The Compassionate Mind (Compassion Focused Therapy)

by Paul A. Gilbert

People often wonder if there is a ‘real self’ or a ‘real me’ among all the aspects of self one does and doesn’t like. We sometimes talk about trying to discover the ‘true’ self. However, this is partly an illusion. There is no ‘real self’; there are only states of mind and patterns of consciousness. There is not a single atom in your body that you were born with; in fact, you are constantly changing the physical fabric of your body all the time, including your brain. The experience of yourself as a being emerges from the patterns that are created in your physical brain. If, for some reason, part of your brain is damaged, then your experience of yourself would be very different. These are the paradoxes that modern science is grappling with today. So rather than the ‘real self’, think of yourself as a pattern of great complexity, a rainbow of many colours, and the point of discovery is not so much finding a particular colour, but rather learning how to blend all the colours. A garden is not just the flowers or the trees or the grass or the soil – it is all these things. So think of yourself as not a single self but as a consciousness that is textured by a multi-faceted, multi-coloured set of possibilities.