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Hello all. I hope you are keeping well. I feel iv progressed a lot in my philosophical journey to better understand myself and reality. I wanted to summarise what I found helpful in medeating my own mind, including my most recent realisations and incorporating that into what I have already shared with you along the journey.

I found the best way to view the mind for myself is to understand by the ID, Superego and Ego, the ID being the primitive part of the mind fuelled by desires and emotion, the Superego the part that holds the ideas and values of the higher self and the Ego that mediates the conflict that arise from between the ID and Superego. Ego is the part that interacts most directly with the world it is where reason is found, its an impulse to resolve conflict and solve problems. It is best I think to view the self that is the whole self the ID, Superego and Ego as state or nation, I think. The Ego being the as Palto would put it the Philosopher King of one’s soul, so that it is only right to recognise that the proper form from leadership is not control like a tyrant nor coercion but rather is mediation itself. To mediate is to have agency between all parties with the view of reconciliation, that means to my eye that one must reconcile all parts of the self so that the soul may live in harmony.

Its a hard nut to swallow to know that one isn’t fully in control of one’s own on mind, one can’t rule the self like a tyrant. To do so would only result in deeper conflicts between the different parts, in my experience of intrusive thoughts the more I tried to control them the worse they got. It was realising that I can’t control it that set me free, they get lesser with each passing day now. Witch can only be good thing, it’s not a case of just letting them happen far from it, it’s a case of meeting the needs of all parts of the mind and body. Hearing them out as it were and through reason, knowledge and the truth recognising them for what they are. Fleeting thoughts and images that bubble up from the depth of the mind, that can do no harm. This allowed me to reconcile them with my higher from of identity and values the Superego and filtered through the Ego to make choices, I know just who I am and what I think about these intrusions. They don’t say anything about me, they don’t define who I am, only the actions ones takes defines a person.

We all of us have thoughts every day we have no control over and often wonder from where they came, I can’t answer that but can say this fact is testament to the to the notation we aren’t fully in control of our own mind. Excepting that truth is part of (I think) becoming a free and fuller person, in the sense that to be free is not to be ruled by the I.D or Superego, thus making no real choices. Rather to be free is to use the capacity we have reason to actually make choices, this part of the mind the Ego needs cultivating—it needs educated and only then can you become the King of your own soul. There is one conciliation to all this, it is I think that once your rational self attains the mantal and one becomes free—one is then in driving seat of the whole self. Placing limits where limits are prudent, that is becoming disciplined in how one approaches life, one becomes the arbiter of the whole self but that comes with reasonability. One becomes reasonable for oneself as a king is reasonable for a nation. It’s a heavy burden and a heavy cross to bear, but freedom is well worth it. Having a constitution for the soul seems to be a prudent action to take, though how one would articulate such a constitution is beyond me—I will work at it though.

One of the harder problems is that of values, the ego needs educated in what it value from the I.D and Superego. It is only in this education that one can created consciously a hierarchical system of values to guide one’s life and one’s actions. we all have system of hierarchical values wither we know it or not, they play a fundamental role in how we navigate the world. It’s how we discriminate good from bad, wright from wrong and justice from injustice. Much of this takes place at child hood as we grow up we garner values from our parents, peers, our education system and our faith (if one is raised with one). Nietzsche thought with his most famous line “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” that we could create our set of values, infect that we would necessarily have to. Yet this is not possible or at least isn’t that easy I don’t think, this was his reaction to atheism sweeping Europe and Nietzsche thought that we would have no choice but to create our set of values ether as society or as individuals. Yet moral relativism has its problems, it turns out it’s not so easy to create our own values. If it where we would have no problem with breaching whatever sets of values and ideas of moral good we already have, yet such breaches torchers us. So, if we didn’t create our own values they must have evolved or come from something above us some higher good, from God perhaps—some objective moral standard that keeps us tethered keeps us in line. There is a core of values that now runs cross civilisations, all differ in one respect or another yet there is something similar about them that can’t be ignored.

 I wrote before that we can only approximate “the good” we have not yet discovered the good in itself, this good must have its source somewhere and as we cannot create it ourselves it must transcend us. Then it can be said God is not dead. Religion can be a great source of meaning and a guide, a powerful tool to educate oneself with. Something to help one understand ourselves, so to gain knowledge of hierarchical values gather them from around us and sift the wheat from the chaff. Discover just what our current values are and how they serve us and adapt. There will be values one hold that one did not know about and contradicts another value, one will struggle to reconcile them. It is only through reason, education and knowledge this is possible. But one can in conscious form learn about one’s values and adapt to be the best possible form of oneself, no longer making choices out of ignorance an impulse to emotion and other drives. I’m learning and have learned this the hard way, I have made choices that run contrary to what I understood my values to be, it has nearly destroyed me. But through this process I’m able to understand why I made those choices and what lead to those choices and what I valued that made those choices possible that ran contrary to what I believed my values were. I’m able to define my hierarchical values for myself and make better choices.

Cultivate the intellect.

Anyway, thanks for reding my ramblings. These are just my thoughts on the topic and may not work for everyone, it may in some parts be incoherent (I hope not) and my understanding will probably evolve over time. I hope you at least get something of value from it.  I haven’t detailed the values I holed here but can in short form say I value liberty, justice, truth, honesty, kindness, fidelity among other things. If you have any thoughts or comments about this post, please share them. I’m always keen to hear other perspectives. Also, if there’s anything you would like me to go into more details about just set me know, I’ll do my best. Stay well all.