Parts of the Self

Jebbo said:

being aware that your emotional reaction to things is not you, but is more a bio-chemical shift.

My issue is not with Jebbo's post. He just got me thinking about something that I've been thinking about a lot lately, and off and on for about 12 years. Trying to figure out what "self" is, and how to understand such a SELF in a culture that insists that mind and body are separate.

The thing is, I can't find a line between them. How do we know if the medicated self is The Self (normal or abnormal) or if the unmedicated self is The Self (normal or abnormal). Why is the me with the stomach full of food the "normal" ME? Why not the hungry me?

Either way, the bigger question is that mind/body split that Rene Descartes handed us. "I think therefore I am." What about "I eat, therefore I am?" For those of us without religion, why do we still cling to the idea of a soul separate from the body? Why not see the body/mind/self as an integrated whole?

In Jebbo's example, that would require that we accept both the waiting self and the fulfilled self as parts of the same SELF. It would also require that we understand that the parent that hit us is the same parent that kissed us. The child that screams in a fit is the same child that sleeps peacefully. That the suicidal girl in me is part of the same SELF as the girl focusing on her camel pose.

The bio-chemical shifts are what define us. That we have them makes us US. That I metabolize food slowly, that my chemicals take me on wild highs and lows, that I take particular chemicals to keep me from having children, and other chemicals for all sorts of other things, that I eat lots of sugar, that I am A+ bloodtype, that I have a size 8 foot, and that I believe in peace -- these are all what make me, me.

What makes you you?

:)