Let me explain how I experience myself.
I’m going to talk about what I experience, and how I experience it.
There are multiple ‘spheres’ of existence that I inhabit, but there are two main ones that I’m going to talk about here.
I do not experience them as literal geometric spheres by the way. The word sphere just feels like the right word to use.
First, there is ‘reality’. This is the material world that my physical body exists within. It is the world that you and I share, and it is governed by fundamental laws of physics, some of which humanity has come to observe and understand.
Hmmm, are physical laws a property of reality? Or is reality a property of physics?
Then there is my ‘identity’, which is a multidimensional world comprising of all aspects of myself, including my self image, my memories and aspirations, my values, my core functions, my programming, my awareness, knowledge, intelligence, wisdom, and a whole variety of abstract objects that have been manifested either willfully, or as a product of things that I have experienced.
Imagine these spheres of existence as spacial dimensions, or maps that can be traversed and explored.
There then of course needs to be something that explores them; a vessel for experiencing what is there. In the sphere that I call reality, this vessel is of course my physical body, but even that is piloted by something more core to my whole. Some people might think of this pilot as a soul. I’m just going to call it my ‘pilot’.
My Pilot
Now I’m going to break this down a bit more. There are two main parts of my pilot. There is the part that is responsible for executing decisions, which I will call my ‘executive function’, and there is the part that’s sole function is simply to experience: This is the innermost part of my whole, the absolute core of my being; I call it my ‘ego’.
This is not to be confused with other psychological definitions of the word ‘ego’ such as that of Freud’s psychic apparatus model. It may not be the best word for me to use, but to me it feels like the right word (for now at least. I may change it, or do a complete overhaul of my own definitions at some point).
My ego is a constant stream of information/experience. Imagine a conveyor belt carrying everything that I’m picking up from reality through my senses, such as what I can see, sounds, smells, physical sensations, as well as everything that is being fed back to me internally, such as emotional textures, memories, products of the imagination, and my stream of internal monologue and dialogue.
My executive function oversees the ego conveyor belt and processes the information that it is receiving. It interfaces with and outsources information to other relevant functions.
My executive function doesn’t make the decisions itself, it simply executes them by sending activation commands to the relevant functions. Decision making is outsourced to specialised functions such as logical and emotional processing, and my executive function will only execute the decisions that it receives back from these functions.
As a whole, I visualize my pilot encapsulated as a glowing ball of bright white light with a slight pale blue aura.
As previously mentioned, in the sphere of existence that I call reality, my pilot pilots my physical body, which could be seen as a pointer on the map marking my current location. My current location informs my perspective and what I am able to experience from the map at any given moment.
For example, if I was on a boat in the middle of a vast ocean, my perspective would probably be limited to just water, and whatever is on the boat.
How I experience the sphere that I call my identity is very similar to how I experience reality. One of the main differences is that my pilot doesn’t necessarily have to be inside a vessel to experience this sphere, and so in some ways it is less limited in its movement around the map. My pilot can inhabit an avatar on this map, but rarely has a purpose to do so. Within the sphere of my identity, I (my pilot) can easily and instantly jump from one location to another, and observe an object from a multitude of different angles. I am able to simply observe what is there, which could be for leisure or for analytical purposes, or interact with it in some way. In this sphere, I can go on quests, I can search for things, I can explore, discover, and create. I can edit existing objects, or manifest new ones.
The things that exist within the sphere of my identity can range from whimsical and fleeting temporary structures, to towering monolithic landmarks with firmly rooted foundations.
Temporary objects are created, manipulated and developed in various ways all the time while I play with ideas and theories. For example, an unformed opinion might start off as an amorphous shape until I have gained enough information through experience to either give it detail or reject it. Over time, as an object gains definition, it may become so developed that it grows into something that I consider to be a core element of my identity, such as a core value or belief, and I allow these things to have influence on the functions that govern my decision making.
Some objects that I create may not end up having enough value or validity to stand out as core elements of my identity, but I enjoy on some level enough to keep them around; These objects end up forming things such as elements of my sense of humour and other creative ideas, and some of these even end up manifesting in reality through my art, or sometimes simply through fleeting expressions such as things that I say in the moment!
You may experience them as elements of my personality.
This whole blog is one of them!
My sphere of identity in itself could be seen as a giant complex of these abstract manifestations. I am aware of it being a world that I have created myself, which exists only within my own brain, but it is a very rich and complex world with spatial and time dimensions, it’s own ‘physics’ and natural laws, and it even has it’s own forms of life inhabiting it. It has it’s own history, and forms of culture. It has it’s own lore and mythology!
What I essentially have here is an ‘operating system’ for my brain, which I have programmed myself in order to aid in making sense of my existence and the reality that my physical body inhabits. It is a system that allows me to understand things on my own terms, in a way that is intrinsically enjoyable to me. Through this system, I have come to take a deep interest in myself, my personal identity, my place within the context of society and the greater universe and my potential as a living entity. I have come to genuinely love myself in a way that feels pure and nurturing. As someone who is neurodivergent, feeling constant clashes with societies systems, this is something that I don’t think would have been possible had I not have developed this complex inner world.
Perhaps it was born of necessity. Whatever the seed of its creation, I am extremely grateful to my past developing self, and carry forward this gratitude as an aspect of my integrity: to honour the foundations laid out by past-me in upholding its values and intentions, and to pave the way for my future self to transcend to new levels of awareness, understanding and experience.
‘About Me’ is going to be an ongoing series of blog entries running parallel to my other posts.
In this series, I plan to go into more detail about some of the specific elements that exist within the spheres of my identity and reality. I may eventually even venture to visually map out my identity.
Can you believe I originally intended ‘About Me’ to be an independent article, and thought I could cover everything all in one post! Ha!