Finding the Self

I have frequently in my past felt that I have "lost myself". Hence my goal has been to *not* lose my Self, rather to hold onto my Self which I felt so often had to be subsumed and hidden...and lost.

I realize I repeat myself.

However, I've just been reading Harpers Magazine (August 2010, p. 18) and there is an author speaking about Kafka. He's saying how once Kafka became ill, nothing would come between him and his writing....that Kafka "understood that travel, sex, and books are paths that lead nowhere except to the loss of the self, and yet they must be followed and the self must be lost, in order to find it again, or to find something, whatever it may be--a book, an expression, a misplaced object--in order to find anything at all, a method, perhaps, and, with a bit of luck, the new, which has been there all along."

This concept that there is value in losing yourself, that perhaps the goal is not to hold to your Self at all costs....is a new idea to me.

Perhaps this is a difference in concept between inner and outer self, as well as self and Self. And if we call Self the essence of a person, well that doesn't generally change.