Ok, I've a bit of free time at the moment. Actually have been lucky this week in general. I had a conversation at work that ended up being pretty interesting, so I'm gonna share.

I have a solid memory of my childhood. Can tell you where I lived, what direction my house faced, what was taught every year in school, etc... Most people I know don't have this and my co-worker and I were talking about why this is. That lead down the path of what is the self and why do some choose to compartmentalize experiences and what impact does this have on the self, and reason?

IMHO, the self endures. We are who we are at a low level and real change is about choice and acceptance. Anything else is a self-lie that must be maintained.

Self-acceptance is about knowing ones true self and coming to peace with that. I suspect many of us are not there and that's why we compartmentalize. It's easier to wall off some experiences to maintain self-lies, than it is to reach self-acceptance.

For me personally, this ties back to experiences and what one chooses to accept as valid.

An example would be discovering ones own self is in contradiction with information presented as just and true. Failure to differentiate known truth from dogma is one easy cause of this dilemma. I'm sure there are others.

If one lived in a place where there were no lies and no taboos, ones self would be pure, acceptance would be given and the self would be whole, with all it's energy available to simply be and do.

Sadly, we don't exist there, so we've all got issues.

Sorry for being complex, but I've gotta tie this to reason and truth. Reason is a holistic thing. One can either do it or cannot. Truth is also one body, in that no truth may contradict another. There are not multiple truths just as there are not multiple means of reasoning.

We don't understand enough of either to eliminate ambiguity in many areas. This forces choice upon all of us. As a race, we are innocent in this.

One who is at peace with ones own self, groks this. It simply just is and there is nothing we can do about it, but choose and grow and be.

Believing something then, is actually choosing to accept something. The knowing of doubt or simply not complete understanding still is there. Abiding by that choice then is conviction.

Believing something, accepting it as completely true, when the reality is it being not known true, is a self-lie. Reason, being what it is, demands then either resolution (acceptance of there being a choice instead of a fact), or a schizm of self be realized.

That's compartmentalization.

It then becomes easier to surrender some of the self, than it does to do the work necessary to face reason and make the self whole.

This has an impact on ones ability to reason and deal with the world. Instead of seeing the world with one self, and one stream of experiences, one sees it fragmented and reason suffers in like kind.

Put into the context of politics today, we've got these left / right labels, religion, and a bunch of other things, I believe are largely coping constructs fragmented people use to deal with their own internal schizms --their divided selves.

Reality is one body, as reason and truth are. Our grasp of it is incomplete and somewhat behind. Our nature introduces a latency between that which is and that which we perceive.

Knowing these basic things helps to understand the struggles we have with the world, but only if one comes to grips with who one is. Depending on our experience and those things we have accepted as true (choices we've made), our artifical self-image (lies) may differ significantly from who we really are.

We are housed in physical things. Cells, neurons, etc... Therefore, real work is required to exist. We take energy to be, we take energy to change.

If we are divided internally, we are diluted and less than we would be whole.

What we experience can and does change us, but here's the kicker: we have a choice in the matter! Those of us, having reached a high degree of self-acceptance, are not divided so much as to diminish the will. Experience then can come and do no real harm.

Those of us divided, find some experience painful and difficult to bear. This is not sin, but pain. Pain from a shattered self, struggling to exist and be whole.

We may all believe as we will, given said beliefs honor reason. There is no shame in this. Knowing our true state, such as it is, forms the understanding necessary for the self to endure and be tolerant.

Scroll this if you need to. I'm gonna just put it out here anyway.

When one chooses to self-lie, there is a burden imposed because of how reason works. It's just like real lies in that maintaining them takes time and effort. This effort is made easier when one compartmentalizes ones own self and body of experience.

Like the poker player good at bluffing. There is knowing one has bad cards, but acting as if one has good cards. There is also just flat out denial, a tempoary compartmentalization, of those bad cards. This is believing they are actually good cards to the point of shock when they actually turn out to be bad, should things go that way.

Where belief is concerned --and conviction too, then it comes from two sources.

One is where said belief is recognized as the choice it really is. The self, in this case is whole, and the belief just and true according to reason. From that conviction comes easily as the self, the self-choice and reason are all harmonious.

Another is where belief is accepted as truth. The self in this case, is divided (the schizm reason forces from a self-lie). The self, self-lie, and reason are in conflict always, thus a burden results that must be carried. Conviction comes at a cost to the self.

Perhaps this is why so many people talk about sacrifice when they talk about beliefs and their implications.

We have no part in choosing who we are born as, therefore, we should feel no shame. Shame is something born of choice. How much we feel really depends on how many lies we have told ourselves.

It is not possible to fully understand the reality we live in. Some people say we make our own reality. I reject this. Reality is, or it isn't, just as reason is true or a non-reason, etc...

If one needs to engage in self-healing, the first step is coming to grips with our state of less than perfect understanding, then applying reason from there to close the schizms, one by one, until the self is whole and at peace.

From there then, beliefs are choices and conviction comes from reason resonating with them to be just and true. In this state, there is no shame --or the reality is very little shame as we all have our tendancies to grapple with ourselves.

This is essentially the ugly cycle I've been through, starting in my early teens. It's just now coming to a close. I am largely at peace with who I am, and there is strength in that being whole, I thought I would share.

From here, I can choose what I believe, know reason stands solid and I am whole. Sounds zen, but it's been the source of a lot of anger and pain.

We live in one world, one reality, sharing one truth (we know little of), one body of reason.

(took me long enough --perhaps it might be faster for others)

Pretty sure of who I am and where i'm going but on my trip it's those false detour's that keep tripping me up. I know better to follow it but for some reason I do it anyway. I just crashed through one false detour trying to lead me astray so now I need to see how long I can stay on the right road!