The self is relatedness. The self doesn’t exist without relationship. The self appears in your deeds, and deeds always mean relationship.
James Hollis wrote that. It stopped me. You find there are books like that, don’t you? Books which you can’t read all the way through without stopping. I don’t mean the stopping for tea, or to answer the phone. I mean that stopping in the middle of the page, or anywhere in the page actually, because what you just read provokes such a mental reaction. This was one of the many places where I stopped when reading Creating a Life by James Hollis.
My first thought was, “how true”. I see connections everywhere, and I see the constancy of change. In fact, that is so important to me that I put the phrase, “becoming not being….” as the sub-head of this blog.
We are constantly becoming, ever interacting, exchanging, adapting and changing.
So, it’s true. The self doesn’t exist without relationship. I’ve thought many times that you could never know a person by observing them, through a one way glass,in an empty room. You have to see how a person interacts, with you, or with others, to have any sense of who they are.
Reminds me too, of “Ubuntu” – “I am because you are”
But then it seemed to me he’d gone too far when he added “deeds always mean relationship”.
Surely there must be deeds we commit alone?
But hold on, am I narrowing the definition of relationship too far here? Am I assuming a relationship is between two PEOPLE?
What about how I relate to Nature, to the built environment, to music and images and art? To this very book I am reading in fact!
It’s true what he says – the self really does appear in our actions, our reactions, and our interactions. It’s not a phenomenon which emerges in total isolation (even our memories and our imaginings are the creation of relationships aren’t they?)
So here’s something to consider today – what sense of self do I notice emerging from my deeds? my choices? my interactions?
Heroes Not Zombies 
What a great post! Totally agree that our self is revealed through our actions, just as it is revealed in our inaction. We are a product of our choices and our self is the slow, steady compilation of those resulting experiences.
Try to walk tall and walk my talk. Once wrote the shortest book of life: Do good, be good, feel good. Do bad, be bad, feel bad. The end. It works for me. So far. This was a good reminder to be cognizant of the doing as the wave rippling out to others, the world and relationships. Thanks.
Fundamentally too. Self is distinguished from not-Self by difference. No perceived differences and Self dissappears. ( ‘Self’ as that which is somehow, and probably rather arbitrarily, encompassed and labelled ‘I’). So, I suppose, the apparent expansion of consciousness experienced in meditation and other practices is simply the automatic process of taking attention away from difference, stillness being a good way to reduce the sensation of edges, thus recalibrating the understanding of where one starts and finishes in time and space.