THE CHALLENGE OF RECONSTRUCTING "ONESELF"

Once upon a time he had vision, he could see. Or he believed he could see. He felt he could see ... something. He believed himself to be insightful. He believed himself to be articulate enough. He didn't question his ability to write, to "express himself"; as far as he was concerned, it "just came naturally." But he had gotten older; he now felt chronic, often acute, pain in his neck and back, causing migraine-like headaches. He now questioned everything about himself, and even what "himself" was or might be. He had rather deconstructed that which he once believed to be himself and had not reconstructed himself, his identity with himself, as himself, as yet. And he hadn't even considered this as important, much less necessary --- until now.

Now he had recognized the necessity and the problem of "reconstructing himself." He had inadvertently deconstructed himself, his particular identity, as a result of practicing Zen, which included the sitting meditation called zazen, a practice of "self-observation," of his own mind and way of thinking, for perhaps forty years. Through this practice, he had rather "vanished himself, which, in so many words, could be said at least to be a result of sustained zazen practice. Prior to that he had engaged in Theosophical or esoteric (I suppose) meditation, which was "transcendent" in nature, for a number of years. And still prior to that he had ingested a goodly amount of LSD for a number of years. Finally, still in his teens, he had practiced what might be called "occult" meditation as put forth by the Rosicrucians (AMORC) for a few years. All of this had the effect of "erasing self or ego," or at least enough that he had reached a point in which he found himself to be quite undefined or even deficient in its "self-sustainability." And so he was now looking to recreate or reestablish such a self-identity.

In his meditation practices, as previously stated, the result, if not goal, was to "see through" or otherwise "transcend" his current identity as "himself." Now and probably for the remainder of his life, he would have to engage in "remembering himself," as it were. And so he would begin.