How do we avoid becoming the habit of ourselves? This is the unseen danger, the danger no one ever talks about, the danger no one ever warns us about. We get lots of warnings when we start off in life – we get told to watch out for this and watch out for that, but no one ever tells us to take care that we don’t end up becoming ‘the habit of ourselves’. Actually, it’s the other way around – we are encouraged to become the habit of ourselves, we are given to understand that this is a good and wholesome thing. The whole effort of society is geared towards solidifying ourselves in this way. This is what life is all about – life (or so we are told) is all about reinforcing and solidifying the habit we have of ourselves, it’s all about reifying the image or concept I have about ‘what it means to be me’.

 

 

What we’re talking about here is a little thing we like to call ‘identity’ – our identity is the habit of ourselves, it’s the shop-worn image of who we are. It’s a fixed idea we get stuck with, a fixed idea that we’re saddled with one way or another and can’t ever get away from, and – more than just this – it’s a fixed idea of who we are that actually doesn’t have anything to do with who we are! This is odd of course because the whole point of an identity is that it is who we are that’s what makes an identity into an identity the fact that we can’t ever get away from it, and moreover the fact that we shouldn’t want to get away from it. We’re supposed to be proud of our identity (or so the idea goes), not wanting to move on from it.

 

 

The belief is that we literally ARE this identity, which is absurd since the identity is just another of thought’s generic ideas, it’s just another concept or construct, and there’s no way we can be ‘an idea’! Ideas aren’t real things – they are ‘abstractions from the cosmic flux’. As far as the World that is made up of our ideas is concerned however, we absolutely CAN be an identity; we absolutely have to be an identity, in fact – we have no other option. There’s nothing else to be in the World of Ideas so we have to be some kind of identity or other, some kind of a mind-created ‘thing’ or other. When we’re in the position of having been subsumed within the System of Thought then change isn’t real but fixed ideas are, and so if we want to be ‘real’ then we are obliged to identify ourselves with an idea. That’s how the game works in this System of Thought, in the Hyperreality, in the Mind-Created-Virtual Reality.

 

 

The game is the reverse of how things really are, however. This is the thing about games – a game is ‘reality turned inside out’. Outside of the games we are constantly playing only change is real, only Jung’s ‘movement from an unknown origin to an unknown destination’ is real and so there is simply nowhere for the poor old static identity to ‘hang out’. There is just no ‘in’ for the Extrinsic Self, no possibilities whatsoever for it, but this doesn’t phase the ES in the slightest; this ‘fact of life’ doesn’t trouble the ES in the least since the ES doesn’t actually give a damn about reality! The Extrinsic Self doesn’t care about what is actually real (or true) – all it cares about is chasing (or running away from) its own unrecognised reflections in the Projection World, in the Positive or Stated World. All this two-dimensional identity wants to do is to continue playing meaningless games forever within the world that is made up of its own thoughts, its own self-referential propositions or assertions. All it wants is to stay walled up in its own private world, the Mundo Privado.

 

 

This is our fate when we become the habit of ourselves, therefore – we stop growing, we stop evolving, we lose all interest in anything new, we run away from anything that might challenge our closed, self-referential way of doing things. We just want to ‘keep on doing what we’re doing forever’ – everything’s a repeat of something else, everything’s a degraded copy of some other terminally degraded copy. We spend our whole lives within the echo chamber and the result of spending our whole lives in the echo chamber is that we’re constantly nullifying ourselves with our own actions, our own intentions, our own clever schemes. As James Carse says, ‘only that which changes can continue’, and since the Extrinsic Self can’t change it doesn’t continue (even though it thinks that it does). It lives only in its own fantasy world, we might say, and its own fantasy world is empty. The only events here are null ones – ultimately hollow and unsatisfying and yet at the same time terribly tantalising.

 

 

So how do we avoid becoming the habit of ourselves (becoming the faithful duplicate of ‘who thought says we are’)? We don’t seem to have come up with very many tips so far – all we’ve done is to say something to the effect that being the habit (or duplicate) of ourselves is the ultimate in dead ends. The point is however that we simply CAN’T avoid this fate – that’s just not possible. There’s no escape. Who is it that’s thinking about avoidance, anyway? Who is it that is trying to escape from the fate of being ‘continuously nullified’? The ‘me’ who is attempting to avoid becoming the habit of itself IS the very same habit that it is trying to avoid – the attempted avoidance of becoming the habit of oneself is itself the habit that is being perpetuated. Exiting the game is part and parcel of the game. ‘Play’ and ‘Don’t Play’ mean the same thing. <STOP> and <GO> are functionally equivalent (despite the fact that these instructions are – nominally – in total opposition to each other). We are well and truly stuck here because just as soon as we try to benefit ourselves (just as soon as we try to ‘seek the advantage’, which comes so naturally to us) we automatically copy or duplicate ourselves, and whenever we copy or duplicate ourselves we straightaway get ‘Lost in the Tautology’. This happens every time we extend or project ourselves, it happens every time we try to realise our goals, every time we attempt to fulfil our plans (and every time we try to stop trying to have goals we also get lost in the tautology). As U.G. Krishnamurti tells us –

 

All of your experiences, all your meditations, all your prayer, all that you do, is self-centred. It’s strengthening the self, adding momentum, gathering momentum, so it is taking you in the opposite direction. Whatever you do to be free from the self is also self-centred activity.

 

 

If I conceive of a goal, and then experience desire for that goal (and therefore try to attain it) then of course I’m extending myself, of course I’m projecting myself – the self or ego that conceived the goal and has put plans in place to attain it is the very same self or ego as the one who is hoping to ‘reap the benefits’, obviously enough. It’s all the one continuity. The one who lays the plans is of course the same one that wishes to benefit from them – this pretty much goes without saying! This is why we put so much energy, so much dedication into our goal-orientated activities – because we expect to benefit, because we want to get something from it. We’re wanting to turn a profit, we wouldn’t make the effort otherwise. We wouldn’t have the slightest bit of interest otherwise – just as Jung says here in CW 14. Para 191 –

 

You are so sterile because, without your knowledge, something like an evil spirit has stopped up the source of your fantasy, the fountain of your soul. The enemy is your own crude sulphur, which burns you with the hellish fire of desirousness, or concupiscentia. You would like to make gold because “poverty is the greatest plague, wealth the highest good.” You wish to have results that flatter your pride, you expect something useful, but there can be no question of that as you have realized with a shock. Because of this you no longer even want to be fruitful, as it would only be for God’s sake but unfortunately not for your own.

 

 

Very obviously, we can’t aim for any specified outcome without projecting ahead of us ‘the self which is to gain in that projected future’, and – similarly – we also can’t try to avoid some kind of specified outcome without duly projecting ahead of us ‘the-future-self-which-is-to-lose’. Either way, we have to extend ourselves; either way, we have to make a duplicate or copy of thought’s image of us, thought’s representation or version of us, thought’s token for ‘who we are’. The Striver (or the Schemer) has to extend itself into the future in order to reap the reward, in order to reap the benefit that is (supposedly) waiting there for it. It doesn’t in the least bit matter which way this striving goes, however – whether we succeed or fail we’re ‘involving ourselves in a tautology’. The duplicate-that-is-to-succeed is a ‘tautological development of its own starting-off point’ and so is the-duplicate-that-is-to-fail. ANY projection or extension of our current viewpoint, our current way of seeing things, is a tautological development. Any projection or extension of our current viewpoint is unreal, in other words. Any projection or extension of ‘who we think we are’ is unreal….

 

 

 

 

 

Image credit – carpediemeire.com