The world outside appears to be fragmented, and such a fragmentation is rarely perceived as a projection of our inner world.
It's our fragmented mind what generates the image of a world broken into isolated pieces.
All names humans have invented believing they were true, says a verse in the ancient Greek poem of Parmenides.
Naming things and people has a practical dimension, but we can't reduce reality to ordinary thoughts, names and mathematical formulas, because that is a distortion.
The map is not the territory (Alfred Korzibsky).
We can identify as a person with a name, likes, dislikes and so on. But those are superficial bits of information and don't say anything true about what we really are at a fundamental level. What are we beyond any idea and preconception?.
The distortion of reality begins by identifying ourselves with a "personality" or "ego" to whom we attribute qualities such as will or ableness to do. Our personal history, our self-image, our superficial desires and thoughts are all fragments of what is considered as "me" or "I". Now, is such a "personal bundle" something consistent or rather a mental construct based on memory and imagination?
If our personality is a single entity, how can we have so many contradictory feelings and thoughts about the same things?
All our mechanical mechanically impulses have always a dark sense of "I" attached to them: "I" like, "I" don't like, "I" feel sad, "I" feel happy, "I'm" afraid etc.
And these blind reactions become contradictory: "yesterday I liked this, today I don't"; "a part of me wants to go, other part doesn't want to go"; "one part hates, another loves".
Such a display of changing opinions are the evidence that we are divided inside, that we are not the single person we believe we are. Therefore, our personality is inflated with a self constructed image full of fragmentation.
A teacher of dances called G.I.Gurdjieff advised we should think in terms of "it likes", "it doesn't like", "it's sad", "it's happy" etc, and keep the expression "I" for more conscious experiences.
Only an impartial Witness has the right and power to collect all experiences.
This is a sacred individuation or soul-making, the Romanticists would say.
Then, the "personal ego" becomes the servant of something higher.
