What is Me & Mine?

Remember! We are here to do. So let's look carefully at what is mine in my many and various endeavours.

RL7: Willingness

Willingness is not just mine: the willingness of others, even just one other, provides me with powerful support. I must have faith and belief in myself, but it's extremely hard to do anything totally on my own.

RL6: My Personal Goal

Goals can be mine, as the THEE-name says: even if others share them or also hold the same or similar goals for themselves. Naturally, no doctrine or ethical norm can be just mine, but I can still have and hold my values and purposes. That seems certain: I just have to ensure they are right for me.

RL5: Communication

Communication creates psychosocial reality and telling stories about endeavours is the most social of things. Stories are the staple of media and entertainment. So it is hard for me to know what is mine and what is not. What people say about me or my endeavours can take on a reality whether or not it makes any sense or is «true» by any conventional standard. There is, however, a glimmer of uniqueness in that I have a voice, a way of speaking that is uniquely mine. This is probably because each of us lives in our own psychosocial reality bubble.

RL4: My Experience.

Me, at last! But is experience really mine? It was determined earlier to be a balanced Centre (like Willingness-RL7) so that means it is not just me.

However much I would like to think my experiences are me, there are socio-physical factors that affect me. Numerous stimuli in the environment condition my experiences unconsciously; and there is the pervasiveness of experiences transmitted between people, especially those close to me.
Consider:

• the atmosphere in a room;
• the sense of presence around a person;
• the projection of blame into a scapegoat;
• the externalization of fear and hostility to create enemies.

In any inter-personal interaction, there may be deliberate manipulation of experiences. However, even when there is not, one person (or both) can project their experiences (emotions, thoughts, intuition, ideas) into the other. This usually occurs without either knowing what is happening. Such experiences are not wholly unknowable. However, being aware takes training, experience and self-discipline.

RL3 - RL1 My Actualization

In this lower realm—development and adaptation (RL3), tests and inquiries (RL2), decisions and actions (RL1)—nothing can just be me. Everything becomes entangled in the messy complexity of everyday reality.

Conclusion

Looking at all the Levels, it seems that not much is actually me! So this now raises the bigger question: how do I live my life? My life is mine to live, isn't it? No-one else can live it for me, can they?

There are two ways to approach this:

• Either: focusing on the one thing that it seems I can call mine: my values and purposes-RL6. You can start from there by checking how «Two Powers Combine »—even if it takes you away from endeavour as such.
  

• Or: not being so preoccupied with myself, and giving my attention to turning my endeavours into vehicles for creativity.

Originally posted : 24-Aug-2011