Postby summerrain » Tue Nov 24, 2020 2:52 pm
Hi Warissem,
Here are my answers. I'm afraid some of them are not very good because I don't know what they are.
1) Is there a separate entity 'self', 'me' 'I', at all, anywhere, in any way, shape or form? Was there ever? There is no separate self anywhere. There never was. We were born as awareness and we existed prior to birth as awareness.
2) Explain in detail what the illusion of separate self is, when it starts and how it works from your own experience. Describe it fully as you see it now. The separate self is an idea that I was taught to buy into by the world – that it is a coherent and separate entity that has agency, a life, and a history. It starts at birth when a baby is given a name and is raised by parents who tell the child the story of being a person. The child starts to believe that it has a name and a life story. It is told it can think and learn to do things and to make things happen in the world. It goes to school where it is taught to compete against other children making it seem that he/she is a separate entity from all the others. The child grows up being fed ideas reinforcing the story that it is a separate self – that it has agency; that it is up to them to fail or to succeed; that it has duties and obligations and responsibilities; that it can be happy if they do this or that. Schools, institutions, and systems reward people who tow the line in terms of thinking and behaving by emphasizing the notion of the individual and how it can feel ‘secure’, ‘happy’, ‘fulfilled’, ‘satisfied’ if they choose behaviours or products that appear to minimise ‘fear’ or the threat of something distasteful (e.g. insurance, working up the corporate ladder, buying the latest new consumer item). The media and government drum up more fear so people think they need to protect themselves from the world that is out there and from other people and from not having enough. People use language that reinforces a separate self and a narrative self. Language and communication require labels. Some languages are worse than others with a preponderance of nouns, like English. A separate self can acquire, own and have nouns (things) and act upon nouns. Western society emphasizes the usefulness of the mind and the importance of using the mind. Education systems are all about using the mind and very little of anything else. We try to solve problems using the mind. The mind gets busy making up stories that aren’t real, continuing to reinforce a separate self. The separate self believes it is responsible and able to live a life that is theirs and so keeps trying to do things to that end, reinforcing this belief in its own existence. The separate self believes that unless certain conditions are in place, something bad will happen to it, like dying or ending up homeless or hurt so will keep doing things to prevent that from happening. Eg. Look for a job, earn money, minimise physical pain, engage in behaviours that are supposedly ‘healthy’, engage in behaviours that increase pleasure and comfort.
3) How does it feel to see this? What is the difference from before you started this dialogue? Please report from the past few days. I am not really sure there is much of a difference in my day to day experience of living. Before the dialogue I hadn’t thought very much about it and since engaging in the dialogue, I have been thinking more about all this but I am not sure it has changed anything on a feeling level.
4) What was the last bit that pushed you over; made you look? I’m not sure that there was anything that did this. It seems to have been a gradual increase in awareness or understanding.
5) Describe decision, intention, free will, choice and control. What makes things happen? How does it work? What are you responsible for?
There doesn’t appear to be any decisions. The mind thinks it makes decisions but these so called decisions can change at any time and the mind seems to flip flop like a weather vane anyway. They are thoughts that arise and if action is taken to select that thought, then it looks like a decision was made. Intentions are what the mind thinks it wants to do based on past experience. Free will also doesn’t exist if there is no self. There is an illusion that the person can choose the next thing that it wants or that has to happen. There are situations where the person is forced into a choice by outside forces and there are situations where outside forces do not dictate a specific ‘choice’ but instead a choice emerges. Free will seems to be an idea that we can make choices around the parameters that life presents us, even if an external force is dictating a certain direction. However, the free will aspect is more about mistaking that the choices that emerge is the human making these choices. There seems to be no choice either or control. If there is no self, these things cannot exist. Control seems to be when the mind becomes dominant and it keeps thinking it needs things to be a certain way. I don’t know what makes things happen – maybe it’s just repeating learned behaviour. Actions happen in response to what has happened previously. What those actions are seems to be based on learned patterns of what works and what doesn’t work to minimise suffering. If there is no self, I’m not responsible for anything.
Don't give short answers. Elaborate on each of the concepts listed above and give examples from experience.
6) Anything to add? I don't think so.
Lisa
