Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth. - Alan Watts
Who is Your Self?
We often see our Self, as an autonomous, independent entity, separate from others and the environment (illusion of separation)
Levels of Magnification
Who is Your Self? You, The Universe? Depends on your perspective What is conflict at one level of magnification, is harmony at another level Space and bodies in the space are two aspects of the same continuum, you cannot get one without the other
pic fromSeeing Like a Superorganism - by Richard D. Bartlett
[Cosmic Eye Video]()
From Book - Thinking in Systems - Donella Meadows
You can see some things through the lens of the human eye, other things through the lens of a microscope, others through the lens of a telescope, and still others through the lens of systems theory. Everything seen through each kind of lens is actually there. Each way of seeing allows our knowledge of the wondrous world in which we live to become a little more complete.
Different Views
Self As Consciousness
”You are consciousness, awareness, the observer of your mind.”
- Your mind is simply a mix of all the conditioning that you’ve received since birth and memories that you accumulated. It thinks thoughts that it already heard somewhere else (your thoughts are not yours). If you were born somewhere else you’d have different thoughts, a totally different mind. So that cannot be you.
- The real you is the awareness behind it. Consciousness.
Self as interconnected
- Self as a separate thing is a misnomer
”What am I without the Sun? Without the electromagnetic field? Without the Higgs boson? Without plants, algae, biosphere, or ozone layer? I don’t exist. Me as a separate thing is actually a misnomer. It doesn’t even exist.” — Daniel Schmachtenberger
Self as dynamic process
Self as a fluid, everchanging process
“I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process – an integral function of the universe.” – Buckminster Fuller
You can shape your self
Self as Empty - Anatta
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However we define ourselves, our definition is not going to ALWAYS hold true
- If it is not always true, we cannot say it to be true
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Emptiness of Self doesn't mean there's an erasure of personality
- Are we moving to normalcy and conformity?
- Emptiness means we are free to express our individuality, there's no limit or boundary the self is confined to
Talks - Metta and Emptiness - Rob Burbea and Catherine McGee
Collection of Selves
Self as an Emerging Dividual
The self is a “dividual”, as described by Deleuze, a transpersonal self. I am not the voice in my head, I am all that arises; you create me as I create you, we are not sealed containers, we are often more transparent to one another and controlled by one another than we are to/by ourselves. We co-emerge, we are just bodies and fictional stories; consciousness is transformable and all stories can be developed. ” Hanzi Freinacht
Community as part of the Self
“I am because I party.” Convivo ergo sum.
We have to think about community as a different category altogether. It’s not individuals coming together and connecting, and it’s not a crowd. Community to me means simply the actual little system in which you are situated, sometimes in your office, sometimes at home with your furniture and your food and your cat, sometimes talking in the hall with the people in 14-B. In each case your self is a little different, and your true self is your actual self, just as it is in each situation, a self among, not a self apart.
Book - We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy & the World’s Getting Worse - James Hillman
Provocative Quotes
”If the voice in your head is you, who’s the one listening to it?” — Byron Katie
”The Aubrey is always worrying about something. The Aubrey is an identity construct. It’s not a real thing. The body is real, the unborn and undying consciousness that animates the Aubrey is a real thing. But the Aubrey is just an idea, reinforced by the environment that affirms that idea.” Aubrey Marcus
Resources:
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Inspired by: Alan Watts | Osho | Anthony DeMello Related: Enlightenment | Ego