When we go beyond “self to self”. Philosophical reflections on consciousness, alienation, contradiction, freedom, and faith.

Writer: A. Sakher Salem Al-Mahareeq

I always ask myself: Who am I? Not as a passing question to which I search for an answer, but rather as a question that haunts me whenever I think I am getting closer to understanding myself. Who am I behind the name I have, the image others see me with, and the roles I used to play? Who speaks inside me when I say: “I”? Is it my real voice, or the echo of other voices that have settled deep within me until I am unable to distinguish between them and my own voice?

“Man” is not only the being who lives, but rather the being who wonders about the meaning of his life, and is not satisfied with being, but wants to know what it means to be. He is the only being who can stand before himself as if he were standing before a stranger, and look at his life as if it were the life of another person, and ask, in the midst of everything he knows about the world: Who is “my ego”? Who speaks inside me when I say: “I”?

Perhaps the first tragedy of human existence does not lie in our ignorance of the world, but rather in our belief that we know ourselves. We memorize our names, know the features of our faces, and tell the stories of our childhood, and then we confuse having a biography with possessing the true self. However, a person's knowledge of what happened to him does not necessarily mean that he knows who he became, just as his ability to describe his feelings does not mean that he has reached their roots. A person may explain himself for a long time without understanding them, and speak eloquently about his depths, while remaining unable to enter them.

And here the journey begins; Not from the world to man, but from man to the hidden distance that separates him from himself.

Awareness and alienation: Do we live as ourselves or perform our roles?

A person is born without choosing his name, his environment, or the first values ​​that shape his consciousness, and then he goes through life carrying ideas and desires that he may think come from deep within him, while they are a reflection of the expectations of others. He seeks success in order to feel his worth, seeks acceptance in order to be reassured of his existence, and may give up parts of his reality in order to gain love and recognition.

But, when does influence by others turn into alienation from oneself? When does the image we create of ourselves become more present than our reality?

Here the importance of the Socratic question that philosophy revolves around becomes clear: How can a person know himself without examining his thoughts and beliefs? Wisdom does not begin with having the answers, but with the courage to question them. The deeper question is not: What do I want? Rather: Where did my desires come from? Do I choose what I really want, or do I want what I have learned makes me acceptable in the eyes of others?

The most dangerous form of “alienation” is for a person not to feel like a stranger to himself, but rather to become accustomed to his alienation until he thinks it is his identity. Then he may live a successful life in the eyes of everyone, while being unable to answer one question in the moment of silence: Is this life really like me?

Self-contradiction: when the self becomes the battlefield

Jean-Paul Sartre believes that “existence precedes essence,” indicating that man is not reduced to a fixed definition, but rather participates in shaping himself through his choices and actions. However, “freedom” does not mean the absence of restrictions, but rather it means realizing what we can change, and taking responsibility for our choices within the limits of our reality.

But why do we sometimes know what to do, and then do the opposite? Why do we demand honesty from others, while we avoid facing a truth that hurts us inside?

In my previous article, “Self-Contradiction: When Your Greatest Battle Is With Yourself,” published in Ufoq News on September 21, 2026, I discussed this paradox that a person experiences between his desire for freedom, his fear of its consequences, and his longing for change and his attachment to what he is accustomed to. Man is not fixed ideas, but rather an arena in which desires, fears, values, and experiences conflict.

Nietzsche, through his project to re-evaluate values, may invite us to doubt some of the axioms by which we live. Is what we call wisdom really wisdom, or is it fear dressed as reason? Is what we call humility a virtue, or is it an inability to demand our rights?

However, contradiction is not a defect that should be completely erased, but rather a fact that should be understood and refined; Fear may protect us, but it becomes a prison when it confiscates our freedom. Anger may be a rejection of injustice, but it becomes destructive when it blinds us to the truth.

The real battle is not for a person to conquer himself, but rather to understand it without surrendering to it. How can he overcome his weakness if he denies it? How can he change if he makes his mistakes the final definition of his identity?

