Dear Rali,
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 illusion of separate self is projected by the language of I, me, mine—language which requires a subject and an object.
The separate self seems to have agency or control. Someone tells me to raise my hand; I raise my hand.
The I stakes its claim on the flow of Life like drawing a line in water.
When my granddaughter was 6 or 8 months old (in 2001), I held her in front of a mirrored wall in her living room and said, “Look there. There’s Chloe!” At the same time, I was thinking, “So this is how selfing begins.” (That and many other ways.) Our parents project a self on us, and eventually we believe it.
People call me Cheryl, so I assume there’s a Cheryl here. (Where is here?) Here, inside this skin, the skin being the boundary between me and everything else. They say that babies are one with their mothers, one with the world around them, but slowly, the separation of me and other is inculcated.
At first, children refer to themselves as their name—in the third person. “Cheryl wants….” Later, it becomes “I want….”
Ah, the miracle of the word “No,” when small children begin to exert their will. No is a powerful word, a word of resistance to what is.
For much of my adult life, I assumed my self, “I”, was a very particular collection of habits and patterns. “I am a person who…” likes the color blue, had asthma as a child, lives in Vermont, etcetera, etcetera. I believed that “my” personal collection of patterns differentiated me from the other 6 or 7 billion people on the planet and defined “me.” (Ha!)
Eventually I met the “Who am I?” question, and, although I didn’t particularly like the question, I began to rethink those answers of “I am a person who….”
As question #5 intimates, the self coalesces around decision, intention, choice, free will, and control. The self seems to have agency. Only by looking closely, deeply does the assumed self evaporate. Oh. The self is only a thought?
Where does the I reside in the body? If I say, “I. I. I,” where do I feel it?
“I” used to feel like it was in the body, in the head. Now, I can’t find it.
For everyday purposes, I still use the words I, me, mine.
Does the illusion of separate self begin with thought? I, me, mine.
When the mind is quiet, there seems to be no selfing. No past, no future. No ego-building.
As I mentioned above, the self begins with language, which requires a subject and an object. Since at least half of my thinking is in words, yes, the self begins with thought.
love,
cheryl
