Self manifests as a range from love/kindness/generosity to hatred/violence/greed. I don’t think we can know, with any kind of certainty, what aspects of self will ultimately ‘win out.’ Either way, the belief that we are a fixed enduring separate self surrounded by a world of not-self is crazy making.
Sometimes it’s easy to see when the self is calling the shots, directing the organism. Someone insults you, you feel hurt/angry, and seek some form of revenge, tit for tat.
Other times it’s really quite hard to see the self, it’s a master at hiding from the conscious mind. Your lowest-level belief system is a good example, the things you take to be self evidently true.
For there to be freedom from the self, the self must be seen in all its guises.
???
Isn’t the self-image present whenever the thinking process projects a ‘thinker’ apart from itself? This thinker is what acts, feels to be ‘me’.
Would you say that whenever there’s the feeling of a psychological subject (an I) acting upon (observing, thinking about, touching) an object (a not-me, thought, image, material/biological entity) the self is present? Is the feeling of there being an observer who is separate from the observed the litmus test for the presence of self? Is that separate observer always the self?
I think what I’m trying to do is enable the proprioception Bohm spoke of, find a simple and
sure way to detect the presence of the psychological self.
Yes that is I think was his point. The psychological duality of a ‘me’ as observer apart from what is being observed is false. Same with the ‘thinker’ and the ‘experiencer’.
It might be if the conditioned brain could not manipulate feelings to sustain its illusions.
You’re asking if the conditioned brain has a lie-detector. Why would it? The true believer can believe anything but the fact that it is a liar.
Yes, thought lies. Especially when it’s afraid of losing control, power, security. The litmus test is not error-proof. That might be true for any self-detecting litmus test.
This seems to me a quest by the self. Desire’ to become? Can there be awareness of desire without judging it?
Self definitely seems to be involved in the Proprioception Quest. But maybe that’s not all there is to it, maybe quests are not always (fully) self-driven, rather by Intelligence or the Universe or God. Skeptic me maintains ‘clinical distance’ to possibilities like that, but I am somewhat open to them.
More consequential for me: Can there be awareness of desire without acting on it.
Can there be awareness without choosing, acting, reacting, judging…that as I see it is ‘not minding what happens’….that is ‘freedom from the known’.
Is freedom from the known freedom from the self?
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The ‘self’ is the ‘’bundle’ of memories, experiences,etc…the past, the ‘known’?
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Can there be awareness of desire without acting on it. Which includes : not being in conflict with the desire, not fighting against it.
Neither scratching the itch nor struggling not to scratch it.
You know how hoomans have invented hacks to fix various annoying things about being us:
Use this simple hack to lose weight without effort!
Do this to rewire your brain and be happy!
Read further and you will learn The Secret for getting everything you ever desired!
Or:
Unfulfilled desires getting you down? Here’s a hack for you: Eliminate desire! Alls you have to do issssssssssssssssssssssss: Neither scratch the itch nor struggle not to scratch it!
(What I’m getting at: To what extent are unnatural-feeling and often counterintuitive activities, like inquiry, listening, mindfulness, choiceless awareness, meditation, egocide, desire-ocide clever hacks to fix things about being hooman that annoy us? And if they are hacks, even if they work, do they move us away from our hooman nature?)
Sorry @rickScott before I can get into your question about lifehacks, my flabbergasted brain just needs to get one thing straight :
Are you saying that :
Neither scratching the itch nor struggle not to scratch it is a simple life hack that we can easily choose to set in motion?
nb. “awareness of desire without acting on it” = “neither scratch nor struggle not to scratch”
I think it’s a hard hack for most people, a trick that’s difficult to pull off.
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Making the effort to fix things that annoy us, is usual human nature (motive/fear/desire)
Just the usual confusion, of me against what is.
If me against what is, is seen as confused and conflictual (aka damaging, dangerous, silly and self perpetuating) we obviously do not try to to fight against it.
Yes, it is a confusion based on my limited self obsessed viewpoint. Struggling against the self is a symptom of confusion. It shows that I have really not understood the concept.
I just want to say (again?) that talking about these things, if we are only focussed on the ideas themselves rather than our discriminating experience itself, is only an act of accumulation or confirmation.
Accumulation (even of pure wisdom) is the reinforcement of self/known.
Is heavy Karma bro!
nb. “awareness of desire without acting on it” = “neither scratch nor struggle not to scratch” = psychological death/freedom from the self
If 99.9% of humans identify as a self, suffer, and live in prison cells of their own making, is that our natural state of being, is it ‘human nature?’ If it is (as I shall assume for the sake of argument), then attempting to be free from self, suffering, and prison goes against nature. And isn’t that what we’re doing here, isn’t it our true (if unconscious) goal: to be free? To quote zee Jiddu: “My purpose is to make men unconditionally free.”
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Itch is real, self is not. Scratching itch is normal animal behavior. Awareness of desire, thought, feeling is a human possibility. Desire for spiritual enlightenment is no different than desire for riches, fame, etc.