Maturity does not lie in achieving perfection or being free from our contradictions, but rather in having sufficient awareness to understand them and distinguish between what should be accepted and what deserves to be changed. Victory over the self is not its destruction, but rather its liberation from everything that prevents its advancement. From this standpoint, I was inspired by an exceptional mentality that I knew of a saying that left a profound impact on my mind in building the self: “I am the wishes, and the wishes are me.” A phrase that required a deep contemplation from me, a great phrase that sums up the relationship between a person and what he aspires to. Wishes are not just dreams that we wait for to come true, but rather an extension of our will, a reflection of our awareness, and an image of what we aspire to become. We do not wait for our wishes to make us, but rather we contribute to formulating them and ourselves through them, through our decisions, our efforts, and our ability to change. The goals we achieve are affected by what we choose for ourselves, the effort we make, and the extent of our courage to transcend what limits us. Thus, we are not merely passers-by on the path of our aspirations, but rather partners in shaping them and shaping ourselves with them. Between what we are and what we aspire to be, the space of will expands, and change begins, through our actions alone.

Accordingly; True victory over oneself is not to fight it, but rather to reconcile with it enough to change it, and love it enough not to give up on developing it. Isolation may be a space in which a person is alone with his thoughts, reconsiders his convictions, and confronts his contradictions away from the noise of social expectations. Thus, it becomes the beginning of the path to self-discovery, reshaping it, and realizing its potential. Perhaps this is the truth of the exceptional minds that chose to withdraw from the hustle and bustle of the world, not to escape from it, but rather to be preoccupied with what is deeper than its noise. She chose to make her mark instead of dissolving in the voices of others, and to leave a mark that time cannot erase, as if she realized that immortality is not created by frequent appearances, but rather by the depth of what we leave behind.

From self-knowledge to self-discipline: What do we do with our truth?

The question of the self was not limited to Western philosophy; Ibn Miskawayh saw in his book Tahtheeb Al-Akhlaq that dispositions can be refined through practice, and Al-Ghazali made holding oneself accountable a gateway to reforming them. Here, self-knowledge moves from mere contemplation to moral responsibility.

What is the value of a person knowing his faults if he uses his knowledge to justify them? What is the point of realizing the reasons for his weakness if he does not try to break free from his authority?

Self-knowledge is not complete by describing what is within us, but rather by what we do in light of what we have known. The person who discovers that his need for the admiration of others exhausts him, and then continues to depend his value on their looks, has not been liberated from his alienation; He just became more aware of it.

Hence, holding oneself accountable should not turn into a constant flogging of oneself, but rather into a conscious practice that combines acknowledgment of error and the possibility of correction. We are not required to be “perfect,” but rather to be “honest” enough to admit our deficiency, and courageous enough to work to overcome it.

Self and faith: Is knowledge enough without purpose?

But can a person achieve his true self through reason alone? Or does knowing oneself also require a moral and spiritual horizon that gives it meaning that goes beyond desires and interests?

God Almighty says: “And about yourselves, will you not then consider?” (Al-Dhariyat: 21), and He directs us by saying: “Indeed, he who purifies it has succeeded, and he who tramples it on has failed” (Al-Shams: 9-10). Here, the soul is no longer just an object of knowledge, but rather a trust that requires purification, and distinguishing between desire and contentment, and between what we desire and what we should strive for.

Faith does not eliminate self-accountability, but rather gives it a moral dimension. It is not required for a person to know his desires and then follow them all, but rather to understand and weigh them, and to realize that freedom is accompanied by responsibility, and that a person’s value is not reduced to his success or social status.

Here, Al-Ghazali’s moral thought meets the meaning of self-purification in the Holy Qur’an: both of them open the way from knowing the self to reforming it. The deepest awareness is not only to see what is within us, but also to know what is worth developing in us, and what we should free ourselves from its authority.

When we transcend the self to the self: will we ever arrive?

The question from which the journey began remains: Can we reach ourselves once and for all, or are we doomed to search for it as long as we live?

Perhaps the question is based on the assumption that the self is a fixed reality waiting for us to discover it, while the human being is a being that changes as his experiences, knowledge, and relationships change. What we think about ourselves today may be reconsidered tomorrow, what we think is weakness may become a source of maturity, and what we see as an end may turn into the beginning of a new understanding.

