You are both: what-you-are and what-you-think-you-are;
and not alternately, but concurrently.
Those who not do fully understand the deal, derive obvious pleasure in claiming that man lives in a world of illusion; that everyone save the speaker is deluded regarding the true nature of life and themselves by exotic nefarious forces which by and large, now dominate man’s original pure, insightful essence.
The religious see it in terms of a contest between good and evil. The sociological view it as between wealth and want; the psychological as between conscious desires and non-conscious needs; the political as between the past and the future. The would-be understanders conceive it to arise-from and be centered-around the normally unnoticed, unutilized potential of the brain to produce states of consciousness which seem to be sufficiently distinct from one another as to merit discreet designation.
While deists believe they can be either saint or sinner, and humanists-psycho-sociologists-cum-whatever-else-is-left believe that men can either come to acceptable grips with their inner demons or not. A man with the understanding sees the same internal landscape in the context of it consisting of what can only be called, from a human perspective, inalterable reality; it is what a person really IS.
But floating, omnipresent above the genetic landscape, is an atmosphere composed of another form of reality, which, comparably speaking, seems neither physical, nor immutable; and just as external to man. The Earth and its surrounding atmosphere can be classified, and studied as separate entities – and yet: the two are composed of the same elements that make up everything in the universe. The two are obviously, at all times, in direct contact with one another at every point on the globe, and the two are known by all to be engaged in constant interaction, activity which produces the weather of this planet, be it fair or foul.
J.