What on earth are you babbling about when you say, “my infinite nature?!”

Before wrestling with the concept of an “infinite self,” it seems most appropriate first to say a few things about “infinity,” then to say a few things about “self,” and finally to put them together.

There is a famous story about a scientist giving a lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said:

“What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.”

The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?”

“You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles turtles turtles, all the way down!”

For the purpose of our infinity, we can imagine the turtles going all the way up too. Why not? But we don’t need to imagine any gigantic space turtles for the sake of infinity when almost everyone as a little kid has learned to take delight in the crazy stuff that happens with two mirrors.

When I was a kid, my parents often took part in our little community theater. I remember hanging around the green room, that had mirrors on all the walls. I was amazed by the vast corridor of little Noahs stretching off into the distance on either side of the narrow room.

At the time it seemed plausible to me that somehow I could switch off and actually experience being one of my many mirror selves.

Of course in this picture there are only so many thumbs before they curve away into the mystical depths of the mirror world, but I’m sure your imagination can extend the concept indefinitely.

Not all mirrors give you an accurate reflection.

Some are distorted, so you can hardly even recognize yourself.

With that, I will segue into talking about the self.

Not all of the self is something we like owning up to. One of the most notable things about the human mind seems to be its ability to lie to itself.

There are straight people who just aren’t interested in hooking up with the same sex, but what of outspoken anti-gay crusaders?

Phenomena like GOP party member Larry Craig, a defender of anti-gay legislation getting busted for indecent conduct last month springs instantly to mind.

In research conducted by the American Psychological Association in 1995, penis engorgement was measured while homophobic men were exposed to gay porn and the data was compared to a non-homophobic control group.

The results were a perfect illustration of the mechanism by which people attribute the things they disown about themselves onto the world around them.

And what of the scientist in the 1950’s who exposed the secret sexual messages in the icecubes of this liquor add?

I guess I can kind of see it, if I squint just right, but I really wonder just how hard that man was searching for sex in the ice cubes.

Carl Jung called the disowned portion of the self, “the Shadow.”

People can commonly take the place of a mirror by responding to and returning our facial expressions, adopting our pet sayings, or merely by just naturally possessing qualities that we also possess, even if only acknowledged on a subconscious level.

When interacting with people, the more you are able to discern what is a reflection from what is truly external, the closer you are to being in touch with your true self.

The closer you are to scrubbing the grime off of your mirrors by allowing yourself to re-own the disenfranchised aspects of your personality; that is when you start to touch infinity.