There is a most insidious and captivating ploy in the support of man’s common mental perception: the sense of him being composed of two factors, two selves; distinct states of mind and temperament. In the lives of ordinary men, this plays well, and obviously, plays-by-collective-necessity. With routine people, this feature of man goes unnoticed, and is neither this-way-or-that with them, but he who would eventually see-to-the-wall must take specific note; for all such talk he does about himself is a form of verbal self-mutilation.
Every time you say, (overtly, or to yourself ), that you are “this kind of guy,” or, “that kind of guy,” you have deeply reinforced the illusion that comes hardwired in human consciousness; that causes men to accept as a “don’t-even-bother-thinking-about-it fact,” that they are something other than an inseparable whole piece of work; a canard that can ultimately prove to be the mental-death-by-a-billion-duck-bites.
No one is the kind of person they say they are; no one can be. The operations of the mind are not arranged for such a thing to be possible. The power of the mind is that it does not see things as they are, but as they could be. This instinctive mental proclivity is responsible for all human progress and technology. Man is able to conceive-of, and then manipulate, his physical environment to better suit his needs solely through this automatic mental posture of always seeing things as they could be – other than just as they naturally are.
No problem for routine men, only benefit. But if you say that more than anything in life, you want to know what is going on for yourself, then every time you say: “Well, I’m the kind of person who…” or, “I am not the sort to…” you are lying in one instance or the other. You either do not really want to get-the-understanding, or else, you are lying about the kind of person you say you are… for both of them “into-seeing” won’t go.
This has nothing at all to do with vanity or humility. Its only significance is in the generally unnoted fact that every time you tell someone, or yourself, that you are this or that type of person, you have truly committed a small, but accumulatively meaningful act of mental suicide. You have artificially torn your mind asunder, (as per life’s obvious intent with man collectively, but not necessarily you in particular), and forced on yourself again the feeling of having two different and separate minds.
J.