There is an inescapable core to the self or perhaps better called the soul. It is like a knot which keeps its essential twistedness no matter how it is deformed; if you try to unravel it your very moves cause it to reform itself somewhere adjacent. It is character and characteristic, what you have to work with and the limitation in everything you do. If gives your your mastering question and dilemma and the inadequate horizon within which you try to answer or overcome them. You can take a holiday from it but you can't escape it, and you wouldn't want to escape it because it defines everything that matters to you. Whatever knowledge you have of it however deeply it has gone only repeats it, including every projection of freedom from it. But if there is such a knot, what exactly is it that is knotted? You don't coincide with it, are always half out of it, and that's exactly why it is a knot.