The self.
May 31, 2016 § 11 Comments
Maybe the self extends past the thin envelope of skin. Maybe it includes the man-made box the body inhabits: the shelf of carefully arranged stones-of-travel, the photos and cut flowers, the wall paint that matches the sky.
Maybe, like magnetism, the self extends out into the yard, to wander among the ferns and grass and the flowering plants passed along by neighbors as slips in Dixie cups of damp earth.
Maybe it includes the street, and the fixed constellation of houses that anchor a particular landscape, the confluence of latitude and longitude above which is pinned a sky where the predictable moon waxes and wanes.
Maybe the self is a filter of chosen beliefs that provides an explanation of how this enterprise called life works; there must be some rules.
Without that framework of rules and assumptions the self would dissolve like sugar in water.
Maybe the self embraces time: the what-was of yesterday, the what-is of today, while leaning, always leaning toward the what-will-be of a tomorrow.
Maybe it includes the what-is-not and what-may-never-be of hopes and dreams.
Maybe the self, mirrored back in the admiration or disapproval of others, is more aware of its own reflection than it is of any intrinsic sense in its own worth.
Maybe that is why self is a volatile stock, spiking high and crashing low.
Maybe self is as ephemeral as thought and as solid as a well-worn pair of shoes.
Maybe self is exhaled, along with our last breath, leaving only a shimmering reflection in the memory of others.
And maybe when we release that self we see, for the first time, what-is, unfiltered.
Very, very honest reflections.
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Thanks Sue. And thanks for reading my posts.
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Love the Dixie cups full of damp earth. We did that as kids.
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My memory of my dad includes his habit of taking cuttings off any plant that caught his eye and rooting it.
You root a plant, and then you share. It doesn’t work for everything, but there are “pass-around-plants,” that are easy to root, and then give away..It is a fine way to get to know your neighbors.
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Amazingly thought-provoking….”ephemeral” is exactly right. The fact that it can’t be pinned down or defined casts doubt on it’s reality. And your concluding line could have come straight from the Bhagavad Gita. Sometimes it takes a poet to explain the unexplainable.
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Beautifully done, Adrian. For some reason, I have been doing some soul-searching writing this week.
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The self. The “I.” The ego. That is the Mind.
Divorce from Self. From ego. Merge with the One, the life spark born.
We are born inside. As we grow, we move outside into ego. We spend the rest of our lives trying to get back inside to the One.
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Yes, the self is a conceit and an illusion, one that is very hard to let go of. As I get older the self seems to have less sway–I think I see the whole a little more clearly, along with the fact that my self may well be a chance manifestation of the moment, no more real or permanent than a ripple in water.
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The self is the ego, the mind.
Divorce the self. Merge with the Oneness, the life spark we were born with.
We were born.with the One, which is inside. As we grow up, we move outside into the world or the Self, the Mind.
We spend the rest of our lives trying to get back inside to the One that has never left us.
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Thenself
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The Self is the Ego, the Mind. The Self lies outside.
We were born with the One inside us. As we grow, we move Outside. We spend the rest of our lives trying to get back Inside to the One.
Adrian captures the journey perfectly.
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