Who Am I?

Who Am I?

I am always after that sense of unity, of wholeness in life, and sometimes, a few moments are granted me…moments of pure grace.

Have you noticed how things seem to break apart on their own, so that life feels much more like a kaleidoscope than a One? Sometimes, I can maintain a sense of self in the middle of all these shifting parts, but at other times, I feel that my self is also made up of shifting parts, so that I an never sure what parts will come together to face the world at any moment, what self will emerge.

We think of self as an entity, as a single, unified and whole being. but often that self seems to crumble, sometimes drastically. “I feel like I’m falling apart,” we say, or, “Pull yourself together”.

I suppose that's why principles are so important, because as we choose ideals and try consciously to live by them, we create and structure a living whole from the many possible parts of self.

I wonder if that's what individuation really means - this discovering or revealing of the person that our choices and actions have created. I think I must also include 'taking responsibility for' the self or selves we create: I think we individuate by knowing and being who we have chosen to be.

So, is there a permanent, true self?

One of the most terrifying periods in my life was a year in which I felt myself unravelling…literally. It was as though everything I ever thought I knew, every part of the self I knew fell away, piece by piece. It was like standing on scaffolding that is slowly coming apart. I thought I was going mad. Truly. Now I now that I was experiencing my self as it really is…a construct of my mind.

Without that construct, I fell into a deep despair. Ironically, I fell so deep that eventually, I reached something even deeper within me. Because it was so unlike anything I had experienced before, this also frightened me. I thought perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to go mad…easier than trying to make sense of what I was experiencing.

But I had three young children. Insanity was not an option. Yet it took me painful months to realise that this indescribable, elusive experience of something was my true self. I had come face to face with my soul-self, and it felt like one great question for which I knew there was an answer, but it was always out of reach.

Is it surprising that this was how I learned to have faith? To trust in what I could not see, could not describe, could not name? From that faith came a knowing. I still cannot explain it. I just knew that I…the real I…is not breakable, not transient, but real, profoundly and blessedly real.

The real Self is what we call the Soul. It is steady, enduring, unaffected by time or space, greater than the small personality that is the ego-self. Soul inhabits and activates the body, and is also of spirit. It links us most firmly with the Divine. Soul is the intermediary between body and spirit, which makes it accessible to the pull of physicality, to the senses, and the ego mind. Our task is to become more conscious of our soul self, to strengthen it, and to follow it. Otherwise, we become too entangled in the body and the ego mind, and lose our Selves.

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