What’s in a name?
Why now?
I have been thinking about changing my name for a long time, on the time scale of a decade. But until somewhat recently (maybe 3–4 weeks ago?), I hadn’t found a name I truly loved. I had a few other names that I liked and it seemed like the meanings felt right, but they either didn’t have the right sound that I wanted, or didn’t come across as “something that’s already a name”, which I did want for simplicity of adoption by others.
I feel Maya fits and I love it.
Why Maya?
So Alan Watts — he was a philosophy professor (or as he called himself, philosophical entertainer) who was kind of one of the big names that popularized the combination or eastern and western philosophies of life.
I have been listening to recordings of his lectures a lot recently. I feel I get a lot of value from listening to them, and they’re also funny so I like them. He basically talks through various philosophical ideas and how they might be applied to your life, but the point isn’t really to educate you in an book-smart way — it’s to get you thinking.
And I’ve recently listened to an entire series of lectures on dissolving the fake barrier between self and other, or inside self and outside self. It’s pretty interesting to me and I think it’s something I believe — that there’s no true separation between inside and outside. Can’t have one without the other. It’s something I believed before the lecture series, on a mental level. That’s why I was interested in the series: to get more thoughts about that.
So, in hinduism & buddhism there is a concept, called Maya, which is described somewhat as like, the great illusion that each individual has that they are separate from the whole (ie: the universe). And there’s a paired concept, called, Lila that is cosmic play. And the two terms kind of interact with each other in a way. The wikipedia article describes it pretty well in a sentence, so I’m going to copy/paste it:
…[T]he whole universe consists of a cosmic Self playing hide-and-seek (Lila); hiding from itself (Maya) by becoming all the living and non-living things in the universe and forgetting what it really is — the upshot being that we are all IT in disguise.
I think both these thing are really fundamental to how I have historically and do presently view myself. Duality and play are something I feel I see in almost everything, no matter how morbid or basic. Although, I don’t always embody that, because even even individuals have internal dualities/there is no singularity besides maybe the universe itself (? haven’t really thought this last statement through).
I think this represents a kind of always-in-flux which is something that I do experience as a person, even sometimes from moment to moment. It’s something I’m more than ok with. Even though I sense I am always changing or shifting as a person, it feels right and true somehow. That feels very comfortable for me, and it’s something I occasionally come back to when I’m feeling upset over something I lost that I was attached to — to remind myself that everything is always in flux, and that’s great.
