Sense of identity

Many forces contribute to our sense of self What is a strong determining factor for your sense of identity ... 

A strong determining factorfor my sense of identity is being a Vietnamese American. 

A. No apparent or overt psychologic problems and no tendency to somatlze or act-out intra-psychic tension. Many assets, few liabilities. Flexible. Good ego strength. Age - appropriate maturity and responsibility. A clear sense of identity. Such conflicts as are evidenced are few in number, situational, and usually conscious. Normal MMPI and Family History. 

In the late seventeenth century the chemical community, in France at least, had arrived at a pretty clear sense of identity. In the textbooks of that time we can also see the beginnings of the drift away from metaphysical toward material composition, a drift more apparent to the historian than to the chemists of the time. The evidence of this development is found in the... 

The self that this book invites you to develop is not easily definable. At its most basic, self means our sense of Identity, our sense of being an Individual separate from all other individuals. When we attempt to describe this self of ours... 

Our sense of identity can be bound up with our present way of thinking or doing things. The more it is bound up, or the more it seems like a matter of principle, the more energy we are likely to invest in resisting change. 

Brunei s experiment with Malayness as a core identity is the youngest of the three examples discussed, and it is much too early to assess what effects this move may have on popular consciousness and the sense of identity in the state in the long term. Despite some of the rhetoric of its apologists, MIB seems not intended as the basis of a future ethnic nationalism. It is not sufficiendy distinctive from its neighbours for that purpose. As long as the monarchy remains the central political fact of Brunei, nationalism of any but a contrived official sort will be viewed with suspicion. 

Remember that any state of consciousness is a system the parts interact with each other to form a particular pattern. Thus, changes in other subsystems that might not be directly involved in one of the four psi transmission routes we have examined may still have important effects on psi functions. Consider, for instance, the functioning of our Sense of Identity subsystem. We all possess a variety of identities that change rapidly with various situations and emotions, but when a particular identity is functioning, it tends to organize the rest of our mental functioning into a consistent pattern. 

It is hard to realize just how strong these various roles or identities can be because we so often identify totally with them. Suppose, in any discrete state, my Sense of Identity is that I am a rational, hardheaded person who is very practical and accepts no nonsense. If a psi impression comes in through any of the various routes, it will be at variance with my identity and perhaps consciously, but more likely automatically and unconsciously, I will shift my attention away from that information or actively suppress it and get on with my realistic role. 

On the other hand, consider the case of many psychics, who do have a socially acceptable (within a subculture) role of being psychic. Regardless of whether or not they deliberately enter a d-ASC, under the appropriate circumstances, they take on the role of psychic, and the Sense of Identity subsystem tends to maximize those functions of consciousness that fit into the role of psychic and enhance psi functioning. We can, in a... 

It is also true that the popular press, with its many articles on the psychedelic group, helped to spread among the groups themselves a knowledge of rituals, language, and habits of the others, so they were able to develop a common style and a sense of identity. It seemed to us that while all the psychedelics differed greatly from the rest of society, they tended to be more like one another in appearance and attitudes than other sections of society did. 

This shift is indicative of a major social crisis, for it indicates an unconscious desire to escape from history (our present nightmare)—sensible in an age that bombards an individual with a wide range of choice just as he is supposedly beginning to solidify his sense of identity. 

The most constant internal experience in my salvinorin journeys is a drastic shift in my sense of identity and conscious perception. At the onset of the experience my identity is completely dislodged from my body and familiar self. Following this I experience myself as existing, but not as a body, human, or personality. I usually find myself in some alternate dimension, which can either closely resemble earth, or be entirely alien. Quite often the worlds visited under the influence of salvinorin do not obey the laws of physics which we are typically accustomed to. The action of the forces of gravity and momentum, the dimension of time, and the geometric construction of these worlds, can be rather bizarre. 

With this perception it seemed as though the universe had collapsed and turned inside out. And the concept that I had an identity as a particular human being, or even that af "I" existed, was entirely pulled out from beneath my feet. The thought that came to mind immediately after this occurred was that this was psychedelia in its truest form, where the sense of identity dissolves and "mind-manifesting" occurs at every level. 

Feeling of archetypal quality to time atemporal experience SENSE OF IDENTITY... 

This automatic response to suggestion affects your Sense of identity subsystem. Ordinarily it is your own "voice" inside you that tells you to do a thing that you then do. Now the hypnotist s voice takes over this role, and your sense of self begins to include the hypnotist. The special modulation from this subsystem that constitutes the ego sense (discussed later) is added to the stimuli that would ordinarily be perceived as the voice of an outsider. Psychoanalysts call this the transference element of hypnosis, especially when some of the transference involves parental transferences onto the hypnotist. The deliberate or implicit encouragement of identification with the hypnotist s voice is an application of patterning forces. 

Since much of a person s sense of identity comes from his body image, the fading of the body in a comfortable, steady posture also... 

Much of the functioning of the Sense of identity subsystem (discussed later) occurs via the Memory subsystem. You sense of who you are is closely related to the possession of certain memories, if the "this is a memory" quality is eliminated from those memories so that they become just data, you sense of identity can be strongly affected. 

The primary function of the Sense of identity subsystem is to attach a "This is me" quality to certain aspects of experience, to certain information in consciousness, and thus to create the sense of an ego. Presumably semipermanent structures exist incorporating criteria for what the "This is me" quality should be attached to. However, the functioning of the Sense of identity subsystem varies so greatly, even in the ordinary d-SoC, that I emphasize the extra informational aspects of the "This is me" quality rather than the structures underlying it. 

Another major function of the Sense of identity subsystem is the exact opposite of its usual function a denial of the sense of self to certain structures. Because certain of our personal characteristics and mind structures are considered undesirable and/or evoke unpleasant emotions in us, we create blocks and defenses against perceiving them as parts of ourselves. Many of these interdicted structures are culturally determined, many are specific products of personal developmental history and are not widely shared in the culture. So we deny that we have certain characteristics or we project them on to others I am not quarrelsome, he is ... 

These large shifts in ego sense in d-ASCs may later modify the ordinary d-SoC functioning of the Sense of identity subsystem, when things you firmly identify with in the ordinary d-SoC are experienced in a d-ASC as detached from you, your conviction of their permanence is undermined and remains so when you resume your ordinary d-SoC. You are then receptive to other possibilities. 

---