In my psyche there is an effort to change the psyche itself. So much writing about self-development doesn’t include the details of the process of self-change and how it works. I’m curious about the very fabric of the reality experienced by each person. What are the forces at play that cumulatively produce this person?
In the process of trying to create some fundamental change in my life there will be a clash of worldviews. We’ll see how opposed worldviews interpret each other using their particular vocabularies in order to make and maintain their differing experiences of reality. This occurs everyday when people are confronted with someone who disagrees with them.
Beyond the evaluation of this particular self, larger questions arise. If each perspective internal to a person sees a different reality then the nature of reality becomes multifarious. How does mood, conditioning and one’s interests affect the way the world appears? Wittgenstein wrote in his Tractatus, “The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.” In what way and to what degree is this true?
2 comments:
Hi Jeff - I wanted to respond to your question about the difference between the world of the unhappy man and the world of the happy man. From two perspectives, one is from a book I just read last night, called "He" by Robert Johnson. In this book which is but masculine psychology. He basically said that happiness comes from the same word as "happen" and he says that if you enjoy what is happening, you are a happy man, or if you can't be happy about lunch you are probably a "modern" man cut off from your feeling function... not yet having made your way through the journey of healing that rift. His two versions of happy men are pre-conscious - illustrated by Don Quixote, and enlightened, Faust. In between you have your modern tortured man, illustrated by Hamlet.
There was a film made inspired by this book called "The Fisher King" which is an awesome myth about how a man heals this rift with his feeling function.
Your way of understanding how to gain happiness is similar to mine. I think I had a rift between thinking and feeling and the lack of feeling is the main cause of dissatisfaction. It's a psychological approach.
A Buddhist would say that even the person who integrated their thinking and feeling would still be suffering (although it wouldn't feel as bad as it does for the alienated person) and would need to liberate themselves from clinging and the illusion of a persisting self.
A religious Jew would say, "Get back to your Jewish roots (if you're Jewish).
People need to find their path before they can walk it.
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