A

Me 217

Facts

about 'me'

me

me

me

Perceiver

Mercy

A fantastic

Mercy experience

1

2

3

Facts and 'Facts'

about 'me'

me

me

4

me

(^5) 'me'
A defining experience
This method of defining me with the help of emotional experiences
could be compared to the charging and the discharging of a battery. Each
ecstasy which I encounter adds energy to the battery of my self-image, as I
'believe' that this isolated emotional experience is part of me. Perhaps
someone important gives me an affirming statement, or I get totally
involved in some exciting or moving situation. On the other hand, living
within my physical body discharges the battery power of my self-image.
This is because my life is not just a series of adventures, awards, ecstasies
and weekends. Rather, my body also experiences work, boredom, pain and
the mundane. The endless repetition of dreary existence imposed upon me
by my physical body slowly convinces Perceiver thought that me is really
connected to everyday life, and not to the defining experience.
The result is that each award or adventure charges me up and makes me
feel good about myself. Everyday life, in contrast, drains this charge as
reality slowly sinks in and forces me to face who I really am. I then
alternate between charging and discharging, either living off my last
charge, waiting for the next jolt, or existing in the drained state of the in-
between.
Obviously, this does not lead to a very stable self-image. I am regularly
trashing the „furniture‟ in my mental „house‟ only to find it reappearing as
the dust begins to settle. Whenever my mental furnishings become too
solid I then brighten up the decor by going through another session of sofa-
bashing.
So how does one handle the conflict between these two ways of
defining me? How can a person identify only with experiences which are
connected with his own physical body? And, how does one deal with all of
the experiences which already reside within the Mercy internal world,
since there appears to be no way of „kicking them out‟ once they enter. I
suggest that we already know the answer to these questions. When we
discussed the process of using Perceiver beliefs as building blocks for the
Mercy internal world, we found that Perceiver facts could support „life‟ if
they followed two general principles. I suggest that these same two
principles will solve the collision between the me of Mercy identification
and the me which comes from my physical body.