Nothing destroys a psyche like the absence of an audience.
A psyche will even reshape itself to receive feedback from an audience otherwise blind to it. It is the parent’s listening or deafness that cultivates and conditions the self-identity and inner voice of the child. In the referenceless void of total isolation, no relative identity can exist, and a psyche will implode.
Those empty of self: those lost souls adrift and alone in life, can find healing and wholeness in connecting to others, in serving others. In the radical clarity of the present, neither self nor other apply. And yet, it is that the life within, this life-form and all others, flows seamlessly through one vast ocean of interconnected ecology. If disconnection that denies or resists the unity of life is the violence that destroys psyches, well-being is then truly in the sharing of being, the singing together of many lives and voices, and the honouring of Oneness.
Just life, without identity, is what I am, and what connects me to all other forms of life. The personal self is only a half-truth, based upon the phenomenal and relative outer. Selfless service fills the empty self with the unity of life.
Who am I? Not even the smiling face of this blissful shell is mine.