In the hall of mirrors, you are everywhere.
Which is the real you?
Find your original Self,
the one who perceives all the reflections
and is amused by them.
Then you will recognize your path and walk it,
no longer stumbling over your many false selves.
The Yoga Sutras, IV, 5 by Patanjali, translated by Alberto Villoldo
We all have them: the selves we are, the selves we'd like to be, the selves we're told we should be. Many are genuine, even if they reside only in the gilded someday of our minds. Others are the false selves to which Patanjali referred.
The struggle isn't in shedding all but the one, true self. It is in discarding the comfort of the false selves, for that comfort is illusory. It is in breathing the acceptance of who we are and delighting in the prismatic possibility of who we might become. Look in the mirror. Which is the real you?
Welcome to the Hall of Mirrors where reside many of my multiple selves. Psychologist. Writer. Human. All still struggling toward the ideal but none of them false. The path is rough-hewn and, in places, trod only by the steps of the few brave enough to dare the awesome unknown within.
Roadmap
Such a small thing, the fabric of a life, caught, pinned together with threads of memory. Such a small thing to be so necessary. This tapestry... it conceals in lovely artifice or protects in chain mail ruggedness or exposes in a secret-by-secret striptease of self-disclosure when the proper key is fitted to the heart's lock. Such a small thing to offer a transcontinental roadmap of navigational surety, complete with inter-city connectors and suggestions for sight-seeing. (Don't neglect Stop #232, skeletal remains, broken heart, aged 28.) Such a small thing, this clothing of self.