How Do I Know Me

The theme for today is "How do I Know Me"

Today, as always
is an opportunity to discover
what happens if we connect the dots
(and stand back briefly to appreciate the emerging face)

of things we've talked and thought about
in our recent meetings and encounters
which are one "crossroads" of our richly varied lives.

How do I know Me?
Let me count the ways.

The poet E.B. Browning
(not to be confused with E.B.White)
wrote a well-known sonnet
with a similar theme
substituting "Love" for "Know"
and "Thee" for "Me"

and yet the principles are the same
except for a few little barriers
... the idea that Thee is very different from Me
... and that Love is very different from Know

Setting aside sentimentality
and the cliche-making habit of social memory and attitude
we might see her poem is really about
ways of knowing someone, Me or Thee
or something deeply.

A bit of Sonnet 43:

I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints

To understand Browning's poem
is to undertake a personal exploration
of deeper ways of knowing
and she points us toward several

which would be a contemplative quest
to unpack or to enter into.

Deep knowledge and deep love assist each other
and may even be the same thing
when cliche is removed.

One barrier to deep knowledge
is that familiarity breeds contempt
and knowledge becomes the mask of presentation
for a too-familiar way of thinking and relating

Another is that "self" love
is deprecated as selfish or even sinful.

So it jars our cultural sensibility
that a foreign proverb such as the Lojong
would advise letting loving-compassion-mind
start and ground with oneself.

Another barrier is that knowledge
often signifies a "failure mode"
in being and relating

At least, initially.
"Don't make me think!"
Let me go back to just being
relating
swimming in the ocean.

Having been kicked up to the surface
of the ocean, thinking often stays there,
resisting returning to the deep or profound.

"Deep means sad"
or "Deep means angry"
How did this get to be a principle of popular Art
and folk psychology?

What is it about humans
that we love patterns?
Is this a mechanism programmed by evolution for survival?
Or is it something more basic?

Perhaps we love patterns
because we ARE patterns
and we know them
through the nameless way we respond to them
that reveals
both oneself and one's connection to something more.

To check this out
sit with a tree
for a while, until something changes,
something becomes different.

It won't distract you too much by talking
(at least at first!)
and you might discover
how it happens to be beautiful.

Can it be,
asking or answering questions about patterns
is just the add-on
the mind's icing on the cake,
If we keep the cake in mind
and don't stay on the surface of the cake
where it's all icing.

What is the important thing about humor?
It gives us a surprise
and delivers us from the confines
of stale knowing
and a stale feeling of
"who I am"
and best of all,
no thinking required!

Suppose we turn from the "how" of self-knowing
to the "who"?

This would be "Who, part 1"
The "me" side of "who".

Western philosophy says
there's one Me, and it's an essence
that doesn't change.

That's a licence,
a user agreement for the soul
but what have we been signed up for?
What are the pros and cons?

As I recall there was no "opt out"
when this contract was engaged.

What's the selling point, the proposition of value?

It's a nice freedom from interference
an opportunity for solitude and self reflection
perhaps a necessary condition for cultivation of "thought"

as well as

to be disconnected from others
and from the constant flow of new knowledge
that is ever arising
and disappearing,

to be condemned to reinventing or rediscovering
so many things
that others have done so very well
and to forego the giving and receiving of gifts
of knowledge or of "being".

The "who" side of this knowing
may challenge these assumptions of one unchanging self

Let's entertain the notion
that I'm lots of "me's"
and I'm different at different times and places
and with different "others"

Humor, also, has as a mainstay
the unpredictable switch from one Me to another
rather than the automatic habit
of creating the appearance of one "together" self
starting when we are very young
with "peek a boo" and continuing through life
... playing with it.

The relief of letting it go
and the relief of having it come back together again.

Does it take a lot of energy to do that?
A lot of subconscious effort?
Or is that in some way to follow the low-energy path
the path of least resistance?

What are some of your "changing me" experiences?

Some are unintended, unwanted
(or you're just not sure)
puzzles, questions, misgivings,
square-peg-in-a-round-hole kinds of things.

Some are intentional
the gardening or cultivating process
the earth-digging, planting, watering,
pruning and harvesting
of self.

What is your special place in the Garden?

Where do you go
(and who with)
what rituals do you do
to do the "self" thing?

Who are you here-and-now
or there-and-then
(and how do you know)?