David,
You write, “I followed some of these stories back through the linearity of their unfolding . . .” Can you say more about how you did this “following?” The idea of “tracing” is very important in TSK, and I understand “following” to be like tracing. What matters here is to ‘follow’ experientially, rather than by telling another story. This can be a challenge.
The conclusions you arrive at (for instance, about being a “representational” being) have a very different weight depending on whether they are based on reflection, or are in some sense directly experienced. And that depends on the nature of your ‘following’. Your statement, “I have caught myself . . .” is one clue, but I would like to hear more.
 To you and others: Is the distinction I am trying to make clear? Does it correspond to something in your own experience?
Jack
Hi Jack
One further note; as I tracked the reactive behavior and accompanying stories back through childhood, seeing the linkage of patterns, underlying the stories were emotional tones linked to attitudes such as hope, and fear, anxiety, and expectation, and joy too. I don’t think these ‘attitudes’ were themselves stores so much as perhaps presumptions based on a more basic presumption of ‘I am here’. I don’t think the ‘I am here’ was a story, so much as it just seemed self-evident.
David
Yes, back in Unit 2, TSK Ex. 7 – Body-Mind-Thought Interplay, I described examining my psychological defenses, and experiencing my reactive behaviors ‘now’, and tracing those reactions, which are often tied to stories I tell myself, back to the founding story that I was telling as a child that generated the same reactions. There was a linearity of time in the storylines but they were held in a unifying understanding of what seemed like the whole of my life. That experience of ‘unifying understanding’ was a profound experience for me in the new opening and self-understanding that resulted.
I think my comment about “representational being” can be understood at more than one level: Intellectually as the stories, images, labels, and language we ascribe to experience, and actually experiencing that process as it happens, to whatever degree we are capable of experiencing it at the time.
I understand the danger that my new understanding becomes a new story I tell myself as I objectify it, which is why I love TSK, so I can continue the investigation. (Feed time into time)
David