Hm, it’s a strange sense not knowing to whom I am responding since I don’t recognize the e-mail fo the poster.  But, actually, I welcome that now - it prevents writing for a specific person or applying any spin other than my own perspective.  But now to the response. (By the way, comments like these are really greatly appreciated!  Not only do they induce me to continue to write, but it’s good to challenge one’s own perspective…)

So, from the comment, I understand that there are three points to be made:

1.) Why does the self and reality have to live on such opposite planes? Does being true to yourself always mean conflicting with the rest of the world?  Well, I don’t think the two live on “opposite planes” at all, but are more so adjacent planes whereby one can become more removed into the self or alternatively, into the reality.  I like to think of it as the water in the Caves special in the Planet Earth episode where fresh and salt water meet (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePUlE1_tkwU&feature=related at 1:07) - there is a visible boundary, and you can drift from one or another bringing the water from the other with you, only to have it return to where it originated.  But regardless as to whether you are in the salt water or the fresh water, you are still under water and will only breathe freely with a clear understanding of both, once you are done with being exposed to one or the other.  So to answer the question simply, I say they are not planes in conflict, but planes from which to choose.

2.)  This leads  into an analogy that I recall using when I was younger, but which I think captures your apt recognition that external stressors are valuable for assisting us in determining who we are as “our purest selves”.  Essentially, (and forgive my lack of the requisite in-depth expertise to have fully understood the nuances of quantum dynamics at the time, or even now), there exists the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which posits that:

…it is impossible to determine simultaneously both the position and the momentum of an electron or any other particle with any great degree of accuracy or certainty. This is not a statement about researchers’ ability to measure the quantities. Rather, it is a statement about the system itself. That is, a system cannot be defined to have simultaneously singular values of these pairs of quantities.

                        -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

One of the examples of this principle is called “Heisenberg’s Microscope” where one tries to measure the location and momentum of an electron by shooting a photon at it.  This is where I start to deviate from the science and draw parallels to our discussion.  Consider the electron on a plane “our pure selves”, and consider the fired photon any experience, external or internal, that tests our sense of self in an effort to try to “locate” who we are.  Now the problem with Heisenberg’s Microscope is that, regardless of the coordinates that one can measure from the refraction of the photon hitting the electron, by virtue of the experiment, the electron is no longer necessarily where it was or moving with the same momentum.  Just as with introspection, the act of trying to find out who you are, makes you someone different and you have to start over.  With external stimuli, the experience of the outside world testing you challenges who you are when the stimulus is applied, but does not necessarily how you have changed (that  requires introspection). 

So, the way I perceive this all is that, if there is a finite plane upon which our “selves” can exist, let’s call that plane reality.  Within that reality, our goal should be to test our selves as much as possible, to get out of our comfort zones, to really expose ourselves to that internal and external stimuli in order to get to who we are at our core - not exact location, but a general sense of region perhaps.  (Note: If our stimuli overwhelms ourselves, do you think we can get lost on the plane of reality? Can we alternatively get lost in ourselves?)  When the stimulus ends at the end of our lives, perhaps in that fraction of our last second can we see who we truly are and have been our entire lives.  Perhaps that what it means to see our lives flash before our lives - the moments that defined us…

3.) And that leads us to the third and final point.  You had asked what if one could change themselves to “solve a massive problem”.  I think you recognize “solve a massive problem” as an external stimulus, and that by changing ones self to solve that problem, one is essentially denying themselves.  It’s kind of like the saying “If you do what you love in life, you will not ‘work’ a day in your life.”  Well, if you do what you wanted, if you acted in conformity with your self, you would not have to tailor yourself as much to “solve the massive problem”. 

When you acknowledged that those in the Wizard of Oz went through a huge journey to acquire what people said they needed (a barrage of external stimuli and catering to an outside world), they came to limit their plane enough to realize that they had it already all along inside of them.  They reached a point of self-knowledge where they came to identify the region within their selves operated and that point, at that moment, was enough for them to achieve their goal.  So the crucial element is that the tin man was covered in some pure gold sheen as a byproduct of realizing, from his journey, that he had a heart all along and need only recognize it, as opposed to being covered in gold at the end because he came to a conclusion from reality telling him he should be covered in gold (someone saying “have a heart” in that case plating him in “fool’s gold”). [And what’s with the flying monkeys or book being used as a critique of the gold standard?] I think this example recognizes the need to be honest with ones self to make sure the gold sheen is a byproduct of one living actively from the inside out (not dominated by reality but acknowledging it’s presence), while also ultimately providing hope that one can achieve crucial strides in self-awareness while alive, without having to take “the final introspection”. 

Lastly, perhaps the process of realization is erratic and progressively minimizes the shifting plane to reveal to us more and more about ourselves, sure.  But perhaps the true value is not only within those seemingly erratic flashes of our “pure selves”, but in taking those moments to extrapolate the algorithm upon which the process of self-realization.  And then maybe the true value is not in figuring out the inputs and outputs of the experiment, or even where exactly we are on the plane as soon as possible, but how we act during the experiment - what are the experiences that can best let us prove to ourselves who we really are.  That then elevates us beyond the experiment of living life each day subjected to arbitrary experiments, whether more isolated in ourselves or the external reality living vicariously through us, and  reveals the truly valuable element of how we operate.  I think it’s kind of like people who go on really long trips to “find themselves” (kind of like the “walkabout” concept in Crocodile Dundee, I know, sorry…) when in fact they return and often times are the same person with a lot of souvenirs and neat stories but not having changed at all.

It’s late, but I’d like to end with this last note from T.S. Eliot who said it all more eloquently and less dorkily in “Little Gidding: No. 4 of ‘Four Quartets’”:

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.”

1. roaringsilence posted this