Table of contents hide 1 Illusion vs. Reality 2 Being Built 3 How to be yourself 4 Being yourself means getting rid of your separate self first
At a public conference, it was reported that a psychology professor said: " Until you are 50, you will not know who you are ." This seems overly optimistic, because it takes much more than maturity to discover who you are; in fact, much more than psychology is involved. Answer "Who am I?" It requires that you take a position on reality itself, in all possible aspects.
Illusion vs. Reality
In high school and university English classes, it is popular to assign an essay on the subject of appearance versus reality, which can be applied to any piece of literature. As it applies to Hamlet, for example, almost all the work tries to decipher what is real and what is illusory. He is the ghost of Hamlet's father and if so, is he telling the truth about his murder ? The new king, Claudius, who has married Hamlet's mother, seems friendly and concerned about the well-being of his stepson at first, but this farce is discovered as guilt and revenge continue. There are more tangles of appearance versus reality in every corner, as is the critical question of whether Hamlet is crazy or in his right mind.
In everyday life, appearances can be maintained through a complicated complex of veils, costumes, unconscious defenses and psychological tricks. Most of these involve the word "me." Burying your true self is a project where you can spend large amounts of time and effort.
When you were little, for example, your parents nurtured and protected you, but at some point disagreements appeared. All children learn that their father and mother are therefore not all-powerful . They can't protect you from thugs on the school bus. Another fault focuses on desire. Children want things that their parents do not necessarily want and when wishes collide, then what? It is a traumatic shock when a couple decides to divorce, because no matter how it is, they are acting to feel happier first or to escape misery, instead of doing what makes their children happier or less miserable. (Of course, there are examples where divorce is better for the whole family, but interruption and trauma remain a problem.)
The Built Being
In such critical points and there are many more, both large and small, you become yourself, which becomes your first and last refuge. Learn or not learn to be self-sufficient, self-protective, self-confident, self-motivated and self-aware. This project of relating to yourself is how you answer the question " Who am I ?" You are the final product when it comes to building a self and presenting it to the world. No one looks in the mirror and sees a real person. What you see is the self, and it is not a simple image, but a dynamic system of relationships within your mind.
This self that is built has a very limited reality, because no matter how much you work on self- improvement, there is a fatal flaw in the ego system. The construction is essentially artificial and therefore, is separated from you. Nobody merges completely with the social self that they present in public. No one fully accepts the psychological being with whom he must live beneath the surface.
The proof of this is quite simple. People say things like, " I hate myself right now " or "You have to learn to love yourself" and it's like talking about someone else: a stranger, a brother or even a pet. Like them, your self-creation must stand out above all . You look at it, you judge it, you hate it one day and you love it the next and so on. In short, the reality of who you are is hidden from you and you don't know what's behind the curtain.
For most people, facing reality is a terrifying proposition ; they greatly prefer to be cushioned by the ego that they have learned to accept. Returning to the example of childhood, when you discovered that your parents were not almighty protectors, it was impossible to remain neutral in the face of this shocking fact. They forced you to face the whole problem of how to defend and protect yourself.
However, despite all the forces that psychologically urge him to remain within his constructed ego, the wisdom traditions of the world, in which I include all religions and spirituality, revolve around the possibility To become real Something inside you, even if you are deeply buried, feels trapped in the ego. Unfortunately for the forces of conformity and conventionality, there has always been a diverse team of artists, sages, saints, crazy people, rebels, poets and lovers who have freed themselves from what William Blake called our wives forged by the mind . These fugitives are both terrifying and inspiring. We venerate and persecute them in equal measure. A figure like Jesus, for example, personifies maximum inspiration and maximum suffering at the same time.
But let's say that fear does not win and you commit to unveiling reality. Immediately an obstacle arises. To become who you really are, you have to go through the self that you created so assiduously throughout the years and unlike a pair of pink glasses, which you can simply remove, you cannot remove the filters imposed by the I ego You have come to believe that these filters are you. The ego system clouds everything you perceive or think.
How to be yourself
The only way to discover reality is to find a strategy that does not involve the self . This means that you must exclude everything the mind does all the time, which is to entertain a constant stream of sensations, images, feelings and thoughts. The mind has been trained to adjust to the self and so has the brain. In its efforts to shape reality to satisfy its desires, desires, fears and needs, the mind has been irremediably divided, with certain impulses under control (more or less), while other impulses roam freely, refusing to submit (ask anyone suffering from anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsions, paranoia, pain, impotence, etc.).
Being yourself means getting rid of your separate self first
This is something that sounds almost laughable. The situation is exactly like saying that if you want to be fully protected, you must abandon all your defenses .
The whole project seems contradictory and more than a little suspicious. The ancient Greek sentence of " Know yourself " could be crazy or simply impossible. But the fact that reality, to be real, must be filtered cannot be avoided. Only by walking on the path of self-liberation is it possible to discover, once and for all, what is real and what is illusion. This path follows defined principles that provide guidance to anyone who wants to be real.
TRANSLATION: Lurdes Sarmiento
MORE INFORMATION at: https://chopra.com/articles/unveiling-reality-the-mystery-of--wwho-am-i•-part-1
