Below is a third excerpt from The Quest for Completion.
The Person in Residence in the Body.
The human body can be said to host the person in residence. I do not mean nonsense here since the human body that concerns this discourse is the living human body. However, the human body is not a dwelling in the sense that a house is a dwelling. The owner occupant of a house can have invitees who in coming into the house accept the hospitality of the invitor owner/occupant. However, it can more accurately be said that the human body in its respirations gives rise to the person that comes to occupy it. There is in every human body the potential resident, the person. Initially, this resident is not an invitee as the body has no say in the matter of which person comes to occupy it.
The multiple-personality disorder posits that in residence are not just one person but several persons. The healing of this disorder if healing there be is in dis-inviting persons from the body and asking them to leave, or not. I am not sure who does the asking to stay or to go. I believe that in coming to know who does the asking, the true person in residence is coming to the fore and accepting possession of the body.
The expression being comfortable in one's own skin is helpful. The human body does host the person in residence and that person may have to disinvite either persons or versions of persons that are ultimately anathema to the person in possession and control of the body. In saying I want to become and am in the process of becoming is to say I am not yet fully realized as a person. In this sense the human body does give rise to the person that I am to become.
However, the nature of the person is at issue as that person exercises dominion over its body and the conduct of the actions the body takes.
I believe this taking hold of self-government is the wisdom of responsible conduct. Mental health is not a given but it is the result of exercising responsible conduct. Non compos mentis is not a status I aspire to. In abdicating the responsibilty of self-government, the person is unseated ultimately. Insanity is the result. I choose sanity and more directly I choose to take responsibilty. I do not mean this judgementally of those who are driven insane by the exertions upon the psyche of events beyond the control of the individual (ex. torture).
Early on I abhorred the taking of mind altering drugs because I could not stand the thought of loss of control over perception (which I deemed perception of reality). I was fearful of the perception of the unreal as real. I was not into sticking a knife into a pillow under the influence of a drug only to later discover I was sticking the chest of another human being. I could not stomach the absence of responsibility for one's actual conduct.
RJH Saturday, November 22, 2008.
Revised by RJH, Saturday, January 03, 2009, and Tuesday, February 03, 2009.
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