Memories, Dreams and Projections

My pseudonyms failed miserably. To put it simply, they simply do not interest me; and it would seem extremely detrimental to my mental health to narrow down my existence into separate characters, each performing a discourse with a particular form of rhetoric. The entire enterprise was, ultimately, a failed attempt to embody virtually a psyche into personae. However, while manifestations of the personae may be distinct and diverse, the human psyche is not. It courts both the sense and the nonsense, oscillating between reason and madness.

Can the theologian clearly speak for a universal experience, such that the testimony penetrates into the core of the inward person, and he or she trembles at the mere mentioning of the experience?

To speak as a theologian is to participate in a particular religious discourse. It is a discourse that legitimizes and maintains the “shepherd” (the one who knows the answers) and the “sheep” (the ignorant morons who need to be guided by another mortal) relationship. Professions of our ‘holiness’ or good deeds are always so dubious, in that to paint a beautiful picture perpetually is only to deny oneself the temperament to reflect on the ambivalent areas of misdeeds and inevitably, the on-going course of repentance. To put it simply, the inward experience or the ongoing struggle of the person in relation to his or her numinousity is always going to be compromised and excused. We will be denied the nature of struggles to lead us to a better understanding of our human psyche. Of course, this would then assume that struggles are easy to handle. In fact, they are not. But to renounce the basic dialectical relationship between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ (or more accurately, the moral conscience and the sin principle) is to chain the man to a misinformed projection of one’s destiny. It is a bungee jump that gives you that momentary ecstasy but does not give you the actual plunge to the realization of an actual fall. Moral conscience and the sin principle are never easy to define. Nevertheless, the position one takes in relation to the conduct of the persona, is crucial to the development of the future persona. To simplify without over-determining the crucial relationship between the two opposites: an intense sense of grace or salvation can only be felt when one recognizes the contradictions of the opposites and at the same time recognize the importance of ‘evil’ to inform the conscience that this evil has to be eradicated. The human predicament is more pronounced in the event when the human being realizes his or her utter inability to escape or eradicate his or her wretchedness.

Already, I recognize my flawed position and my inability to articulate what is a very profound inward experience that simply cannot be uttered or experience outwardly – I cannot simply demonstrate repeatedly the ‘process of salvation’ and the manifestation of grace in a scientific order of recurrence under the same conditions.

The personae portrayed are not the ‘I’ that is complete and total, but each makes up the sum total of the collective identity of ‘I’. But by clearly identifying the various selves, the process of self-understanding will be counter-productive if I do not consider the relationship between all the distinct identities and how they actually alienate each other and at the same time teach each other. They are mere representations; a performative discourse that cannot probe deeper than what their individual structural system has imposed on them. But they are also mouthpieces of a side of us that cannot find the language or the performative idioms to articulate if they remain within the confused whole.

But can the aesthetical stage of me speak for the loose thoughts and fantasies; in so doing, define what they mean?

Forms without contents to substantiate the existence of forms are just flukes, disguises for a hypocritical person whose only concern is to spectacularize his or her existence. It is to scratch the surface but he or she ends up falling flat to the ground without having to leap into the skies. (He or she dreams of a starry night when in reality the clouds obscure the heavens) The aesthetic persona is only concerned with the present, the immediate experience of the moment. He cannot look back and cannot project a future. He finds pleasure and rejects responsibility for his actions. The fragments of his thoughts express different moments of pleasure and madness. Grace is an alien word to him because if there are no guilt and causality, why would he need grace to save him?

Hence, the form and content I will adopt now are those of fantasies, memories, dreams and projections. This is like a synthesis of the consciousness and unconsciousness of the human mind. When emotions threaten to derail me from my normalcy, I extract fantasies and dreams to control them in the rational world. When reason has no answers, I seek the unreason, the paranormal to understand the normal. I will speak in riddles, dreams, myths and prose whenever appropriate. I will talk about my childhood memories or significant incidents that I believe shape my personality. More importantly, these are not answers but meditations of some deep dark nature of mine that in forcing the inner thoughts out to the surface of the public domain, I may in some way reveal things I never know about consciously. Nevertheless, they can be secrets that the conscious mind may be afraid to reveal.

To be at my mid-twenties I cannot be the old man to reflect back on life. I can only project, towards a certainty and unpredictability of death. It is to accomplish a task in future but can never be certain what the task really is and strangely enough know how to accomplish the task. I feel a great pull and a push from behind that I cannot do anything about these forces. I can, however, sit down and have conversations with my personalities, my dreams and my fantasies. There are always aspects of us that we fail to recognize. Nothing is sadder than not knowing ourselves. For it is wisdom of ourselves (not knowledge) that makes us understand the mysteries of the Other.