Conceive of yourself as an empty vessel.
That is what you were when you were born.
On the day you are born you are a clean slate, an empty vessel with no concepts.
The emptiness does not last very long, without understanding you perceive the concepts of hot and cold, wet and dry, dark and light and physical contact.
The first few months of your life, all your ideas are your own; without language you perceive happiness and misery, you feel tired or awake, hunger or contentment and a growing sense of individuality.
In what is called your formative years your vessel starts to fill up with concepts, you develop your first concepts with words and you add some more with your better understanding.
Next comes your schooling years, during these years your impressions of life are challenged and many more concepts not only your own but hundreds of others that are taught to you as fact.
Your concept of yourself gets challenged the most by other people to such a degree it can and does often change your concepts of yourself.
You perceive everything and everybody through your own conception of the world and everybody does the same to you and to everybody else.
Part of your self-notion is your perception of your surroundings; your concepts change as your surroundings do and even more so by observing other people’s concepts about you.
The other parts of your self-concepts are personal, the things you never share because they are inside you and you learned them yourself; and then there is also your dreams.
Your dreams at night are again your concepts of the world and your surroundings but your dream, your personal dream is your true conception of yourself.
Your dream defines your own self to yourself.
Conceive of yourself as full. Full of hope, full of joy, full of potential, full of love and full of your own personal dream. Now you can conceive of a better world.
