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There is for every self that by which it is itself and is utterly alone. Subtle, elusive and often disguised, this can only be discovered to the self; it can never be chosen nor created. For it is that whereby all choosing and creating are accomplished. The self can and does "build screens" for itself and for others — masks, fronts, images — but that within the self which accomplishes this is not itself constructed. Although it is thus alone and elusive, it is not secret, not an essential hiddenness; for it seeks to be manifest, a presence, an inwardness seeking to become outwardly revealed; this appears in many and varying modes. That whereby the self is itself and is alone is experienced by the self as an urgency to be itself in explicit fullness, as an agony for meaning, clarity and order (and as dread over their constantly possible absence). The self seeks to be this manifestly, to utter overtly and share openly with that within the actual other self whereby he, too, is himself, alone, and has an urgency to be with the other.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-4447-8_8

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