What to listen to in oneself

[Authors note: The slightly constipated language of this is post is intentional and is meant to mimic the language of my betters. Specifically the platonic style still apparently favoured by some universities. I choose to use the first person singular instead of plural to individualise the style. Ho ho]

There are words the hover around the edges of my mind. Half defined or undefined, they linger there, surfacing every now and again in an article or podcast.

Two of these words arose this week as I was contemplating a way to approach this topic:

Exegesis: 1. critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially of scripture.
Semiotics: 1. the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation.

So let us examine and interpret this phrase:
"what to listen to in oneself"
First I note the lack of punctuation. Is this a question? Is it a phrase picked out of a text? Possibly "One will learn what to listen to in oneself as one becomes still," or some such sagacity. Is it something written in haste? Something trivial or something trivialised?
 
What about it's context. On social networks everything is contextual and this phrase was indeed passed to me on a social network, in response to my request for subjects for this blog.

So it is the potential subject of a blog post, it's potential now realised.

I move now to the content of the phrase. It has two parts.
The first "what to listen to" seems at first glance to be simple enough. It is "what" which indicates multiple things that can be enumerated; and "listen" which would seem in the fuller context to indicate things which make a (possibly intelligible) sound or create a resonance. Whether that sound is metaphorical or not is moot for now.

The second part is "in oneself." This is the more immediately difficult part. Without knowledge of the questioner, with false ignorance as it were, I cannot know what they mean by this. Let me assume for now that they are not referring to external sounds that are actuated within the hearing system. This would seem to defeat the inclusion of this clause.
I will also note the use of "oneself." The neutral term means that the questioner is not asking me to examine generics. They did not say "in myself" or "in yourself." They are asking for a treatment that is at least nominally neutral.

So what is "oneself" that contains these things to be listened to? The biological self? Does it include the rumbling and trickling of the bowels? The creak of the neck after too many hours sat typing? Or should I confine myself to the inner dialogue of the one's mental self? Are they talking about isolating different parts of the one's psyche, or about competing drives that the one could either listen to or resist?

Again I come back to context. There is a clear and definite road along which I could carelessly storm with the context inside my mind. And you, my long-suffering reader, could as easily careen down a different path given this phrase. Thus we would not only arrive at different answers but start from different questions.
Without an understanding of the author of the phrase it is difficult to arrive at an acceptable meaning for the phrase.

[Here I need to step outside the narrative and say that I am not going to describe said author to you, which would be required by the process, but I am going offer my best guess at their intent given what I know. Let's pretend I have given you the juicy details and led you down some logical alleyway to the next sentence]

With this knowledge of the author, I can rephrase the question as follows:
"Which aspects of one's drives and motivations, or body and soul if you prefer, should one readily express and which should be managed more carefully or shut down completely."

This is a question to which there is no clear answer. To answer it intellectually is a fool's errand or, given the style of this post, an academic's errand.

Since I am neither an academic nor a student playing at being one, I will quickly and jarringly switch to a mode in which I feel I can answer.

To the self and the myriad selves I say "we are at war with ourselves."
'We', and not 'I', for how could a unitary 'I' have such conflicts.
'War' because I can feel the wounds and I can see the dead selves lying on the road to now.
To the surviving selves I say "there will be no peace until the last of us dies."
'No peace' because I do not seek peace. Peace stinks of stagnation.
'Until the last of us dies' since in the pine box at the end of our road there will be peace.
To the questioner I say "listen to everything inside."
"Listen" because that requires focus. Let the selves speak. Do not silence their voices nor their weapons.
"Everything inside" because the world can be too much with one.
To the reader I say "This writing like a student lark is bloody hard."
"This writing..."
Ah, screw it. I am no good a Gibran either...