Immediately after I wrote the blog post, A Topic the Never Gets Old — Me and Mine Again,  I wrote the following journal entry which I will share in full (with a few modifications for clarity) here:

I was working on a blog about self and self belongings. It is so clear that I collect items, claim them as my own, in order to reinforce my sense of identity, to prove my Alananess to myself and the world.  But a deeper question keeps nagging me — why do I create the sense of self (that owner/claimer of belongings) in the first place?

Obviously, as a practitioner looking to escape continued re-birth, I am, at least somewhat, concerned about the high costs of self and self belonging — it is a daily exercise for me to recognize the work of collecting (bot identity and belonging), the work of maintaining and the inevitable pain of loss that come along with this self and these items I claim. Still, despite the suffering that the concepts of ‘me’ and ‘mine’ cause me I persist building up my Alanahood.

Maybe I should try looking at this through the lens of LP Nut’s hidden beliefs and benefits. If I know it hurts why do it? What benefits do I think this self brings me? Is it actually true?

Now I’m still not clear on all the details, but my first impulse is that I think myself protects me. All those years I used to fight unyielding with my Mom about the terms of our relationship — how often to call, frequency and length of visits, allowable topics and presumptions of closeness —  I did it with a sense that I had to “hold the line”,  “protect my boundaries”. The more she pushed me, the more I felt like I had to dig-in and not budge: my sense of self felt like it became firmer in the face of attack, I needed it to protect me.

Now, here in NY, again I feel like I need MY STANDARDS, MY SENSE OF RIGHT AND WRONG, MY INDIGNATION. When someone honks, or liters, I need MY ANGER, something that I can hold onto, a sense of who I am and what I am willing to accept in the face of attack. I make the situations and environments around me, about me, and myself grows in the process. But without this sense of self, in this case who I am not and what I won’t accept, how can I keep myself safe?

But if this self of mine is so fragile that it needs the rigid packing materials of standards and indignation and anger, wouldn’t I be better served –safer –if I had a more yielding sense of self? If the self I have chosen could bend like a reed in the wind rather than snap like a tree, wouldn’t that protect me better?

Without a sense of self what is it, who is it, that Eric would love? Like me without a green purse, would I be recognizable to him? So self is necessary to be loved. But, does Eric really love me, or does he love his own idea of who I am?  I already know the answer to this (see Livin the Single Life Blog) — what Eric and I really love is the future we imagine we share together. A future we don’t even know will be real. This is no reason to cling to a self.

Good person Alana, the Compassionate Vegetarian, the Hugger of the Homeless, The Super Buddhist, she clearly needs a self.  How else can I make myself the ‘right’ kind of person, the collector of good qualities and traits. And if I am not a good self, how can I escape negative karma? How can I guarantee good rebirths and fun-filled lives? Self must exist to create standards of behavior and then evaluate (with one eye closed) whether or not I meet these self-created criterion for karmic cookies. But does this really even work? If so, why is this Alana suffering so deeply in this NY re-birth?

My whole existence seems to be about trying to confirm some set of qualities/characteristics that I dub, ‘Alana’. Qualities that will protect me by defining the bounds of what I think are acceptable, and therefore keep me safe from the dark forces of ‘the unacceptable’. Qualities that will make me loved and, by extension, protected by those who love me.  Qualities that  keep me squarely on the side of righteousness, so that I have a life of good stuff that I am so convinced righteous individuals deserve. But, this all does beg yet another question – if I am really looking to avoid suffering (the suffering of the unacceptable, the suffering of being unloved, the suffering of being unsafe and the suffering of having a crap life), shouldn’t I be trying to end the self that brings me into this suffering-filled-world  instead of trying to ‘game the world, on my terms, once I am already here?