Questioning C.S Lewis

[Omninescience]

Hello, I am Omninscience, I come from distant lands and wonder the world with a floating mind that I ride on. I started reading a book by C.S Lewis called, "Problems of Pain" and I'm having trouble understanding a few sentence or paragraphs here and there, but I'll start with the first one for today. I also hope this can be my thread to come back to everytime I have a question and hoping you people can answer.

"There is no reason to suppose that self-consciousness, the recognition of a creature by it self as a 'self', can exist except in contrast with an 'other', a something which is not the self. It is against an environment and preferably a social environment, an environment of other selves, that the awareness of Myself stands out. This would raise a difficulty about the consciousness of God if we were mere theists: being Christians, we learn from the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity that something analogous to 'society' exist within the Divine being from all eternity - that God is Love, not merely in the sense of being the Platonic form of love, but because, within Him, the concrete reciprocities of love exist before all worlds and are thence derived to the creatures."

if anyone can, put into words commenting along side each sentence of the quote.

many thanks to anyone who can answer well help me move on and continue reading the book, cause I don't continue unless I understand every written word before I move to the next point.

[Robert]

[sunbear]

"There is no reason to suppose that self-consciousness, the recognition of a creature by it self as a 'self', can exist except in contrast with an 'other', a something which is not the self."
Paraphrase: The only way you can define who you are is by seeing someone else and saying, "I am not them". If there are no boundaries to be seen, then you can't really orient yourself.

It is against an environment and preferably a social environment, an environment of other selves, that the awareness of Myself stands out.
Paraphrase: Same as above, more elaboration.

This would raise a difficulty about the consciousness of God if we were mere theists:...
Paraphrase: If God were a single entity how could he, as a personality, know or define himself without other personalities, how could he exist and acknowledge his existence while being the only supreme person?

...being Christians, we learn from the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity that something analogous to 'society' exist within the Divine being from all eternity - that God is Love, not merely in the sense of being the Platonic form of love, but because, within Him, the concrete reciprocities of love exist before all worlds and are thence derived to the creatures."
Paraphrase: However, since God exists not as a single personality, but as a Trinity, he is able to not only define himself, but to exhibit love within his own personalities. Because the Trinity has 3 selves in its one-ness it is able to exhibit love in a relational sense. If God was a single personality ONLY, then he could only ever represent the archtype of love by loving others. As is, the Trinity represents the archtype of love in the inward relationship prior to any created things or selves.