In new age philosophy there is a constant belief system that is continuously spread without question, and it has to do about us all being "one". The main component to this is that all identity is an illusion - and I strongly agree with this for the most part. What really surprises me about this is how blatantly people will contradict themselves while supporting this "We are the Borg. Individuality is futile" idea.
The God/Source is said to be infinite and all life is part of it, and is it. It learns from all the, probably, trillions of lives/experiences. Then people go on to say that all souls fragment away from the source so that we can "learn" and "evolve". This is where the major contradictions come in, people start to say "I" needed certain experiences, so "I" choose my family, and the hardships (suffering), so that "I" could learn from this. Eventually "we" (individuals) will ascend again back to the source where we lose all of our identities again. People will also talk about "their" past lives, which is another contradiction based on the premise "we are one consciousness experiencing itself".
It brings up a lot of questions but a few of them are: How can we have past lives if we are all one? Why does the source need to experience the same suffering and situations trillions of times with slight variations? Is the source seriously bored or sadistic? :P
What it seems to me is people are simply applying meaning to their suffering; they identify with it as a necessary part of life for everything experienced. It's a line of thinking where people start to think that one could never appreciate something without suffering. How could one enjoy food without hunger, freedom without slavery, etc? Similar to Stockholm syndrome: My master only beats me because I need it to grow.
When a person practices some sort of mindfulness or meditation practice they may experience an expanded awareness. It may be feeling a source of infinite energy in oneself, out of body experiences/astral travel, expanded perception of reality, feeling joy and happiness for no reason. And the truth of it is that we really don't need anything to be full, happy, or complete. It holds us back when we start to believe that I need x, y, and z to be this and that.
In conclusion, if we believe that we all are "the infinite source/god", and we believe that it is incomplete, lacking, not experienced enough, evolved/ascended enough, strong enough, or whatever... Then what can we think of ourselves? It seems like a life of perpetual "I'm not good enough".
