How ego, the idea of self; “who am I” is formulated.

When people discover their identity and who they are, they go through certain phases. This is why “just be yourself” is often unhelpful advice; it’s difficult to even know who that “self” is. To begin with, we have to define how ego, our idea of self, forms. We are a combination of things we enjoy being (and doing) and things we are proud to be or at least not ashamed to be. The formula to who we are is: “I am what I enjoy, that I am not (yet) ashamed of enjoying.”

The first phase we all find is that we enjoy being loved unconditionally (by our mother, mostly). Soon, we find that being liked by mom and dad is even better. Then, momentarily, we enjoy being dislikable and loved regardless. This phase is easy to get stuck into even through adulthood—it has a high false ego value to believe we’re so loved that we have no limits, but there are always limits.¹

There are always limits to how much of your unbridled self others will tolerate.

Once you realize you’ve gone over your limits (too often), and people have started to dislike you and subsequently avoid your company, you’ll have to correct your behavior toward being likable again. Many people attempt at this stage to force others to forgive them and like them regardless; “It’s your job to like me, even if I’m horrible,” but there’s only so long as this will work for anyone. (It would be beneficial for parents to express dislike toward their child’s behavior when they do behave badly; otherwise, a road to narcissism is open wide for your child.)

Similarly, we find we like being admired for our skills, and we tend to test those limits with others; “will you still love my art if I poop into a can and call it art?”²

Around teenage, we realize that we like loving (liking) another person in a romantic tone and being around them. Surprisingly often, it will take a long time to discover we like being romantically loved, too, because too often, the trust we’re genuinely loved proves to be a misunderstanding, therefore, many of us have learned in our previous lifetimes to be cautious to like being loved too much – it’s a bit treacherous.

If we are loved unconditionally, we may realize being romantically loved despite not being very likable is a load of fun, the same way as being liked despite being likeable was fun… And that’s another potential trap for continued narcissistic behavior but also self-deception, when we mistake being allowed to for being loved… But that’s kind of beside the scope of this post.

All that concludes formulating the first phase of identity: I like being liked (despite),  and it is likely to last a few lifetimes, but we all do a “refresher course” in every lifetime. The next phase gets complicated, as a LOT OF GROWN UP PEOPLE are very much stuck in the phase of “I like being liked” and “I like what I like,” with little further depth going into it. The problems associated with that on other people create a complicated mess.

Social connections twist our sense of self: We all like people who are like us.

It is to be said that we all like people who we think are like us. Their sameness may be imaginary, but we are looking for traits that are similar to ourselves to like in another person. When we’re still developing, we confuse external similarities to carry much more weight than internal similarities. This means that a person still in development will easily think a person who is externally similar to themselves is also internally similar, and that a person who is externally different is also automatically internally different. While this is true up to a point, our background and culture shape us; it is not true to the extent that we can say, “I don’t like that person because they look different to me,” with a high level of accuracy, any more than you can say: “I like this person because they look the same as me” with a high success rate in terms of internal qualities. This is to say that things like racism are functions of either an undeveloped mind or in other cases inexperience with a different race or culture, which comes out as suspicion and insecurity with those who are dissimilar, rather than steadfast refusal to even contemplate they might be nice or as good as.

However, we all like people who are similar to us; and a developed mind will seek similarities of thinking and character rather than external similarities. While external similarities cue you toward the internal; for instance, a subculture attire will function as a signal for certain values being held high in a person, but the same values may be represented in different subcultures. A punk rocker may find it easy to break bread with a rapper once they get over the external differences.

And this is where narcissism kicks in once more, as we all like people who are similar to us; a narcissist will try and force other people to be like them, either gently or forcefully, depending on how strongly they believe their own way of being is “perfect,” and they’d do a favor to the other to force similarity on them.

Tribal culture means only similar people get to live.

It would be easy to say what we are like if we existed in a vacuum or with people who are already very much like us inside and out. It is easy and feels safe, but for the most part, isn’t true in modern human families, let alone in modern human societies. The irony is that at some stage, people start appreciating differences because they are interesting and exciting, and then, we run into the problem of exploration and bringing people dissimilar to us into our social circles and reincarnational cycles. It’s not a bad thing, just a little problematic.

An undeveloped mind will try to reconnect the dots from who they are surrounded by, and their partnering and friend-making hits another stage of narcissism: “I am who I am friends/partners with.” Then, partnering happens from “above me” rather than through “internally same as me/dynamic to me,” as it should.

I enjoy being liked, + people around me like their own likeness = difficulty forming an accurate identity.

