Picture of a palimpsest…
“Sometimes we project fractal scripts, palimpsests of possibility, onto others and then relate to them as if this is who they are rather than recognizing them as fictive characters in our inner drama. Thus we unwittingly seek out persons to play and replay our persecutors, or rescuers, or victims. Sometimes we repress stories, and their presence may only be surmised when they leak into our dreams, our bodies, our children, our anaesthetizing addictions. Sometimes we dissociate from or condemn others when they enact our secret lives and embody our shadow, which is always repulsive to the ego. The vastness of the human psyche is such that we will never know it fully, or even in significant measure. So we who pride ourselves on being conscious, lead lives in service to stories, some conscious but construed and witnessed aslant, some unconscious but persistent, and almost always binding us to a past over which we had no control. Given the ubiquity of these silent formative narratives, what is our alternative to struggling for a precious purchase on consciousness…… over and against whatever agencies are there dictating our lives?”
Hollis, James. Hauntings: Dispelling the Ghosts Who Run Our Lives (Kindle Locations 296-301). Chiron Publications. Kindle Edition.
