Episode 36: Your Ideal Self Does Not Exist

“We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”  ― Alan Watts fluidnatureself and how this far off nebulous ideal can cause a never ending striving and subsequent suffering. Any concept of becoming is false —  this ideal self we seem to be moving towards or away in actions does not exist in any material way. Your brain fills in the blanks That’s it’s job  And nothing is more blank than your future  And all it can offer is what it remembers. It is the remembered past - not an objective past but a perceived recollection that changes every time it is recalled And that’s like driving ahead while looking at the rear view mirror only Love After Love The time will come  when, with elation  you will greet yourself arriving  at your own door, in your own mirror  and each will smile at the other's welcome,  and say, sit here. Eat.  You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart  to itself, to the stranger who has loved you  all your life, whom you ignored  for another, who knows you by heart.  Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,  the photographs, the desperate notes,  peel your own image from the mirror.  Sit. Feast on your life.