Dynamic selfhood (ICA)

Description

This is experienced as the reality that one's life is changing every moment, one is perpetually new and ceaselessly evolving. One does not consciously will this to happen but experiences life as forever surprising. It may compared to the movie "Aunt Mame" when the main character says "Life is a banquet and most poor fools are starving". Life is experienced as an endless celebration of the fact that, in embracing the reality of change, one is constantly renewed. For example, in the movie "Zorba the Greek", when Zorba watches his special project, designed to make him rich, collapsing about him, his immediate reaction is to dance, to celebrate this catastrophe as a great moment in his life.

A dimension of this experience is a sense of awe that is fear and fascination: fear that it will be like waking up from a dream, that one will always be out of step with the rest of the world, and that one cannot handle these situations seen only to one's self, that one will never have a home again. Yet fascination with reality like a new land; this is the beginning – the first day of the rest of one's life. And there is joy and the desire to find others who share this awareness as they discover the new in their lives. Each new universe is a feast in which one is invited to partake and one decides to accept the invitation. Such moments are followed by the knowledge that joy is always there even if one does not always see it; and one can never again take one's self too seriously.