To thy Self be True…
In a comment on a recent blog I wrote for Applied Esoterix about the challenge of letting people know who you are without resolving to platitudes and job titles, the recent drive toward turning your Self into a brand was pointed out as a dangerous reduction of our selves: “Reducing the complex, often contradictory and typically diverse nature of ‘who we are’ to a logo, a tag line, a sound bite or a twitter message is virtually impossible.” [thank you dangerousideas!]
Fine point. No brand could ever capture your Self, only a persona, a limited aspect of your Self. For it to be representative of your Self, that persona has to be infused with your essence, your values, but it is important to remember that it is not your Self.
Brand YOU
In many ways I welcome the Brand YOU movement. For years, I have helped artists, musicians, coaches, and other individuals create brands for themselves. It is always a somewhat amusing (for me) and usually challenging (for them) process to get people to understand the difference between brand and Self. It comes out clearly when you are developing, e.g. a website. On the one hand, the act of surfing the web is a very personal and intimate one (one person, one screen), and it is important to infuse your virtual representation with as much of your Self and essence as possible. On the other hand, I keep reminding people I work with that this is not about them having to put themselves out there. It’s an avatar, a virtual persona, a mask, a representative of yourself. Not your Self.
Corporate Personhood
In many ways I like this new development as I think it is part of the move from institutionalization to collaboration as pointed out by thinkers like Clay Shirky. We have created corporations and have given them the status of personhood – a somewhat scary notion as most behave like psychopaths with no regard to others, single-minded focus on generating only monetary profit, and several characteristics that indeed do not make them particularly good citizens. But that is another story… (check out The Corporation if you want to know more)
The point here being that if we give corporate entities protection through personhood, it seems fair to give individual persons protection through incorporation. This does not just apply to limited liability, but goes beyond that toward recognition as fully functioning and trading entities (different from the capitalized version of your name on your licenses that serves as your registration of your alien vessel in foreign waters – yet another story).
Person – Persona?
Person, as a good reminder, etymologically rooted comes from “mask”. It’s a mask you wear. Let’s look at the definition of persona:
- pl., -nas, or -nae (-nē). A voice or character representing the speaker in a literary work.
- personae The characters in a dramatic or literary work.
- pl., personas. The role that one assumes or displays in public or society; one’s public image or personality, as distinguished from the inner self.
“All the world’s a stage, and we are merely actors,” dramatis personae of history. Especially the third definition is the key to our dilemma here. Persona is what you put out into the world, it is not you, your inner world.
Persona and Neurosis
The thing is, you have many personas: Who you are with your parents, your lover, your kids, your friends, your boss, a police officer who stops you for speeding, etc., each time you use a (maybe only slightly) different persona. You utilize different strategies based on your early imprints and conditioning, and based on what you have learned over the years to be successful in each scenario.
This is good and healthy. If you were always the same persona, you would lose out on the subtle dynamics created when you interact with others. What becomes problematic is when you start attaching to your personas. When you begin to identify yourself with a particular persona so deeply, that – at least for the moment – your self and other personas become inaccessible.
Attempting to keep in check these multiple personas becomes a juggling game. One of the key causes of modern day neurosis lies in attempting to keep multiple personas in congruence without a pervasive sense of Self. In extreme cases, it can even lead to multiple personality disorder… What is missing if that happens? A strong sense of Self serving as the glue or underlying web of connectivity.
The Whole Self – YOU is a Collective
Your self is an array of multiple dynamics. It’s a collective, not just of personas, but also archetypes. Throughout many traditions the self is represented as a circle:
If you think about your personas, they are your interfaces to the external world. If you begin to identify with them instead of yourself, you ultimately end up gangrene and cut off from that, which in truth is the totality of you.
