We are All Infinite Awareness Experiencing Itself

p>In new age philosophy,, there is a belief system that has to do about us all being 'one'. The main component fof this is that all identity is an illusion - something I strongly agree with. 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 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 thei past lives, which is another contradiction based on the premise that 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 and essentially share the same lives and essentially share the same lives? Why to experience the same suffering and situations trillions of times with slight variations? What can be learned from illusions?

Identifying with Illusions

What it seems to me is people are simply applying meaning to their creating the illusion of 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 creating the illusion of suffering. How could one enjoy food without hunger, freedom without slavery, etc? It seems more of a fall from heaven into the materialistic trap — identifying with and illusionary world.

When a person practices meditation they may experience an expansion in 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 feel full, happy, or complete. It holds us back when we start to believe that I need x, y, and z to be this and th".

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".