Who are you, really?

Over the past couple of days I have been seeking out information from my Kabbalah 1, 2 and 3 courses. And the information isn't there when I look, which is very confusing. Or at least, it is never where I expect it to be.

Two days ago I sought out the Kabbalistic meaning of dreams, thinking that I remembered which course it was from, and couldn't find it anywhere.
Today I was seeking for the definition of the three aspects of who each of us are, and I can't seem to find that either. But I did find my brief notes on the meaning of dreams, tucked away in a different set of notes from another course.

I find this frustrating and amusing all at once. Frustrating because I thought my memory was fairly reliable, and amusing because it just goes to show that nothing is as it seems.

So, from my wholly unreliable memory, the three aspects of who we are:

1. Who we are when we are totally on our own. The way we behave when there is nobody around to see us. The side of us that we hide from other people. The internal thoughts and feelings that we like to keep to ourselves.
   
2. The way we would like ourselves to be - our future vision, our potential.
3. The person that we allow other people to see and who we believe that other people think we are.

Okay, so here's where it gets personal and complicated. Here is how those three aspects of my Self manifest.

I dislike person number one immensely. Person number one is the person only my nearest and dearest get to see. Person number one is the one who has driven non-blood related relationships to an early grave. I want to escape so hard from person number one, that I spend far too much time day-dreaming and planning about becoming person number two. And then I feel frustrated because dreaming about becoming person number two completely opposes what I need to do to become person number two.

Person number three is the facade. Person number three for me requires such a great deal of acting at times that I am genuinely surprised each year not to be included in the Oscar nominations. There feels like such a huge gulf between person number three and person number one. This doesn't mean that when I am with other people I am pretending to be happy. I enjoy being person number three. I enjoy escaping from person number one. But when I go home I become person number one again and that's the part that I try hard to forget and don't want to discuss.

The more I spend time with people, the harder it is to conceal person number one (which, if you think about it, is hardly surprising considering that person number one is where I spend most of my time) and people start to become frustrated. And I can totally understand that - I feel exactly the same sense of frustration.

I believe that my teacher at the Kabbalah centre can see all three, but rather kindly he is hiding his frustration. He said "I look at you, and I think you should already be there"

Interestingly enough, I think that my purpose in this lifetime is to find my soulmate, but before this can happen I need to love myself first. Oo. Tricky. Because currently what tends to happen is that the person I meet sees person number three and assumes I am person number two. And I panic. Sooner or later they will see person number one and feel completely deceived, so I start to chuck person number one at them - starting with brief glimpses here and there and finishing with spades - because they may as well know what I am like now and I may as well get hurt sooner rather than later. Why waste time?

Ouch. Well, I guess awareness is key. And I suppose that there is some comfort in the fact that everyone has a person number one. I guess that after all, I'm not that alone.

Yehuda Berg sent a daily update recently entitled: How do we change? And the answer to that was "Disgust". You need to become so disgusted with whatever habit, addiction, reaction you have, that you cannot not change it.

So my mission is clear, using the kabbalistic tool of Certainty in order to overcome Doubt (one of the great weapons of the Adversary), I need to get disgusted with many of the habits of person number one. Not so much that I expect person number one to be perfect - but so that the majority of the time I am happy enough with person number one that I actually start to become person number two, and such that traversing the gap between person number one and person number three doesn't require the assistance of a Himalayan mountaineering team.

No time like the present, I guess. Right, where shall I begin?