Language is the cause of so much controversy and debate, so often people argue against one another while making the same exact point, yet here I am using language because, so far, it is the only way in which we know how to articulate our communications. The largest problem is connotation. Words hold power only insofar as what ideas and images they are connected to. Since we all attribute various connotations to words in our lexicon we are destined to misunderstand one another. However, with my disclaimer nearing its end, I will make an attempt to explain a concept which shows how self both exists and does not exist and this paradox is the only way which the omniverse will have it.
God (I can hear the connotations brewing already), you must imagine, is like an infinite pool of water. Time is the temperature, the thermodynamics which define the state of the water, of God. God in a neutral state is liquid. It is malleable and indefinable; it is all things. But without movement, God is still, the water is silent and motionless. Consciousness is movement. Consciousness forms ripples in the water. Time, which is like temperature, freezes moments, freezes the ripples into protrusions of ice.
We are protrusions of ice, connected to the great pool of water that is God, and we float about like glaciers upon the surface of the sea. As time goes on, we freeze further, our egos striving desperately to define who we are, what we like, what we don't like, who our friends are, what we want, what we think is right and wrong and so on. Each definition is a chip of ice broken off. Because in us, in the water which is God, is all potential. When we make choices in defining who we are we remove one side of a polar object. For instance, the objective truth of the omniverse prefers neither happiness nor sadness, it accepts both and thus both exist. We, on the other hand, choose which to allow in our lives at least to the extent which we have the power to do so.
All through our lives we are sculpting away at an individual, becoming more and more unlike any other person in existence because, remember we are reactionary beings. We see things we like and we react by reflecting. We see something we dislike and we react by doing the opposite or something different. I could go into systems theory and further dissect this point, explicating how it is we become so unlike one another on a certain level, but I'll save it for another time.
The main point is that we are like ice sculpture glaciers and now let's take into account the question which was originally asked 'How do you find yourself?' 'Do we have a self?' Yes, of course we have a self. And on the contrary, I think this is a most unimportant inquiry. We find ourselves each and every day doing and choosing and saying and reacting to the world. In any given moment of reflection we have found our 'selves'. The self is not what is truly important when it comes to this age old journey of spiritual discovery.
Keeping my metaphorical model in mind about God as water and individuals as ice sculptures, the spiritual journey, much like the psychedelic experience, should be a process of 'melting'. By melting we reacquire the other side of our discarded polar objects, we accept paradox because objective truth, and now this is important, truth is paradoxical in nature. There is no black. There is no white. There is only that nameless nothing which is black and white and it is not two things. Truth is the timeless, harmonious unity of paradox. I could digress a great deal here, but I will refrain.
The self, let's define connotations--the self being a human individual--is knowable and quite easily I might add. Religion is the phenomenon where people worship a, most often, man who claims to have seen God. Desiring themselves to see and know God, people become followers and worshipers of this prophet. It does no one any good. One ice sculpture worshiping another ice sculpture is nothing but an absurdity. I would perhaps like to paint this and have a good laugh at it.
Melt, merge, drown, assimilate, these are things which the self must do. The self seeking itself out is a dog chasing his own tail, finding nothing. Climbing back up into your mother's womb does one no good either, regression would be a mistake. Sub-merge into the sea of divine consciousness and e-merge with new eyes.
