A Mind of Many Colors

November 25, 2024

Make it your business to know yourself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world. Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote

It’s always puzzled me that a spiritual (or psychological) narrative underpinned by so-called unity consciousness can also include arbitrarily fragmenting each of us into separate parts. Inner child, the mind, the ego. Personalities and subpersonalities. The shadow self.

“Human incarnate self in this lifetime” versus “my soul.”

What’s wrong with being just plain me? 

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I’ve noticed that it’s gratifying to assign characteristics I’d rather not own to these “parts.” My inner child is afraid, and can’t make a decision. My ego took over so I didn’t behave very nicely. I’ve always been uncomfortable with the undertones of psychobabble and pop self-help, but I’ll still use the excuse that some semi-uncontrollable twin of my real self did the deed. 

The subconscious mind is in a category of its own, though. It seems a given that a third-dimensional human cannot be completely conscious of everything in their entire experience and imagination in every single moment. “Conscious mind and subconscious mind” is a practical and self-explanatory way of describing and understanding that fact. That division also seems to be the only rational way that hypnosis and certain other phenomena can be explained. 

What’s troubling about efforts to label disparate aspects of ourselves, rather like mapping a carcass—flank steak over here, rib roast over there—is the artificiality. It’s all the same (unfortunate) animal, just different areas within the body. Imposed differentiations of a human self are all still the one person. The one self.

I wonder if indigenous wisdom has a similar system of dividing the self into parts?

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Sometimes I think we’ve evolved into cleverness over wisdom. Entire segments of emotional/spiritual treatment systems would crumble if the only advice ever given was to sit down with yourself and get to know YOU. Perhaps the most beneficial function of a spiritual or psychological practitioner is to point a client toward that goal, and help them walk the walk until they can stride forward on their own momentum. 

I’ll attempt to embrace every speck and far corner of this self I call home, and know absolutely that “I am all one.” If I need to temporarily use a structure of labeling for dialoguing between parts-of-me, I can do so, knowing it is always the self talking to the self, working its way toward unshakable awareness of the oneness it already is.