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Home again
Been doing a lot of thinking recently as to what is Personality. I've been a long-time believer in the idea that Who We Are is based almost entirely on What Has Happened To Us. Our memories, our experiences, our interactions with the world... these are the things that create Us. Without them, we're tabula rasa.
Recently though, I'm beginning to doubt. I've been ripping away layers (or at least filleting them open) of my psyche in past weeks, and at the center have found... a Core.
There's a real *person* down there, independent of fear, independent of hate. And it feels like coming home. Like it's been down there all along, just waiting for me to rediscover it and bring it into the light, to *extend* the Core outward, instead of burying it under layers of adopted Personality, socialization, and memories of interactions past.
So what is this Core, if it seems to be fairly independent of experience?
You ever think of what infants think about? They have no language, no semantics, no symbology. Casual thought would indicate that they operate on a pure instinctual level, and perhaps this is precisely so... they are Core without expressive power... they just *are*.
Then we age, we grow, and we learn life's hard lessons - people will hurt you as well as love you, they will come and go, they will die. We react to these lessons by constructing behaviours that are defensive, to protect the Core... but somewhere along the way the behaviours and the framework we make of them takes on a life of its own, and we lose sight of what it was we were protecting. The vault is airtight, and we forget how to open it... but like the telltale heart, we hear our Core beating at the walls of our own making.
From time to time we may even hear its scream.
So we're born with this innate sense of Self, somehow. Call it a soul, call it the tao, call it pure animal instinct, I don't care. It's an awareness of simplicity that we lose as time goes on, and that most of us spend our entire lives trying to recapture.
We try religion, we try psychoanalysis, we try self-help books. We try, and we strive, and we push... what we don't do is relax and just... be. We don't turn inward, but ever outward, looking for the One True Thing that will Fix Us. That will make us Whole. We already are. Every one of us.
The Gnostics would say that that is our Divine, our piece of God. The Buddhists would say that it is our Way to the Tao.
I've never been able to reconcile in my own head the New and Old Testaments... the wrath, fire and brimstone of the former seems so utterly at odds with the love and acceptance of the latter. And yet, I found a new view on an early bit that suddenly makes sense... we are born with our Self (Eden), we grow and gain painful experiences (Tree of Knowledge), and we lose sight of who we are (cast out). If Xianity is seen as a quest to regain Paradise, or Eden... suddenly it moves much closer to other teachings I am comfortable with.
Hi, me. Nice to see you again. It's been a while.
Recently though, I'm beginning to doubt. I've been ripping away layers (or at least filleting them open) of my psyche in past weeks, and at the center have found... a Core.
There's a real *person* down there, independent of fear, independent of hate. And it feels like coming home. Like it's been down there all along, just waiting for me to rediscover it and bring it into the light, to *extend* the Core outward, instead of burying it under layers of adopted Personality, socialization, and memories of interactions past.
So what is this Core, if it seems to be fairly independent of experience?
You ever think of what infants think about? They have no language, no semantics, no symbology. Casual thought would indicate that they operate on a pure instinctual level, and perhaps this is precisely so... they are Core without expressive power... they just *are*.
Then we age, we grow, and we learn life's hard lessons - people will hurt you as well as love you, they will come and go, they will die. We react to these lessons by constructing behaviours that are defensive, to protect the Core... but somewhere along the way the behaviours and the framework we make of them takes on a life of its own, and we lose sight of what it was we were protecting. The vault is airtight, and we forget how to open it... but like the telltale heart, we hear our Core beating at the walls of our own making.
From time to time we may even hear its scream.
So we're born with this innate sense of Self, somehow. Call it a soul, call it the tao, call it pure animal instinct, I don't care. It's an awareness of simplicity that we lose as time goes on, and that most of us spend our entire lives trying to recapture.
We try religion, we try psychoanalysis, we try self-help books. We try, and we strive, and we push... what we don't do is relax and just... be. We don't turn inward, but ever outward, looking for the One True Thing that will Fix Us. That will make us Whole. We already are. Every one of us.
The Gnostics would say that that is our Divine, our piece of God. The Buddhists would say that it is our Way to the Tao.
I've never been able to reconcile in my own head the New and Old Testaments... the wrath, fire and brimstone of the former seems so utterly at odds with the love and acceptance of the latter. And yet, I found a new view on an early bit that suddenly makes sense... we are born with our Self (Eden), we grow and gain painful experiences (Tree of Knowledge), and we lose sight of who we are (cast out). If Xianity is seen as a quest to regain Paradise, or Eden... suddenly it moves much closer to other teachings I am comfortable with.
Hi, me. Nice to see you again. It's been a while.