The Self as Contradiction

I’m a big fan of Tim Blake Nelson. I first saw him in one of my favorite movies, ‘Oh Brother Where Art Thou’ where he played Delmar, the not-very-bright prison escapee. Nelson has also appeared in other great productions, such as ‘The Ballad of Buster Scruggs’ and ‘Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities.’ So, I was really pleased when I came across the following quote by him,

“Really, life is full of contradictions. Life is messy.”

This quote reminded me of something. It's true that life is full of contradictions. The Self is also.

In my book, The Philosophy of Dark Paganism, I compare the Self to a hurricane. The characteristics of a hurricane are well known. It’s a massive rotating storm of rain and wind that wreaks havoc in its path. Anyone who’s lived through a hurricane will tell you it’s real. If you’re in the path of a hurricane, denial of its reality may kill you.

However, suppose one focuses on the contents of the hurricane. In that case, one will see that it consists of the same ‘stuff’ as the atmosphere surrounding it. This becomes apparent if you fly into its center, called the ‘eye.’ In the eye, not only is the stuff of a hurricane the same as the outside, but the hurricane’s characteristics also disappear. Instead of gale force winds and rain, you’ll find blue skies and calm winds. At its center, a hurricane is nothing compared to the rest of the atmosphere.

One could say that a hurricane is both real and nothing. It’s all a matter of perspective.

With this analogy in mind, let’s look at the Self. The effect of the Self on the world is very real. The news is full of the impact of individual and collective Selves on the world. However, the Self is not a thing. You can’t capture the Self in a bottle and study it under a microscope. The Self is an ever-changing, dynamic phenomenon that’s an emergent property of our physical and spiritual bodies.

The Self, like the hurricane, is both real yet nothing.