Man in Search of Self

About this poem

Man, made in the image of God, is eternally in search of himself (See Psalm 139, and also my poem named “Search Me O Lord”). Man is ever looking outwardly, yet fearing to seek within. From the dawn of time, mankind (like biblical David, like Job, and like King Solomon), in searching outwardly, has looked to the heavens above, to the endless dimensions of outer space, only to discover that in spite of being of divine creation, he remains a mere mortal, a tiny speck in a vastly boundless universe. And thus he bemoans his fate as a perishing soul that, too soon, turns to dust. With the imagination of predestined mortal doom, man becomes overwhelmed with apocalyptic imageries of his ultimate end. “Apocalypticism” is described as the religious beliefs that the end of the world ( and, with it, the end of human civilization and culture) is imminent; that we experience and live a catastrophic life that can only obtain remedy in some nether otherworld. Psychoanalysis looks at this posturing as hind brain reptilian depiction and provides it with a different forebrain archetypal imagery that ironically retains man’s reptilian conflicts, deferring them to the battle of internal states: man divided and in conflict with himself. Man, as existentialist thinker, is forever living a life of conflict, with a kind of “Theseus Paradox” (involving the dialectic of the personal unconscious with the collective unconscious), where the answers to man’s questions of his origins and his destination, lie profoundly buried, hidden in the deep recesses of his own cavernous reptilian brain; and where he reaches outwardly towards the vast expanse of the heavens in hopes of experiencing eternal liberation and the salvation granted by a glorious resting place. How curious it is, this thought: The outer or the outward look or image appears to be the psychological ‘fault line’ of humanity, mankind presumptively desiring to know itself and, at the same time, in fear of turning inwardly to truly know itself; mankind’s novels, poetry, art, painting, literature, psychology, meditation and philosophy; yea, mankind’s mythologies; perchance, mankind’s scientific investigations, being mere substitutions for our confrontation and our embracement of psyche. The irony of it all. We are forever, all of us, time and time again, Dr. Jekyll, ever discovering manifold ways to preserve and to shield our lofty Mr. Hyde. more »