When I first designed a graphic to represent my descent, I had already long been planting meaningful phrases around my various environments. The move away from words to a graphic was meaningful because a symbol was more efficient at reminding me of my search.
In 2005, I represented my existence with a single, simple circle. To me it represented everything I wanted to say. At that time I could see the patterns in everything, and I best expressed that as a wave, or a circle. While simple and correct, it also exposed a relatively shallow understanding. I was just beginning to ask the right questions, and the circle represented all the potential that lie ahead.
By 2021, one year into a renewed search, I designed the “sonsot”. It was more practical than the original symbol from 2005, introducing practical elements that more accurately and concisely expressed my existential state as the interplay of an inner space of thoughts and feelings, and an outer space of people, places, and things. The flowing tendrils represented the maze in which I was trapped, and the outer ring my true being. The biggest breakthrough was in my ability to superimpose this symbol on top of my actual direct experience.
I called this version the “sonsot”, an acronym for “self of time self of now”.
The sonsot had some inconsistencies and shortcomings which were resolved with the latest iteration I created today when I realized that, while I have been explaining it correctly for over a year, I have been drawing it backwards. Rather than dividing my inner conceptual and outer perceptual into two separate spaces, it is more accurate to depict them as nested. I also replaced the nomenclature of conceptual and perceptual with secondself and thirdself, respectively. Containing it all, is my firstself.
I call this version the “aswaswas”, an acronym for “a space within a space within a space”. And while the sonsot and aswaswas versions retain many core similarities, they are different in a few important areas.
- Rather than explicitly define the point of awareness as “within my head”, I can visualize it as the space where I choose to concentrate.
- My inner and outer environments are no longer separate maze-like structures, with one projecting from the back of my head, and one projecting out the front. Instead, the outer world is nested within my inner world, which is in turn nested within my full Being.
- The aswaswas unifies all layers into a single cohesive framework of self.
With the aswasas symbol, the evolution from uniselfist to triselfist is even more clear.
I am sure the aswaswas will also evolve, but the new symbol will make it easier to see through the distortion
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