Discover the Power of a Future Promise

Are you kidding? He also made a million errors! Come on, Vijay, we're all a team, Derek reminded him, repeating the words his dad had said to him after that first practice. Pete's on our side now. Hey, speaking of which--where are you playing? Left out. Left field? In 1982, Science News published a small article on The Three Brains of Eve: EEG Data, reporting both the work of Frank Putnam and a follow-up study by Collin Pitblado, finding that each of a multiple's personalities is associated with a distinct pattern of brain waves and suggest, furthermore, that such neurophysiological variability cannot be faked. The Reality of Selves: A Pragmatic Perspective From a pragmatic perspective, the world makes more sense if selves are real. If we experience certain recurring bodymind patterns over time, then, pragmatically speaking, this is very useful to acknowledge. For William James, co-founder of the philosophical school of Pragmatism, the test of truth is to first suppose an idea or belief to be true and then ask if that truth makes your life better. As you experience the reality of the selves in your own being, consider whether doing so makes your life work better. As Dan Millman has suggested, ask yourself: `What would the strongest, bravest, most loving part of my personality do now? Do it with all your heart. And do it now. WHY DO WE HAVE SELVES? I'm much more appreciative. Hell, I even appreciate being run over. I'm thinking of Kate Milliken, the New York television producer whose broken engagement led to a health crisis that left her unable to walk.

In the cab on the way to her doctor, she almost turned on her video camera. Then she caught herself. It's too early to tell this story, she said. After receiving a diagnosis of MS and sinking into depression, Kate turned to alternative treatments, fell in love, married, and had children. She also made thirty-two mini-films about her journey. It took me a while, but I was eventually able to see what happened as transcendent. Instead of seeing the wall, now I see a sea of possibility. I'm a substitute. Coach said he'll put me in later. Oh, man. Sorry, Vijay. It's okay. Everybody has to get a chance. Nine places, twelve kids. My turn to sit down. Derek laughed and shook his head. If Vijay could sit on the bench and cheer, who was he to complain about starting at second base instead of shortstop? We have saved the why question for last, because in many ways it is the most difficult. Why questions often lead to nebulous or hard to assess spiritual answers and may presuppose the existence of ultimate ends. Despite the research that does exist regarding selves, an ultimate conclusion has not yet been reached, and opinions regarding selves remain split.

Flexible Selfhood Instead of moving into purely metaphysical territory, we would like to propose three simple answers for why we have selves, any one of which may be sufficient: Selves are an emergent property of our human-animal bodymind biochemistry. Selves are an evolutionarily adaptation and solution to trauma. Selves are a generalized evolutionary adaptation. First, selves can be seen to be an emergent property of our complex human bodyminds. An emergent property is something that you cannot predict based on an object's elements or parts. I'm thinking of Kate Hogue, the young preacher who almost died in the tornado in Joplin, Missouri. In the immediate aftermath, Kate did a lot of preaching, mostly to comfort her neighbors. I spoke about how grateful I was for all that we have. But the experience felt hollow, she said, because inside she was questioning her faith. I thought, What does it mean that God was watching over me, but not my friend Tripp, who died? It took Kate five years, including enrolling in a PhD program, entering counseling, and using a form of therapy called eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, to finally put the event behind her. I think anytime you experience trauma, you realize how little control you have over those kinds of things. But the control you do have is to decide how to make meaning once it has happened. To me, the good stories are the ones where something terrible happened and you did something about it that is positive and life affirming. Now I'm one of those stories. The Tigers batted first. Derek watched from the on-deck circle as the Indians' pitcher winged pitches right past little Chris. He probably would have walked if he hadn't kept swinging at pitches over his head or far off the plate.

One out, and Derek strode to the plate. He had his routine down, and he stuck with it now. He knew he had to calm down, to take a deep breath and make his heart beat a little more slowly, so that he didn't swing too hard and miss a ball he should be able to hit. The first pitch came in, and Derek let it go by. Strike one! Way to look at one, Derek! Now you've seen him! Thus, water is an emergent property that results from combining hydrogen and oxygen in the right proportions. Life itself is an emergent property of the chemicals that existed on our planet and the circumstances in which they were found. In the same way, we can say that selves, or self-states, naturally and spontaneously arise from the complexity of evolving as the kind of big-brained biological entities we happen to be. Second, selves can be seen as an evolutionary necessity to handle and take maximum advantage of intense negative interactions with the outside world, especially physical and sexual trauma and abuse. Under this well-known adaptive dissociation view, first seen in the brutal backgrounds of multiple personality disorder cases, the splitting off of different personalities was necessary for psychological and perhaps physical survival; A third answer takes this adaptive dissociation notion and expands it, so that selves are created during intense interactions with the external world and other people, positive, negative, or mixed, to enable us to take care of the many opportunities and challenges we face. Bromberg, for example, states that through the creative use of dissociation, the mind selects whichever self-state configuration is most adaptive at a given moment without compromising affective safety. Parts appear in our lives naturally, as the results of a universal, developmental process. When we need to adjust to something new in our lives, whether it is something in our own development, such as puberty, or something in our external environment, such as the way we are parented, additional subpersonalities spontaneously appear, enabling us to adjust to our changed situation. Thus as we grow and develop, new parts appear whenever our existing parts cannot easily deal with a new challenge. Make Pigs Fly The second technique that transformative personal stories display is they use positive language. The novelist John Steinbeck had a quirky logo he drew after signing his name.

It was a pig with wings. He called it Pigasus, which he wrote out in Greek letters. Late in his life, he accompanied the illustration with the Latin words Ad Astra Per Alia Porci, which he translated (incorrectly, it turns out) as to the stars on the wings of a pig. His explanation: We must all try to attain the heavens, even though we are bound to the earth. For half a millennium, the expression when pigs fly has been used in multiple languages to mean a circumstance so improbable that its completion is nearly impossible. It's a figure of speech known as an adynaton, a way of saying something that will never happen. Steinbeck adopted this phrase because he had been told by a naysayer professor that he would be an author when pigs fly. Derek nodded, and tapped the plate with his bat. Here came the second pitch. It was halfway to home plate when Derek realized it was coming right at him! He tried to spin out of the way, but the ball plunked him square in the left arm, halfway between his elbow and shoulder. Derek cried out in pain and collapsed to the ground, grabbing his arm where the ball had hit it. Take your base! Derek got up and jogged down to first, fighting back tears. He didn't want to give the pitcher the satisfaction of seeing how badly he was hurting. Standing at first, Derek tried to rub the pain out of his arm. He saw his father and Sharlee in the stands, concerned looks on their faces. Parts Psychology holds that subpersonalities are the natural building blocks of the mind, and without their development, we would lack the essential human flexibility that has allowed us to adjust to virtually every social and physical environment our planet has to offer. We invite you to consider the why question on your own. You might be impressed and surprised with what your selves come up with.