Self transcendence (ICA)

This state occurs whenever an individual realizes that he creates himself. There are no guidelines, no justifications, no excuses and no bounds to what he can create. From nothing, he invents who he is and what he can be. In the movie "Mask", the central character Rocky is a living embodiment of this reality. Born with a horribly disfigured face, he defies society's image of himself as an imbecile, a repugnant human being, and shows himself to be an intelligent, responsive and caring soul. Through his own decision to create who he is, he enables others to grasp hold of the possibility of doing the same with their lives.

A dimension of this experience is a sense of awe, that is fear and fascination. Shaping one's own life, one asks "Is this really me?". There is a sense of marvel at what one is capable of becoming and yet had never quite glimpsed before. At the same time there is an incredible fear that it could all go up in smoke. The clay keeps shifting under one's feet and there are no guidelines or measures to tell one how to proceed. There is a feeling of being irreversibly changed, there is no going back to the person one was because one is forever becoming something new. The challenge is to appropriate the uniqueness that one is.

This state is number 19 in the ICA Other World in the midst of this World.