Awakening from Autopilot: Meeting the False Self

Autopilot is useful, necessary even. But it can also be terrifying.

Have you ever reached your highway exit only to realize you don’t remember driving the last ten miles? You were functioning, responding, even making decisions, yet you were not fully present. That moment can be unsettling. It reveals something uncomfortable: you were awake, but not conscious.

Autopilot serves us well in daily tasks. We couldn’t survive without it. But to live an entire life on autopilot is to miss the point of being alive. As Socrates famously said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

This is the condition of the false self.

The false self is not evil; it is conditioned. It is a collection of beliefs, habits, memories, fears, and borrowed ideas. It contains enough information to move through life efficiently, but mechanically. It keeps you functioning, but not fully alive. It drives while you sleep.

Awakening is simply the moment you realize you’ve been asleep.

It isn’t some rare mystical event reserved for monks, mystics, or saints. Awakening is noticing that you’ve passed ten exits and weren’t even aware you were driving. You suddenly recognize the autopilot. You become conscious of the false self.

The false self complains about the life you’re living.

The true self is ready to write the next chapter.

This journey is not about becoming someone new in order to be complete. It’s about realizing you already are complete. Nothing is missing. Awakening is not an addition. It is a remembering.

I believe we are spiritual beings having a human experience. While we inhabit this body, we must reconcile both realities. We are flesh, and we are spirit. We cannot deny either. But we can choose where we live from.

Many of us look out through the eyes of the flesh and listen through the ears of the flesh. Life becomes survival, consumption, distraction. I don’t know whether this is what some Eastern traditions call a “young soul,” or whether reincarnation has anything to do with it. I don’t pretend to know.

What I do know is this: a life lived entirely from the flesh is not a life fully lived. There is little inspiration there. Little true expression.

I once heard Wayne Dyer describe inspiration as being in-spirit rather than in body. That idea stayed with me for decades.

Years ago, before I had language for any of this, I began noticing something that deeply frustrated me. Most of my life was lived on autopilot. Yet every so often, rarely and unpredictably, I would experience what I then called “epiphanies.” In those moments, I felt alive. Clear. Whole. I felt as though I was seeing through the eyes of the Spirit.

Those moments were brief, but they were enough.

They disturbed me just enough to make me ask a dangerous question:

Why am I not living like this more often?

So I began to analyze what was different in those moments. The answer surprised me. In every case, I was inspired.

Sometimes it was a nonfiction book that stirred curiosity and expanded my inner world. Sometimes it was a song that cracked something open inside me. A few times, it was the purity of early love, what we often dismiss as “puppy love,” but which is actually presence, openness, and spirit unguarded.

I was living from the Spirit in those moments.

I didn’t understand it then, but I made a simple decision with the understanding I had at the time. I needed to become intentional about being inspired.

What I didn’t realize was that inspiration is living in the Spirit.

To be inspired is to live from the deepest posture of the true self, the place within that I believe is God. The eternal. The infinite. The real Self.

But none of this would have been possible without one essential step, becoming aware of the false self.

Had I not recognized the autopilot, had I not seen the posture from which I had been living most of my life, I could never have created a plan, let alone executed one, to loosen the chains that bound me.

Self-improvement is the highest form of self-love.

And one of the first acts of self-improvement is awareness of the false self.

I can point toward it, but I cannot see it for you.

Like the ancient metaphor says, I am only the finger pointing to the moon. I can describe the finger endlessly, but only you can look up and see the moon. Only you can do the work.

I can share the tools that helped me. I can offer perspectives, practices, and insights. But only you can execute them. Only you will know whether they work, or whether you must dig deeper, or approach the problem from another angle.

And here is the most important truth I’ve learned:

While doing has value, awareness is everything.

The real work is not learning more. It is unlearning.

Unlearning conditioning.
Unlearning beliefs.
Unlearning thoughts that were never truly yours.

Is there always something new to learn? Of course. Much of it is helpful.

But it will never matter as much as releasing what no longer serves you.

This concept is echoed throughout the Bible with terms like “deny yourself,” “take up your cross,” and the “old self” being crucified.

Awakening begins not by adding, but by letting go.

The false self is formed through conditioning, inherited beliefs, and borrowed ideas. Jesus did not teach that belief brings freedom, but that truth does. John 8:32 Awareness of the false self, then, is the first step toward liberation and true transformation.