Turtles on turtles on turtles

[RtWAims]

LU is focused guiding for seeing there is no real, inherent 'self' - what do you understand by this? I understand this to mean that my experience does not exist discretely. It emerges from the complex systems producing my body's thoughts and actions. Any agency I experience depends on processes outside conscious awareness. I don't see any evidence of a separate controller behind them.

What are you looking for at LU? To understand better how my mind works, hopefully in a way that benefits the guy carrying it around for me, though I suspect that may already be me missing the point. I have independently thought quite a lot about self, consciousness, causality and free will, and seem to have arrived at some contradictions and impossibilities. I'm curious whether direct inquiry shows me something that my understanding hasn't.

What do you expect from a guided conversation? I don't expect a particular revelation. I already understand myself as an emergent part of a deterministic organism, rather than as a separate controller of it. The conscious process that observes, reasons about and attempts to influence the rest of the system is just another caused process. I would like a guide to challenge my understanding through direct experience and see what I am overlooking. I'm interested in whether there is an experiential distinction I haven't understood.

What is your experience in terms of spiritual practices, seeking and inquiry? A lot of introspective monitoring and self-inquiry. Some formal meditation, though certainly not as much. I spend a lot of time observing my thoughts, feelings, motivations and sense of agency, and trying to understand how they arise.

On a scale from 1 to 10, how willing are you to question any currently held beliefs about 'self?

10