Hey Robyn,
By the way, I knew the line about slippers was intended for me but missed the reference. Thanks for clarification.
;)
p.s. No problem about the quote function. The questions and answers are clearly delineated. If you want to reformat the final version, fine. If not, also fine.
It's okay with me how it is.
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 that there is some kind of entity corresponding to my name and the words "I", "me", "mine", which exists primarily inside my head behind the eyes. From here, "I" observe experience and exert limited control over certain aspects of behaviour, such as thinking and moving the body.
In my experience, the illusion starts whenever a thought comes up that includes the "I" as content. When asked to look for where any sort of entity is corresponding to this label, my habitual response is to look and feel in to sensations happening in behind and around the eyes and forehead. At some point, I learned to associate these sensations with the existence of an entity called "me". Most sensations in direct experience are seen to have a source of some kind. The visual experience of these characters being typed is seen to be caused by the action of my fingers pressing against different keys on the computer here in front of me. That is to say, this body is seen to have a legitimate effect on the things it comes into contact with that causes other things to happen in the world. The thoughts that are expressed through typing, and the cause of the action of typing itself, are not seen to have a source. I was taught that everything that happens in the world has some sort of cause underlying it. This information was made to seem very important by those who taught it to me, if I was going to be able to make sense of and maintain an acceptable worldview in the society in which I am embedded.
In order to make sense of this discrepancy between what I had learnt and direct experience, I imagined that, just as there are seen to be people, in the form of bodies external to this one, who speak and do things in the world, there was a little person inside my head, whose voice was the source of the thoughts I 'heard' and whose movement caused my body to do things. In lieu of being able to show this entity to other people directly, thoughts of the story about the experience of this character were used as proof or confirmation of "my" existence. "I" was the main character in a mental movie, who watched my life happening from some space inside my brain, and what happened in direct experience was interpreted after the fact as having happened
to "me".
The way this tends to work in my everyday life is that, when a thought about "I" comes up, I look and feel in to sensations in around the eyes and forehead, and wait for something to come up. Any thoughts and feelings that arise in subsequent moments are then taken to be what "I" have to think or say about what's happening, or what "my" feelings are about any given event. This can happen very quickly and almost painlessly, or it can result in an experience of mental struggle and real suffering whenever the thoughts and feelings that come up apparently contradict the thoughts of the narrative already in place about what "I" am supposed to think and feel about this or that sensation. Experience itself then gets reinterpreted based on what "my" opinion or reaction to particular sensations is taken to have been in that moment.
This all happens on its own without "my" actually thinking or doing anything. Much of the pain comes up in trying to undo or edit thoughts that have already come and gone in order to somehow make it as though "I" never 'said' or imagined or felt such things. To other people, it probably looks like I've zoned out for some amount of time, or like I'm having an argument with an invisible person in or around my head. I wouldn't necessarily be able to tell, because at that point I can barely see or feel anything that's happening around me or even much of what's going on with the body.
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.
Relatively unencumbered. Although the days are growing longer, it feels like time has recently begun to speed up. Less time gets spent fighting imaginary battles with myself before seeing happens and direct experience begins to predominate once more.There's a greater sense of lightness and playfulness to the present moment and the enjoyment I get from that makes time seem to go more quickly. It's possible to sit and do nothing, just looking and feeling and breathing without having to protect myself from anything or anyone else. Moments of defensiveness like that still happen for sure, but like I said, seeing happens and they're released. It's like noticing that I'm picking underneath a fingernail or itching a scab and then stopping. I know I'm just hurting myself for no reason other than it feels sort of good and distracts from any feelings of anxiety that might be present. It's much easier to just look at anxiety directly and see that there's no one who needs saving lurking somewhere behind that emotion.
5) Describe decision, intention, free will, choice and control. What makes things happen? How does it work? What are you responsible for? Give examples from experience.
These are all abstractions taken from stories about different actions, abilities or characteristics the "I" is meant to have or be able to make. Depending on the story that gets thought about the role or place "I" have in this world, I will have a different interpretation of how much choice or control I'm able to wield in different situations, and the more pain I will experience when circumstances seem to contradict that narrative. Of course, whether or not this narrative can be changed to realize more or greater freedom of the will is just another idea dreamt up about the "I" being able to decide its fate or control its circumstances. There's no one behind this experience pulling the strings to make dreams, feelings and interpretations happen who could possibly change them in order to produce any kind of better or more agreeable form of direct experience.
What makes things happen is beyond my ability to perceive directly. I cannot dissect my own brain in order to discern the inner workings of some mechanism or process that gives rise to my experience. There isn't some creature or computer existing behind direct experience that can be set out in front of oneself and dismantled or experimented upon in order to figure out how it works. Everything is out in the world coming together and moving apart from everything else as a confluence of causes and conditions, the workings of which we have a very limited knowledge and awareness, to create what is happening right now.
Body, hands, keys, computers, screens, light waves, eyes, electricity, nerves and brain form a circuit of sensation and visual display referred to by but irreducible in experience to the word 'typing'.
A bird singing vibrates the air around it and that wave propagates across space to reach the ears where it shakes the fluid behind the tympanic membrane of the eardrum and is transmitted as a nervous signal to the brain which somehow results in its being heard here and now as the sound of its song.
The benefit in our lives of the scientific method is that results derived from its practice can be reliably reproduced regardless of who the practitioner is, provided they are able to closely match the conditions that existed at the time of the experiment and follow the instructions carefully. That doesn't mean it gives us a complete picture of how anything works, although it certainly gives a useful one. The thought came up that one day the scientific community might fully understand the process whereby the vibration of muscles in an animal's throat is transformed into the sound that gets heard and referred to as 'birdsong', but that doesn't mean that at that point anyone will have actually understood the
experience of such music.
These examples are inexact and limited pictures of what is actually going on, which cannot be aptly described. By the time any description has even begun in thought the experience it seeks to elucidate is already gone. However, nowhere in any of this is there some sort of space that "I" have to enter into so as to make experience happen. I'm not responsible for experience any more than I'm responsible for the waves of the ocean or the wind in the trees. No one needs to take on the role of a god or saint in order to keep the universe safely running for the sake of sentient beings everywhere. Not that that isn't a very kind thought to have in mind! Just thinking it without seeing that this life to begin with doesn't assume any sort of character or role that is "me" is not enough to save "my" imaginary life from a reality that is both inescapable and already, in and of itself, enough to call complete.
<3
Zechs