My search for selfhood is defined not only by how well I am able to acquire new knowledge, but how well I am able to struggle. Selfhood comes with my ability to sit with deeper and deeper levels of what I already “know” but am not fully conscious of, and my willingness to tolerate the intensity of rigorous self-honesty. I need, in a sense, to pass through a smaller self in order to move into a larger self; to take a leap of faith, a free-fall into my own nothingness, my soul, or that within me that is without time, place, circumstance, that within me that is eternal, infinite and somehow connected with a source of energy beyond me. When I can struggle with my own pain, I can sort out the distortions and illusions that keep me from seeing clearly. Like
cleaning the dust from a window so that I can see through it, I will clean the dust from my mind so I can see through it to the truth of the soul.
I am willing to struggle.
What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn.
Henry Adams