Many voices
When you think about how you experience reality, there are a variety of voices in your head (however that manifests for you). Some are the voices of our parents or teachers from early childhood, sometimes the voices of our lovers or friends appear to help us make decisions, and then there are other voices that whisper encouragement or devastating thoughts into our awareness. It’s a bit like the gods appearing anytime the hero needs to make a decision in historical references like the Iliad (if you want to go deep on voices in your head, I recommend Julian Jaynes “Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”).
Archetypes – Your Guides to the Unconscious
Jung initially created the notion of archetype to describe transpersonal characters sometimes occurring in dreams, shared not just by a variety of his patients, but even across cultural contexts. In a way, I like to think of archetype as a personality schemata, a high-level template for a persona if you will.
Carolyn Myss introduced me to a very practical application of archetypes when I studied with her several years ago. She wrote about this in her book “Sacred Contracts” (I am quoting liberally, for her specific theory, please check out her work). Here, she suggests, that each of us have a collection of twelve archetypes that serve as our guides and connectors to our subconscious. Four of these we have in common, eight of these are part of our particular makeup.
Victim/Child/Saboteur/Prostitute
According to Myss, the four archetypes and their respective voices we each hear at times are the victim, the child, the saboteur and the prostitute. Each of them sound negative, but remember they are your guides to your subconscious. We create situations in life that allow us to grow. When we encounter them (and they indeed might not be pleasant), we are invited to evolve by heeding the voices of our guides, and taking action to shift back to our Self:
- Victim – “Why me?”, “They did this to me!”, “Poor, poor, pitiful me” - These are some of the thought patterns associated with the victim. We all know what it feels like to feel like a victim. Truth is, none of us is ever a victim. Events occur. Excrement happens. How we interpret the situation determines as to whether we feel like a victim or not (even Jesus on the cross did not consider himself a victim, but instead said “forgive them cause they don’t know what they do” – not much of a victim there…). When the victim voice chimes into our consciousness, it’s an invitation to ask yourself “How can I take care of myself in this moment?”, “How can I reframe the situation to feel like I have actions available to me?”
- Child - “I don’t know how this works”, “I am helpless”, “I am overwhelmed” - As the child you become small and everything else becomes big, you don’t know and everyone else seems to know, you are out of control in a confusing world. When this archetype pipes up, make sure to be kind to yourself. It’s okay that you don’t know. Nobody does, remember? Turn it around and ask yourself “How can I make this situation fun?” – a good thing about children is their attention span is not very long and easily consumed by new and shiny things.
- Saboteur - “You think you can do this?”, “Remember how you screwed up last time?”, “What makes you so special?” - The saboteur reminds us of our shortcomings, our failures, our weaknesses. Every time he sneers, you are invited to step back, take a moment, and remind yourself of what you have learned from the past failure and how this relates to your situation at hand. Every failure is an opportunity for quantum growth.
- Prostitute - “It’s not that bad”, “I know what I have here, I don’t know what’s out there”, “At least you know this” - This archetype is the reason people stay in crappy jobs or abusive relationships. It’s the voice that reminds you of uncertainty, and it challenges you to find comfort in uncertainty. Yes, knowing what you have is great, but if you really want to grow, you have to be willing to give up who you are for who you could become – which might feel like a little death… but then, some little deaths are quite pleasant
Your Personal Archteypes
In addition to the four described above, Myss suggests that each of us have eight additional personal archetypes. Examples of those are artist, guide, healer, magician, hero, helper, etc. (Myss has a long list in Sacred Contracts). You can find yours by thinking about the characters in movies or books that you relate to. Or historic figures. What are some of the patterns that connect them? Which aspects resonate with you?
Living dynamically from the center
Your personas connect you to the outside world. For them to be truly representative of your Self, they have to be infused with its essence. You have to remember who you are. If you do, then you can easily find the appropriate strategies to connect to the world outside of you in a way that serves you – through your physical encounters and personas you engage then, or virtually through the brands you create to represent you (and ideally go to work for you nearly like clones you send off to the factory). When you find yourself getting sucked into your brand or worse, having reduced who you think you are to a slogan or behavior pattern, time to step back, and evaluate how this particular strategy is serving you.
