How can 'non - self' be relevant to people with no pre -existing sense of self

[Ariaecheflame]

Originally Posted by sentient

Not exactly sure how to approach this subject.
So I’ll narrate a story of two sisters – both ½ Papua New Guinean ½ British.

The one sister I see as having a PNG soul. When she goes to PNG she just plonks herself down on the ground with the other village women – an instant relief, instant contentment. She has ‘arrived’ – she is whole – she is in her real-reality element. She has a collective/tribal self id.

The other sister whom I see as having a British soul cannot really enter the circle, she cannot quite figure out what the women silently share or have in common and why she is on the outside of it – looking in ... as if there was an invisible barrier. So she communicates with concepts and whatnot but feels quite alienated – she only feels in her real-reality element, when she is with her Western white friends. She has a separate-self-id.

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My primary caregiver till I was about 5–6 was my grandmother, who had a collective/tribal self id. She didn’t have a-separate-self ego, she only lived in connection to ‘things’. So that became my id.

When I moved to live with my (now passed away) partner’s Aboriginal ‘mob’ – I was instantly ‘at home’ – I had ‘arrived’. I was in my real-reality element, despite the racial and cultural difference (though similar really).
This is something my Western white friends could/cannot get in a million years and wondered why I would choose to pretend to be ‘aboriginal’, when obviously (to the eye) I am not.
But without my aboriginal friends I would have felt like a ‘lost soul’ in Oz.

So I am familiar with the difficulties living in and juggling both worlds. I have never fully ‘achieved’ this separate-self-id myself, plus my inner ‘value system’ goes against it. So perhaps the best thing one can do is to carve a path for one’s self in-no-man’s-land …. in-between-the-2-worlds.

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That was a beautiful post, thank you so much for sharing.

It struck something in me. A cord of recognition.

I know what you mean by the two worlds comment but it is a difficult thing for me to explain...