Perennial Philosophy
Part of what Aldous Huxley called the perennial philosophy, and which is close to the beliefs of mystic sects from all religions, is that that which most of us call our self, our lower, small s self, is really illusory and that our true, or higher, big S, Self is something wholly different.
Put in Freudian terms, the lower self consists of our id, ego, and super ego. The id is our basic animal appetites; the super ego consists of our value system, and the ego is some integration of the two other parts. Another meaning of ego is the image we hold of ourselves. All these different lower selves are in constant flux: appetites change as one is satiated and another arises; ones values change over time as does ones image of oneself. In fact, the lower self is obviously inconsistent, and insubstantial.
For example, people say, "I am hungry", but after they eat they say "I am not hungry". People say "I am a Catholic", but perhaps years later they convert to Buddhism and say, "I am a Buddhist." One day a person meets some success and they say, "I am successful", but perhaps the next day they meet a failure and say, "I am a failure." But has the "I" really changed? No.
The perennial philosophy teaches that this "I" , the higher Self, is the subject of which all the other feelings or ideas -- hungry, not hungry; Catholic, Buddhist; good and bad-- are the objects. The Self is consciousness, the experiencer of all the different experiences--of being hungry, of being a Catholic, etc.
Furthermore, according to the perennial philosophy, this higher Self, this consciousness is of the same nature as Goddess. In fact, it is Goddess.
This idea that we are all at the core of our beings identical with Goddess, the ground of being, what have you, is an idea which is often attacked by Christians as evil, and in fact if misinterpreted it could be. But in fact it is Christ's very message. Yeshua's teachings, and the Christian myth read right, is at its heart humanistic. His death on the cross being a symbol for the sacrifice of the lower self to the higher Self.
Later the Church corporate had to take the Goddess back away from the people as a way to control them. It separated man from God and posed itself as intermediary, making the people wholly dependent on them for their salvation. Christian religious institutions in most manifestations down through the ages have been authoritarian and sometimes --even the Pope will tell you-- themselves quite evil, serving the interests of elites over the masses of God's children and persecuting people of other faiths. If Jesus has been in his grave, he must have been spinning like a top through most of the past two thousand years.