Character Study

I used to say, with bemusement because I didn't really believe it, that the Universe looks out for me. I waltzed through public school without really trying. I was admitted to the only college to which I applied. I stumbled into jobs when I needed them. When I finally decided after a few years out of school that I needed to return, even if it meant taking on student loan debt, I received a full scholarship, again the only one for which I applied.

I'm lucky like that.

So is there truth to that vision of spirituality? Does the Universe have my back? And why me, and not so many others who deserve it at least as much as I do? What I think now is that what I put forth into the Universe is what the Universe sends back to me. Or maybe it's just that I notice the patterns that I'm looking for and disregard the ones that I'm not, such that it seems like things happen for a reason or are guided in a certain direction. I don't know. But I choose to believe that the Universe lately has been orchestrating my podcast library such that the things I'm thinking about are discussed, directly or indirectly. Because the Universe and me, we're like that. Right now I'm thinking about this question:

Who am I? Or, what am I? Or, what is "I"?

I'm not the first to ask it, but the question lingers in my mind.

I listened to Missing Richard Simmons, and the most perplexing part to Dan Taberski seems to be, short of something nefarious or traumatic, is it possible that someone could, after decades, turn on a dime and completely abandon the people and connections that had been deeply important to him?

This story was fascinating to me mostly because it portrays a person for whom intense, meaningful, personal human connection was an integral part of his public persona. One can see the emotional toll that kind of connection on that grand of a scale could take, when the death of the mother of a complete stranger could move him to tears or a message through a "Contact Us!" dialog on a web page could prompt him to make a personal phone call, or when he could care enough to expend the effort to take out ads in local papers to locate and follow up with someone he met once at a mall event. As much as his work meant to so many, and as close and personal their relationship with him felt to them, it's certainly understandable that after decades he may have felt the need and the right to turn it off. For me, with my own personal history, it's not hard to understand, either, that turning it off completely may have been for him the only way, that leaving the door open a crack would have inevitably lead to it blowing all the way open once again.

In context, though, the deeper question is, can we change who we are fundamentally with nothing but the force of our will?

Yes. I think we can. It's extremely difficult to break out of established patterns, but with the right motivation, it is possible to take a hard left turn into completely new territory. I quit drinking, lost 70 pounds, started taking dance lessons, and sought out the kinds of relationships I wanted instead of settling for the relationships that would have me. Those were hard changes, and the temptation is always there to fall back. But keeping the door closed is the surest way to stay where I want to be.

But if I can change, who was I before? Who am I now? What is the thing that remained the same? What is the continuity that made that guy and this guy both "me"? Is it just a trick of memory? Since I can remember the second before this one, and the one before that, there is for this human brain an illusion of continuity. But can it be that I am only my memory? Because my memory is terrible.

This American Life replayed an old episode, "Testosterone." This one was right up my alley because gender roles and the meaning of masculinity are fundamental questions to my sense of identity already. One of the stories is of a man whose body stopped producing testosterone. He lived without it for four months, and what he found most disconcerting was the idea that his personality, his sense of self, could change so completely with a change in his body's chemical soup. Similarly, in another story in the same episode, "a transgender man, who started life as female and began taking testosterone injections" discovers that he, a former feminist lesbian, is in some ways, against his own will, turning into something of a "jerk." His sense of self is inextricably tied up with the hormonal composition of his body. If that's true, then what is the essential, eternal "me"? Is there such a thing?

S-Town raised the same question. It was presented as a true crime podcast along the lines of Serial, but modeled more on the form of a novel than on the form of TV investigative journalism. The crime was not true, it turns out, and is essentially abandoned by the end of the second episode, and the series reveals itself as a deeply moving character study of a fascinating man. Again, though, it raises the disturbing question: was the essence of who John B. McLemore was, and his ultimate fate, fundamentally altered by a chemical change inside his body? Was his spirit poisoned along with his body, or was his spirit no longer able to express itself accurately through that body? And if so, who was he really? Or who was Uncle Jimmy, after the bullet lodged inside his brain? Is there an eternal part of him that wants to but is no longer able to represent itself to the world through his physical body? And if so, where does it reside, and where does it go? And if it's not defined by its physical representation in the world, how exactly is it defined?

Am I not my brain? Am I not what I think and feel and remember? It is such a fickle and delicate instrument, the brain, dependent on an immensely complex interplay of connections and chemical and electrical reactions, any of which can be inhibited, altered, or possibly even enhanced by any of a huge range of external factors. In the episode of This Is Actually Happening titled "What if they told you the monsters were real?" the narrator lives a frightening and confusing set of experiences that seem to fit right into the spiritual reality of his parents' community. After years, he finally comes to the conclusion that those experiences were born instead from insomnia and untreated mental illness. He wasn't seeing demons as someone chosen by God to do so for the benefit of others; he was hallucinating because of a complicated interplay of physical factors.

In the Sivana Podcast episode "Listening to Ayahuasca," Ashton talked to psychologist and author Rachel Harris, who described ayahuasca and other hallucinogens as "medicine" and discussed deliberately jacking with the chemical soup of the brain and body as a spiritual practice, a means through which one can intentionally "re-calibrate" the personality. Again, is my personality not me?

If I am not my brain, then am I my soul? When I think of my eternal soul continuing in the Universe over time through multiple physical bodies, à la Defending Your Life, I am drawn more to the idea of a collective singularity of spirit, or energy, or consciousness. If we are all one, if we are all connected, if we come from and return to Oneness, then what is the continuity? Does a drop of water in the ocean retain anything at all that could be called droppiness? When again a drop forms, isn't it just a drop and not that drop? Who and what am I when I am not in my body? Oneness makes sense to me. If past life experiences and memories are real, then rather than "I was a king" or "I was a simple farmer," it would instead be that "we were the king" and "we were the simple farmer." It is recalled not as an individual experience but as a shared one. Somehow a collective memory feels more true to me, maybe because I can't even remember what I did last week. In Sivana Podcast's episode "The Law of Karma and Reincarnation" Ashton Szabo asked Vanamali Mataji that very question about individual continuity in the midst of Oneness, but she dismissed it. For her, the Law of Karma requires a body upon which karma can act, therefore each specific soul must return to a physical existence to receive its karmic due, therefore there must be continuity of the soul even when it is not in a body. She kept using the word "obviously" though none of it seemed obvious to me. She spoke of the "causal body" and the "subtle body." Perhaps I need to read a book on Hinduism. Though sometimes I can feel connected meaningfully with all of humanity, I don't know how to reconcile Oneness outside of the body with the separateness of some sort of continuous "me."

From the little I do know of Hinduism, I feel drawn to it. I like the notion that spiritual evolution comes through action, regardless of belief. One need not believe in any particular religion or creed. One need not even perform yoga. If one is with selflessness executing one's duty, whatever one may perceive that duty to be, then one's spirit is inexorably evolving. That makes so much more sense to me than the idea that belief in a particular understanding of God or specific doctrine or set of rules is a prerequisite to rising to a higher state. I also feel the truth that both heaven and hell are human conditions on earth, not eternal consequence of earthly actions.

I changed myself, in meaningful ways, through therapy and human connection. Are those means and methods of change any different than any others listed here? I quit drinking and altered my lifestyle in other healthy ways. I lost weight. I took classes to learn to juggle and to dance. I stopped thinking of myself as a misanthropic loner. I sought out the connections that pushed me to be better. So now that I am different, am I still the same?

I know nothing, Jon Snow, except that I am in a state of growth and wonder. And it makes me happy.