When you're trying to make yourself a better person, there are two yous involved (at least). There's the you you are, and then there's the you who wants to make you better and who does make you better. There's the you that gets worked on and the you that does the work, right? So which you is You?
I think the first you, that is, the you that gets worked on, isn't really you at all. It's what we've grown to think of as you (or me), it's what everyone says our you is but really, I think, it's just our personality, our ego. It's a conglomeration of traits and habits, virtues and vices, prejudices and pre-planned performances through which we interact with the world, but that's all it is. Our personality, our ego, our "self", can change, yet we remain the same. My habits have changed, my virtues and prejudices are different today than they were on the day we graduated highschool, but I am still me. I haven't changed at all, in some way. In some way I am exactly the same as I have always been, underneath all that exterior stuff. I am me, no matter what my personality or my ego "looks" like.
So what am I then? If I'm not the you-that-gets-worked-on, then I must be the you-that-works.
But what is this you? The first you was easy. We all know that you. It's the you that you and I know, the you that our employers and coworkers and friends know, the you that our families and loved ones know, but that you is no you at all. The real you lies underneath the surface one, the real you is the ideal that is constantly critiquing and working on and forming the surface you, the personality. The real you is insightful and wise, seeing the proper way in every situation. The surface you is blind and dumb, constantly stumbling over itself. This is why the real you is always working on surface you, ever trying to form it in its own image. The real you is conscience, the surface you is superstition.
The real you is the ideal you, the perfect you. The surface you is the imperfect reflection of the ideal you in the material world. The real you is a force, always pushing, the surface you is a substance, ever resistant. It is between this pushing and resisting that human lives are lived.
Our folly is that we cling to the imperfect reflection and ignore the ideal. We attach ourselves to and identify ourselves with the surface you, the personality, and thus deny the real you. When we do this, we lose our insight, and then we count our blindness a blessing and call it sight. In our ignorance, we mistake our ignorance for wisdom.
The court jester who plays at catching his shadow is surely comedic, but the poor fool who with real passion attempts to restrain his shadow is just as surely tragic. Still, all of us engage in such tragic foolishness. The surface you is ever changing and therefore unreal. Its being is contingent upon an infinity of variables and is therefore relative. The real you is unchanging and absolute, its being is contingent upon nothing. The surface you demands one thing today and another thing tomorrow, the real you demands only one thing, constantly: "be good" . The surface you is like clay that, without a sculptor to give it shape, has no form of its own. Our fault is that we forget the sculptor and think we are nothing but clay. The real you is not the clay, the real you is the sculptor, the real you is the you-that-works, the real you is God (no joke) and this is why it is written that God makes man in his own image.
And the Lord God said unto Israel, "You shall be Holy for I, your God, am Holy."
