there's not a single, specific "me"

5: "sometimes we dream strange things that make us wonder if there isn't a subversive inner self -- an irrepressible and mischievous spirit within -- which delights in showing us just how falso are the shapes, boundaries and rules by which we lead our lives. this subversive smiling inner self seems intent on showing us that we cannot get away with restricting the freedom and the mysterious nature of human beings."

7: "if the things we face are greater and more important than the things we refuse to face, then at least we have begun the re-evaluation of our world. at least we have started to learn to see and live again.
but if we refuse to face any of our awkward and deepest truths, then sooner or later, we are going to have to become deaf and blind. and then, eventually, we are going to have to silence our dreams, and the dreams of others. in other words, we die. we die in life."

11: "the world 'orthodoxy' conjures up for me a world in which people have reached the final station of how they define themselves."

22: "that is perhaps why the ancient greeks, the egyptians, the africans and the indians have so many gods. each god is the abstraction of our different attributes and our different selves which need to be acknowledged and nurtured in harmony with the whole. we have to accept our many selves, and our one self. we need to be unified. all our different selves must breathe and be healthy -- the side of us that dreams, the part of us that lives beneath the stream of forgetfulness, the body's need for celebration and ecstacy, the soul's need for work, the divine in us that quietly longs for higher unition, the erotic in us that craves mortality's immortal joy.
but when any orthodoxy comes along and tries to repress any of these needs of aspects then rebellious dreams are sooner or later going to break out and disturb the good sleep of the land."

24: "the other way is to undertake the integral migration, to become an exile within the interiors of the self. we accept, we change in some way, we go mad. we live two lives, become two people. we dislocate. we implode. then our secret selves become more real than our external selves."

-- ben okri - the human race is not yet free, for salman rushdie


these quotes are very inspiring and thought-provoking in my situation. at first, i thought that orthodoxy sounded like what i was looking for -- what i needed in my life. but upon further reading, i found out that the author was pegging orthodoxy as the negative and accepting all of your different selves as the positive. i now am starting to realize that looking for my single, specific "me" probably isn't the best way to find myself. while right now i feel that all of my different selves are forced and fake, i do feel that i can develop my real selves with time.