Your archetypes are your inner voices that guide you to areas of your unconscious where you might have open wounds, trigger points, or learning lessons. When they pipe up, you know you need to pay attention and ensure that you are keeping your center. From here, you can now ask yourself what dynamic this voice is serving in this moment. What beliefs or truths do you hold that are being enforced by this voice? Who would you be if you had solved this already?
You are many People
Around ninety percent of the DNA in our bodies is not ours. It’s the DNA of bacteria, fungi, and things I am sometimes not sure I want to know about. Your consciousness is not much different. There is more than one entity running the show. We collate them into an experience of self, but ultimately, it takes a village to make you happen, inside and out. The key to having a coherent and forwarding experience here is to get to know your team. Don’t try and make them all one. They tend to resent that (just like you want to maintain your individuality and not become part of the masses). They are here to help you. As you learn to embrace your personas, use them effectively to maneuver the outside world, you will find that being yourself with different strategies is way more rewarding than constantly trying to adjust your personas to the demands of other people and letting them tell you who you are.
Similarly, as you make your archetypes your friends (e.g. by conversing with them in your head, or using automatic writing), they now will help you identify opportunities for clearing out patterns you hold in your unconscious that are not serving you.
Observe You
Ultimately, the one thing you know is real for certain, is your experience right here right now. If you are shifting toward observing what is occurring around you, and inside of you, shift to Observer mode, you have a pretty good way of finding your Self. Most of the other dynamics tend to be attached to personas or archetypes. The one thing that is for sure your Self, your tastebud on the tongue of universe, is the point of perception, the one that is reading this right now. Be that as often as possible.
The Metaphorical Mind
“Every child is born an artist, the problem is to remain one once they grow up.” – Pablo Picasso
One of my favorite art stories as a child came from a documentary about Picasso. It was showing his progression in understanding and communicating his reality. The documentary started with a water color he had made of a bullfight as a sixteen year old. It was beautiful and attempted to depict the bull, the audience, the vibrant colors with as much realism as possible.
The documentary went on to show his progression as a painter and artist using his depiction of bulls as a baseline. The bull went on to become reduced bit by bit as Picasso was learning to communicate the essence. Slowly it turned into the line drawing of a bull that Picasso is so famous for today.
The very last item shown in this exploration was a piece he had made out of a bicycle handle and a bicycle seat. He had arranged them in a way that they looked like a bull’s head. And even though I knew I was looking at bicycle parts, I saw a bull looking at me from the wall…
This was my first direct experience of what I have come to call the Metaphorical Mind.
The metaphorical mind is that of artists, poets, inventors and engineers. It is a mind that can see something for what it isn’t with as much ease as seeing it for what it is we commonly agree on.
A bicycle saddle or a bulls head. A handle and horns…
What something is
We tend to get stuck in determining what something “is”. But what “is” something? What “is” “it” to “you”?
Your reality is created by distinctions. Patterns you have signifiers for. Signifiers being signs which convey meaning to you. The more signs you have, the more distinctions you can create in your experience, and the more complex it will become. Benjamin Lee Whorf created the concept of linguistic relativity to account for this phenomenon. He is usually cited when people bring up that Eskimos have many words for snow, as for them subtle distinctions about the snow (its ice level, depth, crust, etc.) are crucial to survival.
Similarly, your vocabulary has developed to ensure your survival. You learned to call for your parents, direct people around your physical experience from hunger to full diapers, and later learned more subtle distinctions that allow you to manipulate and function in reality.
Schema, Schema on the Wall
Distinctions are grouped into schemata. Schemata are higher order concepts. E.g. Lemons, Oranges and Mandarins are all part of the schema “citrus fruit.”
