Being yourself and finding your light
Just had a significant talk with Lou K about Finding My Light https://loukcoach.wixsite.com/light
https://simbi.com/louis-charles-kelly/finding-your-own-light and came to some interesting logical / philosophical conclusions.
The main idea was to be yourself, to be myself. But what is myself? In many ways I feel like I've lost myself, whatever that means.
So, a question I had was "what if being yourself is being a bad person, or being self destructive?"
Specifically regarding self-destructiveness; it can be regarded as internalized destructiveness from others. It is someone else's destructiveness towards you that you've somehow learned to perpetuate. Someone else's ideas of how to be, but that makes you unhappy or is against your best self-interest. And being yourself is not being self-destructive because being yourself means wanting the best for yourself.
"What if being yourself, means being a bad person?" Well, Lou's thought was that perhaps in a way they are being themselves because they are most likely trying to take care of their own. For example, a pirate may murder and plunder but he / she is plundering for the benefit of his crew, family, self, etc. But perhaps they were not being fully themselves...
Behind these ideas of finding yourself, I believed was the notion that your true self was necessarily a good person. That this presupposes that humanity is by nature "good." But what if your true nature, your true self was evil? What if you believe by nature humanity is "evil" or each person could be on a range from good to evil? Then finding yourself and being yourself might be destructive to others or even destructive to yourself.
...So eventually it seemed to emerge that being yourself, you want the best for yourself. And if you want the best for yourself, you don't want to be self-destructive. How you do the best for yourself is going to be unique to every person though.
And wanting the best for yourself is wanting the best for the world. You live in the world and if the world is better, you are better also. So destructiveness is also not being yourself.
That doesn't presuppose any essential nature as good or evil. It almost makes such a a notion of a good or evil human nature irrelevant. It becomes an issue of doing what's best for yourself and what's best for the world. In practice this becomes more complicated though. And maybe even mundane to the point of choosing to have ketchup with your sandwich or not. But it is a guiding light and helped me understand what it means to find my light.
And for practical methods for finding your light, Lou had some really good insights on that.
https://simbi.com/louis-charles-kelly/finding-your-own-light and came to some interesting logical / philosophical conclusions.
The main idea was to be yourself, to be myself. But what is myself? In many ways I feel like I've lost myself, whatever that means.
So, a question I had was "what if being yourself is being a bad person, or being self destructive?"
Specifically regarding self-destructiveness; it can be regarded as internalized destructiveness from others. It is someone else's destructiveness towards you that you've somehow learned to perpetuate. Someone else's ideas of how to be, but that makes you unhappy or is against your best self-interest. And being yourself is not being self-destructive because being yourself means wanting the best for yourself.
"What if being yourself, means being a bad person?" Well, Lou's thought was that perhaps in a way they are being themselves because they are most likely trying to take care of their own. For example, a pirate may murder and plunder but he / she is plundering for the benefit of his crew, family, self, etc. But perhaps they were not being fully themselves...
Behind these ideas of finding yourself, I believed was the notion that your true self was necessarily a good person. That this presupposes that humanity is by nature "good." But what if your true nature, your true self was evil? What if you believe by nature humanity is "evil" or each person could be on a range from good to evil? Then finding yourself and being yourself might be destructive to others or even destructive to yourself.
...So eventually it seemed to emerge that being yourself, you want the best for yourself. And if you want the best for yourself, you don't want to be self-destructive. How you do the best for yourself is going to be unique to every person though.
And wanting the best for yourself is wanting the best for the world. You live in the world and if the world is better, you are better also. So destructiveness is also not being yourself.
That doesn't presuppose any essential nature as good or evil. It almost makes such a a notion of a good or evil human nature irrelevant. It becomes an issue of doing what's best for yourself and what's best for the world. In practice this becomes more complicated though. And maybe even mundane to the point of choosing to have ketchup with your sandwich or not. But it is a guiding light and helped me understand what it means to find my light.
And for practical methods for finding your light, Lou had some really good insights on that.
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