The Self and the Image

The eternal question pursued by so many of us everyday in action and thought is who am I and what am I doing here. We try to live out who we think we are, we cling to ideas of identities and act from those spaces and places. Yet are we that or is it all just imagination. Who can tell the difference really? Then a sudden thought appeared as I was looking at photographs, as I searched for beauty in them: We all want a degree of recognition, a form of witnessing, we want to be seen and heard. And the form of this keeps shifting through time. Yet, this endemic need seems to suggest that our image seems to only be made real through the recognition of another…an outsider, an observer to ourselves that gives us that attention of observation, of recognition. This suggests that our image is in fact unreal because something real does not need proof of existence or sanctification by something that is outside of itself. It just is. This then led to the thought that most of our interactions in the world are of images of one another interacting, interaction by proxy. Authenticity is interaction is now highly challenging further because social media removes us even further from our virtual realities so we are just being validated through taps on phones.

To collapse the image of the self seems like the best way to come face to face with life. It’s authentic flow. And yet here we are catching every ‘like’ we can so that we can somehow become ‘real’ like the velveteen rabbit through love clicks though. The fact that you have an image that requires validation is in itself a pointer to the Ego and it’s deep insecurity. Deep down it knows its not real therefore it searches out ways and methods to make itself real through another person or state. And this also links to Time because then your image of yourself builds a story of who you are and time is needed. Whenever one gets lost in beauty or love, when all awareness of the self fades, Time seems to be absent. Our separation of ourselves from our self leads us to create a self image instead, the real gets replaced by the fake and these fakes keep the show going! Until its curtains or you wake up from the dream.