Who Am I?

"Who do you say I am?" Jesus the Rabbi asks Peter the Fisherman, and Peter replies, " You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."

I have been ruminating on this exchange for a while. Peter had witnessed some mind-blowing encounters between Christ and humanity, up to and including the raising of the dead: he had also experienced Christ's transformation into a being of pure light, and his total control over the elements in the calming of the sea and stilling of a storm. Many who read this will dismiss this as myth, and that's perfectly reasonable, but ... What if

I don't know where I'm going with this, but there, that's nothing new.

Oddly enough today's wonderings, were not prompted by the Bible, but by the New Scientist, which features an article entitled 'The You Delusion." Here's a taste of it:

" Self-awareness may be an apparently complex phenomenon that emerges from the brain. However ... a mind cannot observe it's individual components. It can only glean the echo of billions of neurons responding to each other with electrical signals. The flow of signals is dynamic, rushing along a different set of connections every moment. But some paths are more well- trodden than others. In humans the predominant connections seem to be those used to contemplate the minds of others - the same connections used to contemplate ourselves... . To you that is your sense of self confined inside the Petri-dish of your brain."

The article then turns, with scholarly attention, to the behaviour of molluscs and am octopus, and loses me, so I set my neutrons off a-firing on the contemplation of my-self.

"Who do I say I am."

Wow! I can say ANYTHING. I can list what I do, pontificate on what I believe, relate my stories (again!) and reorder my timeline, safe in the knowledge that I am absolutely free to invent and reinvent what emerges from all of this, because, basically it's all smoke and mirrors, a rational and entirely reasonable attempt to make sense of the fact that I am a being that comprises over 99% that is empty space - to all intents and purposes a transfigured being of pure energy, despite being a biological entity, with the illusion of solidity, and the delusion of self.

I was working on this illusory self yesterday morning whilst serving tea with Joan at the Monday morning lunch for the down-on-their-luck at the Salvation Army. I was being nice (an important element in my manufactured self) whilst actually thinking how easy it would be to be impatient, unpleasant, derogatory, insulting and unkind. There are so many opportunities with Joan, who is a wonderful person, but with fixed opinions that are not necessarily mine. In fact I had no intention of being any of those unpleasant things. I was playing mind-games with myself, because I'm curious, and it's interesting, if somewhat unsettling from your point of view, to do so.

This is getting crazy. I have to stop.

My friend Carol once said, to my utter astonishment, that I tell lies, and she knows this because I said so. Looks like I may well have let that cat out of the bag: I freely admit that I am guilty of looking at life and making it up as I go along. Maybe we all do.

I shall end with a biblical quote, because I started there, and it seems fitting:

From (cosmic) dust have I been formed and to (cosmic) dust will I return.

I rather like that, it gives me a sense of purpose.

That's pretty much who I am.

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