# The Natural Self > The natural self is the self you chose to be in this life prior to habituated persona layers, where pain arises from resisting that true nature and resolves through allowing all choices to be equally valid. - Canonical: https://sassani.app/topic/the-natural-self # The Natural Self The natural self is the self you actually chose to be in this life, prior to the habituated "normal" persona layered on top of it. In the single linked transcript Bashar frames the natural self as the reference point against which pain and suffering are measured: pain is what results when you resist being the self you actually are. ## Pain as resistance to the natural self The linked session opens with a direct equation: pain is the result of resistance to the natural self. The teaching is not that pain is inflicted on you by circumstance, but that it arises from the gap between who you are and who you are trying to be. On this view the "drag" of suffering is the friction of living as something other than your natural self. The companion framing here is that many people find it easier, given how they were brought up, to first experience what they are not before they can clearly recognize what they are. The contrast itself becomes a learning instrument: the pain of being untrue to the natural self teaches, by negative example, the shape of the natural self. ## Resolution through equal validity of all choices The path to resolving that pain, in this session, is not effortful self-coercion but a shift in how choices are held. Bashar states that all paths and all choices are equally valid, positive and negative. When you allow all choices to be equally valid, you do not put a charge on one over another; you do not invalidate what you do not prefer. In that state of non-invalidation, everything is in balance and you can experience exactly what you prefer without attracting what you do not — because invalidating what you do not prefer is precisely what charges it and draws you toward it. The practical logic is inverted from common assumption: it is not preference itself that creates attachment to the unwanted, but the invalidation of the unwanted. Holding the unwanted as an equally valid choice robs it of its charge, and only then can you move toward the preferred without being pulled toward what you resist. ## Practical implications Notice pain as a signal of resistance to the natural self rather than as an external imposition. The question becomes "what am I being that I am not?" rather than "what is being done to me?" Practice holding choices you do not prefer as equally valid rather than invalid. The teaching warns that invalidating the unwanted charges it and attracts you to it; allowing it as a valid option is what releases the charge. Use the contrast of what you are not as information about the shape of the natural self, rather than as evidence that something has gone wrong. ## Representative passages Pain, pain, pain, pain is the result of resistance to the natural self.— Bashar, All Paths And All Choices Are Equally Valid (all-paths-and-all-choices-are-equally-valid#text) It's the recognition that all paths are valid. All choices are valid, positive and negative. And when you allow all choices to be equally valid, then you don't put a charge on one more than the other. … when everything is an equal choice, then everything is in balance, and you can experience exactly what you prefer and not experience what you don't, because you're not invalidating what you don't, which actually puts a charge on it that attracts you to it.— Bashar, All Paths And All Choices Are Equally Valid (all-paths-and-all-choices-are-equally-valid#qa-2) ## Related - [Natural Self](https://sassani.app/topic/natural-self) - [Pain](https://sassani.app/topic/pain) - [Unconditional Acceptance](https://sassani.app/topic/unconditional-acceptance) - [Resistance](https://sassani.app/topic/resistance) Markdown twin of https://sassani.app/topic/the-natural-self. The HTML page is the source of truth.