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I spent the day today, mostly unconscious. No, not like that. More like almost asleep. On my last visit to the doctor I brought home more than glucose testing equipment. I also brought a raging cold. Gotta love it.
When I was in elementary school I had no idea who I was. Most kids I knew didn’t know who they were, either. It wasn’t a question that ever came up. Life was mostly about reaction, and if we thought about it (we didn’t) reaction was pretty much a learned thing picked up at the knee of our mothers and fathers, and later from the big eye of TV.
If asked, our answer would have been our name and age. That was pretty much it, and it was certainly enough. Eight to ten-year-olds didn’t spend a lot of time discovering themselves.
One day, a long time ago, I got ill at school. My father was alway away, “on the road” was the term, and my mother worked, so I couldn’t go home. Instead the school nurse had me lay down on a cot in her office, and I fell into an uncharacteristicly deep sleep.
It was an odd feeling, to come in and out of it. It was deep, and it was hot, and thick, and I found myself thinking things I’d never thought before. Odd, wonderful, terrifying things. I can’t remember the nature or content of those thoughts. All I can remember was that I had a profound reaction to them. It was good, and it was bad, and it was exciting and scary.
Over the years I have found myself in that state again, from time to time. And, every time I’ve come out of it, it has been with some new (for me) notion. That happened again today.
Here is what I saw.
There is a little thing that is a part of each of us, perhaps it is like a small sphere, or like a dot of light, or some tiny strain of chemistry that is the one thing that makes each of us different, one from the next. If you are religious you might step up and call it soul, but it doesn’t feel like that to me.
To me it seems like a “multiplier”. To me it seems like something through which we (I) analyze and perceive the world. It isn’t the collection of thoughts what we take to make up ourselves. It isn’t ideas, notions, like or dislikes. It isn’t precisely the experiences of our lives, but it somehow seems to touch all of those things.
It is more like a tincture. More like a tiny touch of something that changes that which makes us all alike into something that makes us each different. It is powerful, and profound, and tiny and easy to miss. I think people can go through their entire lives and never notice it. I think it is what I perceived when I was in elementary school, but had no name for, and had no framework within which to consider it.
Is it real? It feels real. But then, I was in a deep sleep somewhat abetted by medicines. It may well be solely imaginary. Whatever it is, it does not seem to be malleable. It doesn’t seem to be something I can do more with than observe. Changing it is out of the question. The closest thing I can get to is naming it, and I’m not sure I want to even do that.
I can’t be the only one who has this. Perhaps it really is the little thing we call ourselves. I may never know.
It is a little frustrating to have noticed this and to be powerless to do anything with or about it. It is one of those ineffable things.
It is something that is so.
It is also something that is “so, what?”
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
I’d call this the “sense of self.” It’s both ephemeral (as you said, you can’t grasp it) and it’s also solid. I think once you experience it, you know exactly who you are in the world. Parts of it may grow or drop away, but at its core, it’s perfectly stable. I often think that most people are so easily swayed by the influences that surround us because they’ve never experienced themselves that way. I also wonder if most of them really even have that core. Maybe they were born with it, but it was quickly destroyed.
Perhaps, Catana, it is like certain quantum particles, that is to say that it isn’t real until it is looked at. That the very act of measurement is what substantiates it. Or, perhaps, as Dickens would have it, it is just a piece of undigested cheese. )
I read a quote by Herman Hesse not to long ago. I’ll paraphrase.
There is within you a stillness, a sanctuary, to which you may at any time retreat in order to be your ‘real’ self.
One possibility.
Another is the ‘homoculus’, associated with Descartes’ Cogito. This imore closely calls to me, (for me) that observing self, which if we are true to Descartes is the basis of our ‘intellectualizations’.
The third suggestion, is one that I found about a year and a half ago. I call it my ‘faith’, after Emerson, because it is some ‘spot’ in the front of my brain, (cerebral cortex) which I train myself to concentrate on. It is more like a ‘force’ than the reference in the Hesse quote, an energy, so to speak.
I have read observations on each of these ‘interior selves’, some of which say they do not change, and some which say they do. The Hesse one, I have recently associated with what some psychologists, would have to look them up, are calling the ‘god-self’.
The important thing is that even within our interior mind, away from the others of the world, I believe that we find an other/Other.
Speculating for a moment, perhaps we will find others, if this is possibly the work of the individual to become more conscious of the working of the brain, as distict from the self. But, as I said, that’s speculating.
In any case, the mind, and the brain, are both challenges to understand, and develop. And of course, our interpretations as to what the meaning of these selves are, is fundamental, not only to our ‘personal/(as in God)interior’ selves which is ‘beyond the world’, but to how we relate, represent, and communicate to other persons on the ‘external’ level. May you keep discovering your ‘selves’…!!!!
Thanks, Loreen.
Quite honestly I don’t know what to call it, but I find it fascinating. Not being a spiritual person, however, the term core seems to resonate for me rather well, but I must continue to claim ignorance.
I must say, thought, I’m delighted with the discussion this is bringing up.
I would probably call this our connection to a collective consciousness as people through God’s uniting spirit. We will each interpret this differently and need to come to our own “faith” or belief as to what this means for us.
What really stood out for me in your post is the personal touch. You are explaining what makes you tick. People love to know what makes others tick! We are fascinated at the different takes we all have. What are you thinking? Why are you thinking it? I also loved your thoughts on teenage identity. Great post!
Shirley, thank you for the kind words.
As you have no doubt gleaned from my feeble attempt at description, I have a poor grasp of the subject, and can only report what I see and feel–a kind of weather report.
I find it both fascinating and informative to see the many different ways a single phenomena can be evaluated and described.
Kind of amazing how people can come to opposite conclusions about the same idea. My core sense of self is who I am throughout a lifetime. It’s an absolute rejection of some mythical collective consciousness or belief in something “out there.” I really don’t understand how Rik’s own concept of coming to himself as a unique individual can be twisted into either of those concepts.
Hi Catana, it is amazing that we each believe differently, and that’s the point. I believe what I believe. You believe what you believe. Actually I do believe in what you say too – beliefs are often a conglomeration of interconnecting concepts. Have a look at my blog: perceptionsblackswan.blogspot.com to see what I believe about identity and purpose
Rereading my first post (not sure what I always mean sometimes), I was probably referring to soul or spirit as that “something” we can’t quite grasp, as I said “connection” to the collective. Please excuse my thought process sometimes – I can be a bit “dof” (stupid) at times!
Rik, I’m also non-spiritual. In fact, after years of reading and thinking about it, I still have no idea what spirituality means, and I doubt that the people claiming it for themselves do, either. There are so many personal interpretations that it’s hard to accept that it has any meaning at all. But they tend to center around the idea of there being something “out there” that you are either aware of or not aware of. And that, in turn, seems to hang on the idea that your “self” is somehow independent of your brain. How else could people believe in reincarnation or the survival of a “spirit?”