We do not return to ourselves as a traveler returns to a place that has not changed, but rather as he returns to a place he knows, and he himself has changed. We carry our past, but we are not reduced to it; We acknowledge our wounds, but we do not have to make them an eternal destiny; We review our beliefs, not because change is a betrayal of the past, but because adhering to the truth may require going beyond what we thought was true.

Perhaps the tragedy is not that a person does not know himself, but rather that he believes that he knows himself, so he stops searching. Perhaps freedom does not lie in having a final definition of oneself, but rather in not allowing any definition to become a restriction that prevents us from maturing.

The journey from “self to self” is not only a transition from “ignorance” to “knowledge,” but rather a transition from living without accountability to living with awareness, from attachment to the image to confronting the truth, and from surrendering to what we are to taking responsibility for what we can become.

Perhaps the greatest paradox of existence, dear reader, is that we begin our lives thinking we know ourselves. The human being is a question whose answer never ends. Then, as we spend many years, we discover that what we were is not necessarily what we are, and that what we want is not always what we need, and that what we defend as our truth may sometimes be an old fear that has learned how to speak the language of certainty.

We go out into the world in search of recognition, we chase success, love, and status, and we build images of our accomplishments that we hope give us a sense of worth. But we discover, sooner or later, that what comes from the outside alone cannot answer the question that resides within: Am I living the life I believe in, or the life I have learned to lead?

Then we understand that going beyond “self to self” is not an escape from the world, but rather restoring the connection between what we live and what we believe, between what we say and what we do, and between the person we show to others, and the person we can face when we are silent.

A person does not reach himself when he knows everything about it, but rather when he learns to live honestly before it, to confront his contradictions without hating himself, to correct his faults without denying his humanity, and to believe in the purpose of his existence without abandoning his responsibility to seek it.

Perhaps the “self” is not a reality that we find at the end of the road, but rather a relationship that we rebuild with ourselves at every stage of life. The more our awareness expands, the more we discover that some of the answers that once reassured us are no longer enough for us, and that some of the questions that we were afraid to face were the beginning of our transformation.

Thus, when we move beyond “self to self,” we do not reach the end of the journey, but rather we learn how to continue it without escaping our truth, how to love ourselves without sanctifying its faults, and how to change it without losing our humanity.

Knowing oneself is not an attainment of the final truth, but rather a continuous exposure to its possibilities. The more we become aware of who we are, the more we realize that we are not just a product of who we were, but rather an open project for what we can become. I am the security for myself when the world fails me, and I am the wishes for it when the boundaries of reality narrow. I am the self that turns to itself to understand it, and leaves its familiarity to transcend it, and in the space between what “I” am and what I aspire to be, I find myself not only discovering myself, but also recreating it. It is as if a person is not born once, but is born again whenever he has the courage to reconsider himself and the freedom to choose what he deserves to become.

In conclusion, self-awareness, no matter how deep it is, should not turn into barricades of arrogance, an illusion of absolute sufficiency, or a pathological isolation that excludes others in the name of independence. Maturity does not mean dispensing with others, but rather choosing the right person who sincerely inspires us and feels what we feel and our value to him. Even if a person is able to discover himself in isolation, he remains a social being whose features are shaped in the mirrors of others, and whose horizons expand through dialogue with them. True independence is not isolation from oneself and isolation around it, but rather owning it without deifying it, and being open to the other without dissolving in it. There is no mirror in the world that excludes the presence of your surroundings when looking into it, and there is no person in the world who does not need others. Because he is a social being by nature, as a person’s knowledge of himself is not complete when he thinks that he is everything, nor when he makes others everything, but rather when he realizes that he is a self that exists on its own, not sufficient for anything else, and that his strength is not in dispensing with the world, but rather in the ability to belong to it without losing its originality. I once wrote about the concept of excellence and self-realization: “Try to make yourself an exclamation mark in the midst of all the question marks.” “Those around you” to be different on your journey from self to self.

** An academic and specialist in human resources development, institution building, and sustainable development issues