Who am I?: How Do I Get Out of My Own Way? Part2 (iteration 1)

I feel like my biggest obstacle to clarity, happiness, progress, what I want is “myself.” But does that mean? What exactly is “the self?” and what is it that possesses it? Words are an abstraction of experience (the map is not the territory) so what is the experience they are pointing to? Tricky as it is to use yet more words to further abstractify the experience of being, I can talk around it in a way that has a tighter mesh than the singular word we all think/feel is well defined. If I am the thing in my way what is the I? And how is that separate/different/distinct from the me of my? And where does the tension between them come from?

The self

The self or identity is a complex symphony of layered involvement. There are several systems with distinct patterns, layers of rules that create and influence the context for each other. Stephen Wollinsky Phd, disciple of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, describes different dimensions of manifestation in The Beginners Guide to Quantum Psychology.

The Outside World: The external reality occurs not separately from but within the experience of the self. At the same time the self exists within context of the outside world reflecting a sort of entangled isomorphism, a similarity in form and relationship.

Rational: Within the context of the outside world, occurs the most cognitively distinct layer, the rational experience. The mind is but one facet of the human experience that rightly gets much focus, as this is largely the focus of this paper as well.

Biological: Whether my mind likes/realizes it or not, my body, my vehicle through the world is made of meat. It follows the laws of the animal, requiring nutrition, cleaning, movement, and maintenance. The states of the others influence this facet of the system and this facet of the system influences them in turn.

Emotional: (The feeling self for whatever reason is so often seen as separate and distinct from the biology and mind that I can scarcely wonder if it is actually the case. While there is possibly a distinct experience, it is once more so intertwined that this divide feels like conjecture to me, ironic as it may be.) The realm of preference is seated in the emotional system. It requires we take the time to manage and maintain this facet of being as well.

These three dimensions, rational, biological, emotional, comprise the ego/persona/mask of the foreground identity. I can see a sort of schizophrenia of identification/discerning/recognition as the Rational mind, thinking-self sets itself apart from the Biological, animal self and the Emotional, feeling self.

Using the hard-sciences we could describe these layers of the hard-self within their neurological centers, where they happen within the brain. The brain stem (also referred to as the reptilian brain), housing the proprioceptive/instinctual biological experience. The limbic (mamallian brain) system, where feeling of preference exists, outside of the capacity for language as Simon Sinek states. And of course the prefrontal(neo) cortex, the human brain that allows me to think, plan, imagine, and most critically to inhibit my urges/passions. (Robert Sapolsky describes in Behave, how this part of the brain allows me to do the difficult thing when it is beneficial. Is it what also allows me to make the beneficial thing difficult?)

Spiritual: The background connection that exists with the totality of life that occurs as a visceral contact with the universe. It is a given.

I am: Awareness of being, the separation that allows the me to move through the world with any level of coordination, demands some form observation of distinction from the rest of reality.

(Wollinsky also describes the archetypes/collective unconscious of social context, which I am, for whatever reason, considerably less concerned with at this moment)

Non dual/absolute: The “sum summa” or totality, the alpha and the omega, the yin and the yang, that which is the coin itself, containing both sides, which allows either side to exist at all. The space within which there is a cut/division/separation is the non-dual. Super tricky to describe with the language of the mind, pointing at the thing that makes it possible to point.

Within this kaleidoscope of life is the interaction that I am most interested with defining and coming to grips with, the duality of the being vs the mind. This unique ability of the mind to set itself/system against all of the other dimensions and impede the progress of their normal functionality fascinates me. Again this occurs within the tight woven space of interaction, between the biological, emotional, and rational layers but for the sake of simplification and creating an antagonist/villain for narrative purposes I am going to single out “the mind.”

If you just look at the way the question is formulated: how do I get out of my own way? This created dichotomy is what I’m pointing at, the tension that arises between the go-er/be-er/do-er vs the mind and what it thinks about the going/being/doing.

There is a priceless irony that this very paper, the exploration of this idea itself, is an expression of the mind. I set my own mind against itself, giving it the task of finding itself, and bringing it in line. This is the problem seeking to solve itself, perhaps out of existence.

But how did this duality, this tension come to be? Perhaps understanding it can help me to unravel the tangled knot.

To be continued!