So. As we all really like being liked, but dissimilar people around us like their own likeness, we like our own likeness, and this creates a to-and-fro of different personalities trying to convince the other that their way of being is the better, more likable one. I’m sure the truth is somewhere in the middle, and as we battle out these differences, we will arrive at this inevitable conclusion: “I cannot please everybody, and everybody cannot please me.” Therefore, we learn to value our right to be and do what others will NOT LIKE US FOR. We also learn that it is easiest to just do what we enjoy and let others do what they enjoy, and the easiest way to achieve one’s own right to do what we enjoy is to let other people do what they enjoy: we learn the value of personal freedom for everybody. We have to learn to tolerate not being liked by everybody, for the enjoyment of things that we enjoy.

This is what separates the Savants* thinkers from the Normal Person* thinkers: the Savants* realize they are different from others internally, while the Normal Person* thinkers only see the external differences, and thrive to hide any internal differences; as to a Dog-person, if it can be hidden, it doesn’t matter; happiness comes from being liked by others, not doing things we enjoy.

I enjoy it, but it hurts others. Ooops.

So, sometimes we enjoy things that we enjoy, which wind up causing emotional or physical pain or unhappiness to another person. Let’s just say you’re a man who enjoys sex; you think your wife is a heterosexual woman who enjoys sex, too, but in history, the chances of your wife being a bonafide lesbian are high because we didn’t ask, did we? So, men learned that sex hurts women, and no man worth their love and like enjoys causing discomfort to a woman they intended to make love to. So, you reel back; you are not proud to be a man who would hurt his wife for sexual gratification: “I enjoy it, but I am not proud of hurting someone.” You change. As you can see, sometimes we change unnecessarily when we equate an individual character trait (I don’t like sex with men) to be a trait of an entire externally-selected group: “Women don’t enjoy sex with men.”

There becomes your first limit (and your first confusion): “I enjoy it, but it hurts another person. I am not proud to hurt someone I love; I prioritize being gentle over my own enjoyment; I would be ashamed of being a person who puts personal enjoyment ahead of the well-being of others. I would be proud to put my needs aside for another human being: I change.”

This is where false vos come into play: A false idea of another person or group. Ego is our idea of self, and it can be either truthful or false, while vos is an idea of another, and that too can be false or truthful. We sometimes change unnecessarily for an entire gender or another group of people, when truthfully, we just need to let go of THAT INDIVIDUAL and find someone more suited for us.

Another road to change is realizing that what we thought was admirable wasn’t. “I won by cheating. I thought winning was what was important, but now people despise me. Oops.”

“I/you cannot survive on my/your own you/I owe me/you love.”

The false idea of self and others also comes in the sense of incompetence and idea of danger, and also a false idea of what another person needs to be happy. “I cannot survive on my own, therefore, I must force others/this person to stay with me,” or “They cannot survive without me; therefore, I must accept them to force me to stay with them.” Or “They cannot survive on their own, but they don’t realize this; therefore, I have a moral duty to force them to stay with me where it’s safe,” or “They already have love here; therefore, I have to force them into staying because they’re looking for insecure love when they could have certain love here.”

This puts another spanner into the works of a person seeking their own identity: Manipulation: If you don’t take care of me, you are a bad person.”  There comes the identity of the strong and the weak, but also, which way the idea of strong and weak formulate is not entirely cut-and-dry. This is where a lot of people stay stuck in their own development: “I owe this person. I must hide my true self and stay away from things I enjoy because I am needed.”

Once the pain of staying gets too heavy, a person will forcefully detach themselves from this point. This is another point where a person must ask: “Am I proud to be a person who would put their own happiness ahead of others’?” and they’ll arrive at this inevitable conclusion: “Well, no, but they don’t put MY happiness ahead of their own, so therefore, I owe them nothing. I must do what’s right by me, and justified by my moral code; I must demand THEM to accept my happiness matters, too.”

This is where we get to moral selfishness; selfishness limited by what is moral: “Two questions: Do I enjoy it? Do the people I do it with enjoy it too?” The entire point of my theories. The correct answer to these questions is “yes”. If the answer to the first is “no,” there’s no point doing it, and if the answer to the second question is “no,” you’ll have to find people who enjoy their part of the mashup as much as you do. My entire work is focussed on this phase: How to clear the way from here toward your authentic way of being, with your authentic partners.

The formulas

“I am what I enjoy, that I am not (yet) ashamed of enjoying.” “I have the right to do what I enjoy with people who enjoy it, too. I will protect my right to do so, and protect other’s rights to enjoy their life within these limits.”

Who we are is a balance of being and doing what we enjoy, enjoying being liked. Then finding that we enjoy something more than simply being liked, and decide to do what we enjoy despite sometimes being disliked for it. This is limited by realizing we’re not proud to be a person who would enjoy doing that, then, we have to change. At times we find situations where we must do something we’re not proud of for a greater good, like our own good; protecting our own identity from people who have not yet discovered not all people are happy the same way.

1. Your True Emotion Mirrors have the same naturally existing limits, so their love feels limitless. They have boundaries, but you wouldn’t WANT TO go beyond them anyway. ↩

2. Granted, this may also be a test in the audience’s intelligence; is their opinion worth a damn. ↩

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