This morning's epiphany involves the concept of self. Our culture holds that I am a being identified as Mark Stidham. I am unique, and I was the same person yesterday as I am today and will be tomorrow.
Few would quibble about the definition. And yet, it is clearly a myth that anyone remains unchanged from day to day. Moment to moment, there is change. Recognizing such a fact is difficult, but the myth is so deep in our culture that I think it will be some time before I work out all of the repercussions. For example, if one is fully invested in the myth of stasis, it is easier to see why one would be mystified about nearly all of experience. Without the myth, a being would intuitively understand that we are always 'becoming' and are never 'arrived'.
There are so many aspects of our culture that suffer from persistent myths. One of the most toxic myths is racism. Science tells us that all humans are 99.9% similar in genetic code. And yet this social construct is a 'reality' that cannot be denied. Can we ever achieve racial equality if the designation of race is based in a myth (i.e., a social construct)?
There are other myths even more important in creating unsolvable chasms for understanding. Christians believe in the myth of sin, that is, transgression of the 'laws' of a divine god. Further, this state of immorality separates a human soul from the divine and only the confession of this state and of a belief in the son of god can save our soul from eternal damnation after the body occupied by the soul is no longer living, How can we expect to communicate with each other when operating in such a completely nonsensical framework? Or more to the point, how can we expect to communicate when one group of people believe that a fundamental truth is 'all of sin and fall short' and another group doesn't believe there is a divinity to which to answer? In my philosophy, there is no god, while others hold there is nothing but god. It is a seemingly unbridgeable chasm.
Myths can be construed as fictions useful in explaining something or in thinking about something. The epiphany in 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' concerns the awareness of reality being the interface between the past and the next moment. Reality is not that which has been measured or analyzed or otherwise rendered into memory. Words and language can be mistaken as reality instead of representations of reality. In the same way, it is convenient to conceive of the self as something eternal, internal, and separated from context, but to believe too deeply in this convenience is to deceive and therefore to misunderstand.
