Please do not read this thread, it will only upset you.

Read this one instead, it hasn't got me or god in it. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/3303/metanarratives-identity-self-consciousness

I was born at an early age - I don't remember much before that, and then I had a childhood, some schooling and various occupations until I became old. I'll spare you the details.

The details are what make me this particular individual, the way the details of the features of my face make my photo id unique. Without the details, you don't know me from Adam.

And the Lord God commanded Adam, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
— Genesis 2:16–17

Long story short – just as you have ignored my warning above, so Adam had to eat the the fruit. But compare you, me and Adam with a dog, a cat, or a cow. Their story, as WE tell it, is much the same. They are born, learn some stuff, eat some stuff, do some stuff and get old. The big glaring difference is that though they live that story, they never tell it, either to themselves or to each other or to us.

Psychologically, they do not live in time, but in the continuous present; memories they have, and habits, and these present themselves by association as appropriate to the present moment. Thirst provokes the memory of the way to the water-hole, but there is no story, so no particular individual, no self, and no time. Such is paradise, there is no death, because there is no narrative to end. There is no good and evil, because judgement requires time and there is no time, only the present.
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The narrator is the omnipotent god of the story, without whom nothing can be or occur. There can be no story without a narrator, therefore there can be no story without a god.

So in the beginning, was the word. And the beginning was the beginning of psychological time which is the beginning of the story, the beginning of the narrator, the beginning of self. The story creates time, by recapitulating, and in recollection makes a judgement and comes to know good and evil. Judgement is always from outside - and therefore always of a story, always of a narrative.

We live in time - in history that dissolves into mythology as a continuous self that dissolves into birth trauma; and at the other end dissolves into apocalypse, death, and judgement. But let's not talk about that, until we have to.

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1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2The same was in the beginning with God. 3All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4In him was life; and the life was the light of men. 5And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. — John 1:1

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. — John 1:14

One is always telling the story, or another story – the meta-story, to oneself, the way the devout tell their beads, with obsessive yet inattentive repetition; 'this is the kind of person I am, and this is the world I have to deal with, and this is how I do it.' But one always stands outside the story as narrator to tell the story. One is absent from the story one tells, because the story is related, and even the closest relation is not oneself, in the same way that god is outside his creation.

The narrative self is always going back in time to tell the story of myself, as I did myself above briefly in the beginning of this post, sparing you the details. And in this recapitulation also, I am telling the story of my starting to tell this story as if from the outside. What could it mean for the narrator to enter the story? For the word to be made flesh?

And here, I'm afraid, I will lose you, if I haven't already, because I have to lose myself.

The world as history carries on; everyone continues their interweaving narrative selves as usual, except, for one man, the story has ended. This is enlightenment, the silence of the mind that is not absenting itself from itself in stories and histories. Not that they are denied or ignored, because they are all round in the people, the culture, but they are present, and outside. He responds, he speaks, he even tells stories, but his inner story has ended. He is fully present, and so fully absent.

When the story is complete, the self story, that is, it does not continue, though history continues, and the body continues - "After the first death, there is no other."

Only the story of self that is incomplete, fragmentary, suffers death, and all that can be mourned is the imagined continuation of that story. The imagination is one's own, and it is one's own incompleteness that one mourns. 'Send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.' So many human lives/stories/identities are begun, and so few are ever completed.
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It appears, from our position as narrators of a story we are telling ourselves, that the silence before the story begins is the same as the silence after the story has ended. but this is so only if the story ends without being finished. Something has been accomplished, psychologically of great significance. If I can analogise – we are children to be educated, babbling away and filling exercise books with our nonsense, until at last, we 'put away childish things' The enlightened have the mastery of language, whereas we are lost in it, and the dumb beasts have not even enough of it to make a story, never mind get lost in it.

You are lost in an endless forest of signposts all pointing in different directions. This long post is nothing but another bunch of signposts, making the forest even more impenetrable, including this little one here that says, unhelpfully, "you are here". But where are you going? {there is scope here for a play of words between "Whither away?" an archaic version of the question just put, and the answer the seeker after enlightenment might give, "To wither away".}

But more likely, you are not lost at all, but have discerned which signs are to be trusted and are marching forward. In that case, you already know to ignore all this childish nonsense, and will be putting everyone on the right road already. Good for you. Alas, I see many armies marching after their leaders, all confident they have found the path all heading in different directions, and putting up many signposts as they go. I am doing the same, but without many followers, I hope, because all my signs say "you are here".

In Aldous Huxley's Utopian novel, 'Island', less well known than the dystopian Brave New world, The wild mynah birds are taught to speak uplifting phrases - 'Attention!', and 'Here and now!'. Utopian novels are great big signposts, just as dystopian ones are warning signs.

Personally, I have a liking for old signposts. Although they are sometimes hard to read and covered in graffiti, they came from a simpler time when there were fewer signposts in the forest, and folks may not have been so well lost, and of those, the ones that have survived may have been more so the ones that lead somewhere.

Here's a bit of that graffiti from the appropriately titled '(What's the Story) Morning Glory.'

Today is gonna be the day that they're gonna throw it back to you
And by now, you should've somehow realised what you gotta do
I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now
And backbeat, the word is on the street that the fire in your heart is out
I'm sure you've heard it all before, but you never really had a doubt
I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now
And all the roads we have to walk are winding
And all the lights that lead us there are blinding
There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don't know how
Because maybe
You're gonna be the one that saves me
And after all
You're my wonderwall — Noel Gallagher

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I'm hoping that by now, the only people still reading are those that feel the need to be maybe saved, from a life lived in a dreamtime story that just stops when the heart stops beating. The story so far is that we (humans) have fallen out of the present continuous of living, into a story that is always a moral story, always judgemental. We do not live in what is, but in what was, what might have been what could be and what ought to be and ought to have been.

There can be no return to the innocence of not knowing. But we live in the story of what ought to be, and it contradicts what is that we still also inhabit, willy-nilly — and the only way to resolve that conflict is to make the word flesh; which is to say to make the life we lead the same as the life we know we ought to lead.

[1] Judge not, that ye be not judged.
[2] For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
[3] And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
[4] Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
[5] Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. — Matthew7

One is one's own judge, and it cannot be that one finds the world guilty, and oneself innocent unless one is either the Good Lord Himself returned, or else a corrupt judge lying to oneself and pretending to believe it.

So get your moral story straight first off, by being honest with yourself about yourself. Then follow your conscience as best you can, but do not expect another to follow it. This is a proper self-concern, that leads quickly to a calmer quieter inner life.

But it is not enough, because one's incomplete self is not enough to complete itself. Therefore one needs help, and when one sees of oneself that one needs help, that one is insufficient, inadequate, one asks, and waits for help. And if one has actually exhausted all one's resources, perhaps the silence responds, or perhaps the exhausted listening brings the silence into being, and perhaps it is the blessed silence at the end of the story, or the end of the post.