e pluribus unum

" 24 Hour Recovery "

"The naive picture of the self is wrong!" OK, got that out of my system. If that was all I had to say, I would be happy now. But I need to add some explanation. Over several years, I have developed an "expert friendly" model of my psyche which serves most purposes, even in a crisis. So, the test of truth is what works, except we know that things can work for centuries and still be wrong. Given this already, I am pleading with you to realize that your ideas of the self, whatever they are, are necessarily wrong. Give them up and start the search anew, naked, empty-handed, with no expectations whatsoever. But realize that at the end, you will have an armload of nothing, because "you are not your mind, but it is yours to use" as Krishnamurti's Master said. What sort of picture will allow us to think of the mind as merely a capacity of the self, like a foot, or teeth? What then, is the self?

I built up my picture of my psyche based on tendencies which had no obvious explanation (Hetaira traits), strengths like programming even though I am not a rational person, my relationships and what they teach me, some past-life memories, and some personality facets that I developed to improve myself. If a simple picture cannot be right, and I am saying that ultimately the mind is not the self, and by the way, neither one exists anyhow, why I am leading you through this elaborate garden? The point is that we have to learn somehow, and the ultimate goal is a unified being. If I know my "parts" and develop them, the hope is that they will all play together nicely and make me a comprehensive, strong, elaborated, powerful adult. People who work in the field of psychology understand this initiative and are enthusiastic to discover someone who undertook this enterprise on their own, without even a book for guidance. It is true not just because it works, but because it is what I built using what came to me.

The title means "one from many". This is a natural concept. So, I have many parts, and they all function in different ways and help me to do a multitude of things, yet I am not those parts. Something is the moving force that exercises them, like a person using their arms and the complexity of them to manipulate the complexity of a piano to make music. A simple arm could not play a complex instrument, and a complex arm would not be needed for a simple instrument. The structure of the psyche matches the structure of "reality". When we come to understand the whole picture well enough, the bell rings, the game is over and we go on to something else. I am intending to become "all one thing", which does happen sometimes, and to be unshakable in that. I cannot give up the idea of what I have discovered, but in trying to live it and represent it, I fall short often. That's OK. Still learning.