When I was a young teenager everyone used to

say just be yourself. Also find yourself.

The ever changing body/mind of nerves and sense organs with its feelings, sensations, emotions, instincts, beliefs and tendencies is the ever changing ego and is not our true Self. It has been called the little self as opposed to the big or higher Self.

The supreme Being or Self of God is not the same as your higher self but it is an emanation or outflowing from God and Christ thus part of and one with it, but not It in totality.

To find yourself retiring from the sensory world of normal consciousness is needed.

Fasting, resting and avoiding distractions like tv, internet and radio is needed in order to hear your inner voice, your conscience, your inner self.

In this state of hermetic isolation and sensory deprivation one can pray or supplicate and reach out to God and Christ for direction and communication.

The Buddha Sakamuni who is the equivalent of Christ as witnessed by John said in the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra,

“The Self (ātman) is reality (tattva), the Self is permanent (nitya), the Self is virtue (guṇa), the Self is eternal (śāśvatā), the Self is stable (dhruva), the Self is peace (siva).”

That peace is your higher Self the real you, your essential spirit.

 Sakamuni Buddha goes so far as to declare that “in truth there is the Self [ātman] in all dharmas [phenomena]”.

This is important because looking at the physical material world from a Gnostic point of view, you say to yourself this is All the work of ignorance through the Demiurgos Yaldabaoth and can become repulsed by it.

In reality the Spirit lies within all phenomenon of matter as its essence. Nothing can exist without that Divine essence in all creation.

But that essence was and has ignorantly been used in creation so we see the strange occurance of blood sucking insects and mass murder in war, which are ignorant uses of the spirit principle.

The body and mind with its sensations and emotions are a function of the ignorant use of the spirit essence and are not the real you.

Who you really are is peaceful, stable (unchanging), virtuous versus vice, eternal and permanent. 

Samsara or the material world is not the Self but Nirvana is the Self and paradoxically is the essence of all Samsara or unlasting material creations even though they are ignorantly created.

Things like rainbows, trees and lakes are beautiful yet in reality copies or reflections of their true nature in material form and therefore essentially Divine but not really since they have been copied using the ignorant substance of non-eternal matter.

Seeing the Eternal Self of God's Spirit in the fleeting, transient nature of the material world and not clinging to it or craving it is wisdom. It's being dispassionate for all things that are transient.

Ask yourself will it last forever?

So why should I cling to it or hanker after it?