What Is The Higher Self Meaning? + How To Connect To It Through Spiritual Practice

In new age spirituality, the higher self is one of those terms that is used A LOT.

Perhaps you heard it mentioned in a guided meditation, or your yoga teacher cued the class to connect with their higher selves during savasana.

But what is the higher self meaning, why should you seek to connect with your inner self, and how do you do it?

In this article, we’ll unravel this spiritual term and discover what it means to be connected with your true self in each area of life.

What Is The Higher Self?

The higher self also called the inner or divine self, is a state of higher consciousness that yogis seek to reach through spiritual practice. It can also be described as our inner guidance. So if you’ve ever felt like something within you was guiding you toward something, you’ve already felt the presence of your higher self.

We all have a “true self” within us, but we usually have little or no awareness of it. Instead, we are generally connected to our “ego self”, a sense of personal identity, and feelings of self-importance.

Now, the purpose is not to eradicate the ego self (as this is essentially our personality) but instead balance the ego (lower self) with the higher self. The fast-paced, high-stress modern lifestyles we lead strengthen the ego self and move us further away from our highest self.

This is why spiritual practice is so important. We slowly start uncovering the higher power within us through meditation, yoga, self-reflection, and spiritual study.

So why should we seek to connect with our divine self? It is believed that reaching this state of consciousness allows us to access our deepest truths and hidden knowledge, allowing us to become the best versions of ourselves.

The higher self promotes greater self-awareness and acceptance, allowing us to see things from different perspectives and uncover the negative thought or behavioral patterns that hold us back.

The Meaning Of Higher Self In Relationships

Connecting to your higher self doesn’t just help you make progress in your spiritual journey. It also promotes deeper and more meaningful relationships with others (and yourself).

When we do the spiritual work to connect to our higher selves, we can release emotional baggage and negative beliefs that previously had a detrimental effect on our relationships.

Connection to the inner being evokes a healing effect on an emotional level, so it helps us release past hurts and heal internal wounds so that we can cultivate a healthier and more soulful relationship.

Moreover, higher emotions like love, compassion, and empathy are dominant on this high vibration. This positively changes the way we see and interact with others, which also has the knock-on effect of making us more attractive to others.

The Meaning Of Higher Self In Career

The level of self-awareness we gain via connection with the higher self allows us to discover our dharma (life purpose). Dharma is a Sanskrit and Buddhist word related to our soul purpose—the big reason we are here.

Living your dharma is about spending your days doing what lights you up and what you feel passionate about. It is also about making a positive difference in the world or touching the lives of others through what we do.

If you feel stuck, confused, or dissatisfied in your career path, cultivating a deeper connection to your higher self will help you uncover the truth about what you want to do and what you are meant to do on a high level. For example, you may discover your dharma is to spread beauty into the world, which can be done in many ways, such as painting, singing, or designing.

The Meaning Of Higher In Everyday Life

By cultivating a connection with your higher self, your daily life experience will change drastically. This is because we vibrate at a higher frequency and see things in a different light.

Our entire outlook on things will shift; the daily tasks that used to feel mundane now feel meaningful. We are also much more present in everything we do as we live in our hearts rather than our minds.

Moreover, we feel calm and at ease when connected with our highest selves. We release our attachments to things, situations, and people and abandon our self-centered needs.

We see things from a big worldview rather than focusing on our personal problems. This helps us remain calmer in stressful or challenging situations and prevents us from feeling anxious about what is happening in our lives.

How To Get In Touch With Your Inner Self

To gain awareness of our higher self, we must cultivate mental stillness. This can be done via various spiritual practices or simply by slowing down and sitting in silence each day.

The more we do this, the more we will start to notice signs, symbols, omens, and intuitive feelings, which is how we experience our inner world. These signs and symbols can appear in dreams, during meditation, or as we go about our daily lives.

Meditation

You can enhance your intuitive capabilities in meditation by stimulating the third eye chakra, the energy center responsible for our inner wisdom and imagination.

When doing this meditation, you may also like to wear or hold a crystal, like Sodalite. Sodalite is associated with the third eye chakra and promotes intuitive understanding, inner knowledge, and increased self-awareness.

Heart-Centered Yoga

Many ancient wisdom traditions teach that connection to the divine comes through surrender to the heart. And by heart, I mean the spiritual heart, known as Hridaya.

The spiritual heart is said to be the witness consciousness, an intimate observer of our thoughts and emotions. Therefore, by awakening Hridaya, we can shine divine light into all areas of our lives.

We can work with the spiritual heart through heart-centered yoga practices. This can be done by incorporating heart-opening yoga postures and backbends into our asana practice, as these poses stimulate the heart chakra. Or it can be by practicing Bhakti Yoga (the yoga of devotion) through chanting Sanskrit mantras.

Journaling

Journaling or free writing is an effective self-reflection practice that helps you move closer to your true self. You can write intuitively by simply putting pen to paper and writing whatever comes out.

At first, you will likely journal about surface-level thoughts coming from the ego self. However, as you continue to free-write, you’ll connect deeper within and begin writing from your higher self.

If you find it challenging to free-write, you can use journaling prompts. I love to use the Soul Therapy journal. It helps you cultivate a daily journaling practice with thought-provoking prompts and open-ended questions to connect with your higher power.

Spiritual Study

Exercising the mind through spiritual books can also help us explore our souls and foster a connection with the divine. Numerous books can guide you toward your higher self and spiritual awakening.

I highly recommend Access the Power of Your Higher Self by Elizabeth Clare Prophet, as it gives simple techniques and practical steps to realizing and accessing your highest potential.

Spiritual Growth: Being Your Higher Self by Sanaya Roman is another transformative book with practical steps to raising consciousness. I also like that there is a guided meditation at the end of each chapter to embody that specific teaching.

Spending Time In Nature

Being in nature is one of the best ways to find mental stillness and presence. By connecting to the positive healing vibrations of mother nature, we connect to our heart center, which awakens the higher self.

Nature is incredibly purifying, yet most of us are deficient in it. We either live in cities with minimal nature or are “too busy” to spend time outdoors. This contributes to our imbalance of the ego self and higher self.

However, spending as little as 15 minutes in nature and the sun daily is enough to bring ourselves back into balance. Nature’s ancient wisdom reminds us that we are just a tiny part of the greater universe, which puts our personal problems into perspective.

Final Thoughts On The Divine Self Meaning

The higher self is the inner wisdom that lies within each of us. It is the state of consciousness where we discover our deepest truth.

There are many different forms of connecting with our highest self, such as meditation, chanting, and walking in nature. But what they all have in common is mental stillness, which is integral to hearing the messages our soul is trying to share with us.