Now that you have the schema “citrus fruit,” I can tell you about Grapefruits, which you might have never encountered before. All I need to say is that it is a citrus fruit, and you will know various properties and I can now compare and contrast it to other citrus fruit you know. E.g. I can say it’s usually bigger than an orange, pink in color, a bit more bitter, etc.
Schema are higher-level principles. We can build schemata infinitely until we end up with meaningless oneness. So obviously, it is a tool to be wielded wisely. The key being that it allows for us to abstract something from what it is, and by abstracting it into a higher level order find parallels that might be surprising, amusing (there is a great theory about humor as a benign violation but that’s a whole different story), or sometimes simply beautiful.
Living with a metaphorical mind
Living with a metaphorical mind allows for a different experience of reality. A poet friend of mine once wrote about LA that it is “a great place for paranoids, because nothing is what it seems like and the earth could open up and swallow you at any point.” I think it is a great place for enlightenment for the same reason. Realizing that nothing is what it is allows you to create your own meaning, your own symbolic reality. This is where you begin to live a magickal life of correspondences. Having a metaphorical mind that can jump in experiencing things, not just for what they are, but what they can be, provides you with:
- A richer experience of reality
- The ability to be playful in your experience of reality
- The ability to relate to others more easily
- The ability to see the bigger picture
A richer experience of reality
On a most basic level, it’s fun to create stories. Children love it (some of my last posts where about beginner’s mind and the wisdom of children). We like to make up things. Depending on our early conditioning, we will later in life adopt either the controlling parent stance that this is non-sense and a waste of time, or – as Picasso mentioned – we remain artists, having an ever new experience of this reality, learning new distinctions, delving into an ever new sense of wonder.
And be playful…
Living in a wonder world opens you up to the idea that you might be able to create aspects of your reality. I am not necessarily talking about “The Secret” here. Not the naive magical thinking of a child… and exactly that – with a dose of realism. There are probability patterns to contend with and as much as I wish somebody would knock on my door and tell me that there is world peace now because I sat on my couch and wished for it, I doubt it will go quite that way… But, imagining a world in peace might allow me to see new opportunities to apply my knowledge, skills and abilities toward that. If I only see the world for what it “is”… why would I want to get up and participate in anything? Being able to see the world for what it could be, drawing widely from all the metaphors available, might open up new realistic possibilities.
Empathy
Being versed in switching viewpoints, in drawing parallels to archetypal patterns, in seeing schemata, also allows for a deeper sense of empathy. Once you grok cubism, how can you ever assume that there is only one way of looking at the world. And if I can leave my default perspective, I might as well try on other people’s point of view and see what the world might look like from their perspective. Nothing connects people like being able to empathize with each other. We are growing up as a human species where for the first time we are beginning to have global awareness of each other. For this not to end in tragedy, we will require a lot of empathy.
The bigger picture
As we begin to have more distinctions, see more patterns and create ever higher level of schemata, it is impossible, not to see the big picture. While the big picture might be warped due to some primary assumptions that might be off (e.g. if I accept the idea that oil is required for human survival, the “big picture” would entice me to build a highly controlled society with a small oligarchic elite), it will still encompass a global understanding. With the technologies available to us today, we cannot help but to. Within this new experience, having a metaphorical mind will allow us to integrate schemata while being confronted with ever more complex distinctions. It is not easy running a city and having a political mind (from Greek polis = city). We are now being asked to step up to run a planet and having a terrestrial citizen mind. It will be easy to see differences between each other, but even more important to see the parallels. For that, a metaphorical mind will be extremely helpful.
It’s not just for artists anymore
The metaphorical mind is something each one of us has access to. We use it daily and have used it as a child to begin to make meaning of this world. Each of us can access it, and we have no excuse not to exercise this circuit. Especially in a world of crisis it is crucial for each of us to begin to see the world for what it could be. To do so for the world is a tall order. To even do that for your own life is not an easy task. But it’s like a muscle. You can exercise it. Think of all the uses for a brick. Write them down. See? Easy… Start small…
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