Sometimes I feel like the world is slipping away from me. Like my perceptions are twisted so much beyond repair that I will never be able to truly know the world as it is.
Sometimes I feel like I am wearing blinders.
My focus has narrowed, almost to a point, in the last few weeks. I hardly can conceive of What Lies Beyond or how to alter this, in my view, rather limited, narrow perception.
I feel like I live in a box that I know I can bust out of, but don’t have the strength to do so. There are small holes in the box that I can see out of, but cannot expand.
Maybe I have a head cold or something. I would like to think it were something as simple as that. But, what if its not? What if I’ve reached the end of my perceptions? I once postulated that a person is capable of only so much learning, of self-knowledge. I have operated under the assumption that this was not the case, as the evidence I perceived led me to an altogether different conclusion.
Now, I begin to wonder. Is there a limit to self-knowledge? Is there a finite amount we are meant to know about ourselves and no more?
I would like to think this is not the case, as my entire philosophy is based around the idea that we continue to learn about ourselves as we grow.
I still believe this to be correct.
Therefore, I have to conclude the problem lies not with my personal growth, but with my perceptions of that growth. This can be flawed, as it is with a majority of people. Therefore, a simple realignment of my own perceptions should correct the issue.
But, I’m not ruling out a head cold.
The House of Goonery 
Do you feel that there must be a sense of constant upward movement? That is, constantly learning, or are you allowed to have plateaus on which you travel til you reach a point in your life where you are meant to learn something new? It seems that after a period of growth, or learning, or however you wish to term it, there should be a period of adjustment so that you are able to become accustomed to this new way of thinking or this new aspect of yourself. Sometimes, though, you have to try many different ways of climbing that mountain standing in front of you before you find the right one.
I do not believe we, as humans, stay the same from birth to death and within the realm of growing and changing, we have moments of wild self-discovery where we say, “Yes! I can do that!” And sometimes it’s more subtle.
Are you sure you’re not expecting too much of yourself? It sounds to me like you feel somewhat like I do and the little bumpersticker on my Facebook profile sums it up nicely. “I’m not sure if life is trying to pass me by or run me over.”
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I agree with the concept of plateau’s. Maybe that’s what I’ve reached in my own development and I just need to recognize that and accept it.
As to whether there is a constant sense of upward movement, I believe we learn what we need to learn when we need to learn it, if that makes any sense.
This is what I was trying to articulate in the post (and failing miserably at, apparently). I feel like I’m not “getting it” right now and this is causing me to dwell on the negatives, rather than the positives.
I just need to step back and reexamine what I’ve learned and take the next logical step into the future.
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I’d have to agree with you that the problem lies in your perception, and in the tools that you use to percieve.
The problem with self knowledge is that it is very difficult to get another perspective. You are like a man standing in a feild of flowers. If you were in a plane, looking down, you would see that the pattern of the flowers is your name written in the feild, but you can’t see that because you are standing among the flowers yourself.
That is not to say that your goal is impossible or even impractical. It just means that the more you know of yourself, the more difficult it will become to find out more, especially as your growing perspective invalidates previously held truths.
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But this is the point! As I perceive more of myself, those “previously held truths” would naturally be dropped in favor of new ones.
One adage I’ve found to be true is “Nothing is forever, especially truth.” You may be familiar with the saying “Change is the only universal constant.” This is the same philosophy.
And I get what you’re saying about the field of flowers. It’s a good analogy, too.
Self-examination and self-honesty are the two hardest things anyone can do.
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