Home again

[kickaha]

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.

Comments

[songhawk.livejournal.com]

Here's how I look at the OT, NT, and history in general- I think of the human race as collectively aging like a single child. Early OT, Genesis-Kings, for example, is kinda birth-4: the kid is ritualistic/routine-oriented, wants black-and-white rules, throught temper tantrums, and whines a lot "we don' wanna go to preschool! we wanna stay in the nursery! we wanna go back to egypt! We're hungry! manna again? Ick?" and parental discipline seems capricious and heavy handed (all right! I've had it! 40 years timeout in the desert!). Probably heretical of me but being a parent is a learning experience...
By the time you get to the NT the kid is growing up, exploring understanding their world (the greeks were clearly the young experimenters- let's see what happens if we do this...oooh, cool...), and beginning to show some morals understanding- so Dad lays down some new rules that involve having to think about other's feeling and treat each other nice because it's the right thing to do. Paul even talks some about needing to grow up and learn grown-up teachings like kids need to eat solid grown up food. And kids are involved in explanations that are more why we should behave certain ways, not just "because I said so".

IMNSHO, humanity hit adolescence somewhere around the enlightement and is still there: simultaneously warlike and wanting peace, "I don't have to listen to you, you don't know anything, I can do just fine on my own", seeking information lots of places"...and very very interested in sex in all forms. };-)

*nod*

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

Actually, I've seen it pretty much the same way... this just throws a new spin on the initial development. The Eden story becomes us moving from raw Self to when we hit the real world and throw up defenses against it, and the rest becomes road map on how to get 'back'. That provides a nice link to other philosophies that I've felt much more at home in than the traditional Judeo-Christian tradition.

Meeting the Inner.

[byrdie.livejournal.com]

The closest I've come to that is still rather divisive: the wounded kid with the snarling protector is the deepest I've dug thus far. And that, still, is for the purposes of dealing with difficult social situations and trying to reprogram myself. I figure I'll get closest to seeing my "core" once I'm able to react to touchy spots without consciously suppressing one and summoning the other. Or, perhaps, the part of me that knows what to summon and what to give a time out is my core, but works so much behind the scenes that I hardly notice its stage-ninja presence?

Going back to a point before I was fucked-up, just being, acting and exploring? I still think that confronting What Happened To Us allows us to seperate What Happened to Us from Who We Are, once we figure out What It Changed and Why It's Not Working Anymore. I'm not much for running around and screaming "I'm cured!" at every breakthrough, because I've seen what happens to people who assume that they're over something -- they rarely are. But recognizing that I'm probably going to be on a path towards getting back to ... Eden, my Core, the Tao, Who I Am? I don't know if I'll ever get there, but I think that you're right: that association makes sounds correct to me in ways I can't quite explain.

Tabula Rasa.

[lirrin.livejournal.com]

There's a good article in one of the latest science mags (can't remember which, but it's in my bathroom) about how the "Tabula Rasa" theory of human nature is beginning to fall out of favor, because it doesn't jibe with common sense. And to my way of thinking, it really doesn't.

I think, though I've never really put any concerted effort into analyzing this, that I have always felt somewhat the opposite of what you describe. That I am me, always me, always have been me and always will be me. Things will happen to me. My opinions and attitudes and likes and dislikes and situation and knowledge may change, but I am ME. I haven't locked away part of myself or hidden it. Sometimes my life leads me to being tougher or weaker or louder or softer, but there's nothing to dig for, I'm here. (I sometimes find it funny that people think I'm difficult to read or understand, because though I may be mildly complex, I'm not particularly protective of myself, or shielded.) It's like in my dreams...I've asked others if, when they dream, they are themselves or someone else. I am always, always, always ME. Most people tell me they may be someone else. "Well, I was a Chinese warrior, and a guy." Dreaming I was Chinese, or living in another time or place, or even another gender, and I am still ME. My name is irrelevant, my appearance is irrelevant. I am the entity doing the experiencing, even if what has led Dream Me to where she is (virtually always I am female, apparently I have a very very strong gender sense) may be completely different from the life Reality Me has led. And my personality in the dream may emphasize one aspect or another of Me, but it's me, never any question.

I have no idea what that means, though. Do I have an unusually strong sense of self? I've been told I do, so maybe so. Maybe I just lack the imagination to think of myself as someone else in a dream. I've always tried to remember that what the child Me thought, the adult Me should consider, and not let "education" or "experience" beat out of me the things I once understood. May be why I still talk to the faeries in the garden, I suppose, or maybe I'm just certifiable. ;-)

Have you ever been around newborns? They come out with their own personalities, honest. Some are easily startled and cry a lot, some are quiet and observe everything soberly, some laugh at anything, some sleep most of the time, some explore, some don't...there's definitely a personality there before experience. What we do and experience of course must shape us, but we don't start out as a blob of clay with nothing for the experiences to act upon. And have you noticed that two people can go through virtually identical experiences and see them completely differently? I've seen abused children come out of horrific situations basically cheerful and forgiving adults. I've seen people with pretty normal, non-abusive lives come out and be rotten little shits as adults (just extreme examples.) People don't react uniformly to stimulus or experience, even if their lives are parallel.

Okay, so I'm not the most philosophically inclined person on the planet. :) Hobbits prefer good food and good company and a good story to all this introspection. *heh*