Unconscious

Have you ever met someone that habitually, let's say, pulses their foot up an down or sniffs or scratches in some repeated way, unaware that they are doing it? Surely you've met someone, or heard an interview with someone on the radio, that had an unconscious habit of speech where they overused a certain word or phrase and seemed unable to notice that they were doing it. Repeatedly using the word "like" or "you know" are a couple of common examples that come to mind. Of course I've eventually seen (or had pointed out to me) many unconscious habits of my own which became glaringly obvious once they were brought to light.

So how about this? Have you ever met someone who unconsciously created a whole identity for themselves? Who, over a lifetime of reacting to their environment, believing and obeying those thoughts and emotions that appeared with the most regularity or intensity, became identified with these patterns and the behaviors which resulted (and the story resulting from that behavior)? Have you ever met someone who identified so strongly with this aggregation of thoughts, habits, or tendencies which have accumulated over time, and the story associated with them, that they could not with any clarity even conceive of any other possibility? So locked into this identity that everything perceived and experienced is passed through this filter as it were. Where everything is processed as to how it relates to this identity which has, by some miracle, become the 'subject' to which all else appears as 'object' or 'other'.

Maybe a better question would be; Have you ever met anyone who didn't do this?