Dr. James Hollis

Thank you, Andrew.

It's a privilege to be with you.

Well, first of all, the idea of the self with a capital S to distinguish it from the ego consciousness, that is to say my conscious presence as you and I are talking right now.

is a transcendent other.

It's a mystery.

It's essentially governed by our instincts.

It's nature seeking its own expression and its own healing.

What I've seen in terms of the activity of the self through the years, it has two agendas.

One, healing when injured.

And secondly, expressing itself in the same way that the acorn becomes the oak tree, so to speak.

Now, the ego, of course, is that little scintilla of energy that begins to cluster.

We're born without an ego, but then there's several shards of experience between the me and the not me that slowly accumulate, almost in tidal pools, so that I begin to differentiate myself from the other, my mother, let's say, or my father, or the object that is there.

And you're right.

We are an animal that seeks to understand as part of our adaptation to the world.

And so we are narrative animals.

We create stories about it.

And our stories rise out of what we're experiencing at the moment.

So you can see why a person born into a certain culture or a certain family of origin with its style of relating works.

or disrelating as the case may be, becomes the ground for defining that person's sense of self.

So it's important to distinguish between the self and one's sense of self.