Finding Who We Are

I decided earlier this year that I would learn more about myself, including what I want, what I don't, what I enjoy, why this, and the list goes on... You would think that such a task, or goal, may seem fairly straightforward, and yet it has proven to be quite difficult. We are often times looking at the world through the lenses of our preconceived notions of what things are or look like, based on the teachings from our environment. It is quite difficult to look at things purely objectively. In addition, we no longer pay attention to small details that we have conditioned ourselves to ignore... We have been conditioned to see what we chose to see and learn to ignore extraneous stimuli that does not influence us directly.

Enlightenment thinkers? How about philosophical postmodernists' views? Is it possible that all can be known, or can we know nothing? Would you want your fate to be revealed, to be known and defined by scientific principles and reason? I think it's comforting to know that science has its limits and its boundaries, and cannnot reveal the absolute truth. In this light, it can be possible to understand ourselves and the forces and interactions we have with our environment and each other, but it cannot be done solely based mathematical principles. Deeper connections, must be made across the physical sciences, the natural sciences, the social sciences and humanities. In addition, in order to further deduce such ideas set in scientific discourse, we must unveil the workings of the human brain.

So how do we manage that? Through awareness. How do we acheive awareness? Through detachment. By detachment, I mean detaching ourselves from certain preconceived notions of who we think we are from our ways of thinking. Maybe our way of thinking isn't all that great, and by retraining ourselves to think in a new way, we could begin to utilize our senses in a whole new way.