I’ve come to understand myself as many parts. Each of them are distinct and all as colorful as a room full of people. They have their own opinions, needs, wants. Scheming, plotting, advising, teaming, acts of aggression, are all a part of the drama between them.
At first I believed my mind was trying to organize my sense of self by conjuring up a sense of parts, giving me a farfetched, but useful, reason for my inconsistent feelings and expressions. I thought to myself, how can anyone in a single day act and react in such a paradoxical manner? In one moment I can be loving, then admonishing, then downright cruel—never in such clean succession.
The deeper I explored myself the more complex and rich the narrative of me became, until I surrendered to it and began observing rather than trying to make perfect sense of it. Through the sincere seeking of the “narrative of me,” I realized that most of my life there had been a dictator at the helm. I called this dictator, The Questioner.
Up to that point, I’ve always identified myself as inquisitive, curious, maybe even skeptical. I used my “natural” inclination to question everything in order to establish my power, my relevance, my safety. The Questioner in me had taken over. But how? It used my experience as a child to win enough support by my other parts to rule with impunity.
Many moments led to The Questioner’s dominance in the narrative of me. Each one offered TQ an opportunity to leverage it’s strength of inquisition to destabilize the decisions made by my other parts. The Taskmaster within me couldn’t craft anything long enough before TQ whispered something like “are you sure this is the best use of our time?”
The Mystique within me would express strange knowledge, only to be followed by TQ whispering, “what are people going to think if you say that aloud?” The Wierdo within me would be questioned before it could even act, “does someone who acts so strangely deserve to be loved?” It goes on and on, touching every single part of me.
With enough questioning and destabilizing, TQ won the “cold war” of my childhood development. But there were two camps that developed, those that supported TQ and subsisted on what little light TQ would offer, and the others who followed The Wise One. The Wise One did not play, react, engage with TQ. It waited for what it knew would come, the inevitable stepping down of TQ and the subsequent civil war.
Over the course of two years and a ton of emotional processing, TQ stepped down, finding more (sustainable) power in a unified stance with the other parts. The Wise One remained still. With no more dictator, a civil war broke out within me, all for the purpose of seizing the light of my consciousness to steer this ship of a body to a specific shore.
On one side, parts of me sought to be known and understood by people, to ultimately feel love and connection. On the other side, parts of me wanted to be invisible, and to struggle and grow with only myself as a companion. This paradoxical state felt natural to me, though, as if the bifurcation of my-self had happened long before I was a twinkle in my mother and father’s eyes.
Turns out TQ’s reign was only a short, divergent plot-line in an unresolved civil war between two warring factions: those that believe in relevance and those that believe in solitude, as the “master key” to life. The relevance seekers within me wanted to learn, create and express for the purpose of catching the attention of others. The solitude seekers within me wanted to ponder big questions, slowly build up wisdom, and devote that wisdom to my well-being.
Obviously, these two groups would complement each other immensely, and yet they waged war and fought for the light of my consciousness. When one side took over, it blocked the other. When one side faltered, the other side quickly took advantage. Suffice it to say, they were not friends. And yet, they were within me, a single individual among billions of others walking this earth.
With the support of The Wise One, I was able to sap the overpowering conflict within me and get my sides to see each other. One by one, they put down their arms and embraced, choosing to surrender to love and unity. They gave up what they thought was their greatest strength, their sense of self (as separate from the whole).
With love and patience I showed them all that the only way forward is through alignment. Without alignment, without the blurring of the lines between all of me, without the whole-hearted, nonjudgemental support of one for all and all for one, progress is an illusion, just the spinning of wheels with no movement.
Now I am here, moving forward, looking out into the world and realizing that I am one part of eight billion other-selves. The unity I’ve found within is my only guide to help create unity without.
"The only way out is through" was a major understanding that bloomed within me during my big bike tour, and I also wrote about it for tomorrow's article. Glad to be synchronized with the collaboration of your selves, my good man! Write on 💪