Hi Perry,
Hope you are well.
I'm still ill – thanks for your concern.
Perhaps I’m understanding this difference between ‘sense of self’ and identification with ‘sense of self’.
Perhaps, yes ... perhaps you can be more definite? :-)
LOL!
Okay I’ll have a go at explaining how I see it.
There is being happening here, experience happening, awareness happening. There are memories, patterns, a life. It has a particular shape and is distinct, unique. ‘I’ am here, awareness is here, memories are particular to here and there is a seeming continuity of ‘here-ing’. This gives a sense of being and distinctness about here. This doesn’t mean that here is anything more than a ‘here-ness’ but it does give rise to a sense of unique ‘hereness’. Here is not somewhere else, someone else.
Identification with self is making something else out of this ‘being/hereness’. It is turning process into a noun. It is giving permanency, unchanging solidity to the experience of changing ‘hereness’. It then sets up a point, as it were, to which to refer back to. A place to which experience is referred, or, through which it is filtered. For example; I played a song I’d written to a friend the other day. I made a judgement about what I think he thought about the song, whether he liked it or not. From certain scant signs I judged that he didn’t think that much of it. But, this was then filtered through a story , one that has been told many times, that I can’t write songs, that I can’t sing, that I’m crap at music and why don’t I just give up with it! This story was probably what motivated me to judging that he didn’t like the song in the first place. There was really no evidence for any of this just a filtering through an existing structure, a pattern which refers back to a story. These habit pattern and energies are where the self is identified, where it clings to. 'I' believes these stories.
In a more general way, identification just happens – it just goes on all the time. ‘I’, ‘mine’ or not ‘I’, ‘not mine’ with many things it encounters. In reality I understand that none of it is mine, or at least I understand it on some level. Possessions are not mine, not the body, not the thoughts even. ‘I’ is the identification process.
Perhaps the problem is with expectations.
Is there a problem? You seem to be doing fine ... it is a funny old process, looking at things that are totally obvious and familiar, but looking in a new way, asking questions that one would never normally ask ... it is almost impossible not to have any expectations but of course, doing anything genuinely new, one's expectations can ONLY be wrong! I wouldn't worry about it...
Yes, always expect to have expectations. I guess there is just a part of this process that is just me trying to second guess the future. However, perhaps there is a genuine question that in some way knowing what ‘the gate’ experience might entail, would help me to work out if I’m going in the right direction. But anyway I’m happy at the moment to pass over this .
So how about this: do you choose, do you will, do you control your life? What, if anything do "you" control? What is the "you" that does the controlling?
This is what happened when I tried to decide on a book from the pile on the floor:
I look at the books. Most of them I’ve read or at least browsed. I know something about most of them. My eye wanders over titles - it gets attracted by a title - remembers what it know about it and that it was a little bored by the ideas inside. It goes to another title, Dhante’s Divine Comedy. It was interested by it but didn’t like all the hell fire and damnation sense – but it thinks it wants to try it again but remembers it has already tried to get through it 3 times before – abandons the idea. There seems to be attraction going on (what the title of the book conjures up, even the look of the spine). There is memory going on. There is an assessment of level of interest and potential for satisfaction. Sees another book it hasn’t read for a while, William Stafford - slim volume of poems - likes the fact that its small – can’t quite remember it – wonders if it might be interested in reading it to see if there are poems that might seem more interesting now that I haven’t read it for a while – some kind of wisdom in it that is in line with my current way of thinking. All of these responses just arise. I haven’t DONE any of them. They happen, as it were, before I think them. ‘Full Catastrophe Living’, a positive response to the title and colour of the spine – there is a thought, “should read this as it is borrowed and will have to go back, so read before then”. Mind sort of runs through what it knows about the book – brings up something like “one of my wife’s books - Jon Kabat-Zinn -his name irritates me - is this NVC - so-and-so is into NVC - don’t have a good response to so-and-so”. But interested to know what’s inside, any useful knowledge - but then, too big - then NO – dismissed as a choice to read. Eye wanders around pile again.
Again, this process happens almost without thinking about it.
No I don’t decide. Deciding does happen but through a process of its own.
No I don’t choose, choosing happens. I can’t, say, pick a book in my head and the hand just goes to that one (though it might happen that I choose a book at, the same time as saying this in my head - but it would sort of be a coincidence). I can’t just move my hand by saying move my hand or open and close my eyes just by saying this. Again this might be possible but only under certain conditions. I say “get up and run up the street” but nothing happens. The voice in my head doesn’t control anything (just as well!). Processes come about, largely unconscious it seems. Reasonable, quite often, but not willed by anything. There may be such a thing as will but it is not the voice in my head, not thought.
Okay, very tired now , so will post this and go to bed.
Best Wishes,
Mark
