Re: BEING SELF-AWARENESS and REASONING?
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The word self awareness ,normally read as one word, is a combination of two very important psychological concepts. It is imperative to understand both the words separately before talking about it generally and , specially, if seen in the light of a very contextual exordium in your question.
To be self aware one has to be aware of “self”, what is self?,To a degree, the conception of “self” starts with the conception of “life” itself, but for intelligent beings it doesn’t stop there. There is a huge separation of the perception of universe when seen with the eyes of an intelligent being like human or with the eyes of an animal. Self is a core, centre of the personality, personality that includes both conscious and unconscious, to many psychologists the goal of development of self is not hidden in its perfection, rather in wholeness and in balance, which is why the symbol for self is “mandala”.
Like I said before, self is the centre of personality, a personality that includes both conscious and unconscious characteristics. Ego is the centre of the consciousness, delineated by one or two dominant attitude or functions.
“Personal Unconscious” is another very strong characteristic of “self”, it is directly in conflict with the ego. This can be attributed to an individual’s personal mental trash can. The personal Unconscious is a construct of mental taboo, which one can not socially share with other within the norms of decency.
Two other very interesting constructs of self are “shadow” and “persona”. Shadow is considered a dark side of your personality, an animal instinct that every one of us carry, it is somewhat seen in the symbolic representation of devil and daemons. A slip of tongue, by Dr Jung, is the language of our shadow, we demonstrate the existence of a shadow in our dreams and fantasies, in anger or when under the influence of drugs. Suppression of a shadow is a key to a socially acceptable personality but at the same time at the expense of creativity, and strong emotional display.
Your query is about yet another construct of a personality, called “persona”, it is what we project ourselves to be , a socially acceptable mask that we all wear, we may change our appearance and mask with the perception of the audience that we are facing, but never the less persona is conscious representation of the personality. It is an opposite to “shadow” because it accepts all the appropriate compromises that one has to make to live in a society, thus making “persona” a “social archetype”. Now the question arises, what is our true self, the shadow or the persona?.
How can we be “aware” of our own self, the phony existence may just be a mask that is not acceptable to the society or for that matter to an individual, yet it might be a very strong trait of personality wholeness. Does it mean that credibility of a person is conditioned with his acceptability within the norms of social acceptability, what if the whole fabric of society is upside down, what if a person is truthful in a society where truth is detested, has that person lost every chance of “growth”
Duswari, I wonder do we judge people by our own “persona” or by the collective norms of social acceptability?. what drives us, religion or social pressure to be civic?. I do understand the necessity of “self awareness” but what if it is revealed upon you that you are not the one who can be reason with, does it force you to damage your “whole self” to be acceptable?