Sense Of Self

Shoshin

I have noticed this sense of self that tends to hang around
which often makes its presence felt through feelings sight and sound

It creates a world of make-believe, one that's full of spam
when it floods the present moment with thoughts & feelings of I AM

Even though at times this sense of self can be quite intrusive
But search as I may for its source...... it remains elusive

However, now when the sense doors open up and this self starts to perceive
through Awareness I'm learning not to be fooled... by this world of make-believe .

Hmm...Seeing is not always believing...

How often are we fooled/duped by our sense of self ?

Bunks

Haha constantly.....almost every time a thought or feeling arises.

I do catch it these days though. Sometimes take longer than others.....

Jeroen

If you sit and draw a line from something you’ve seen to your “self”, you’ll find it’s impossible. We are not the body, there is no eyeball, where is this “you”?

techie

Self may be an illusion, but this illusion is so strong that it feels real.

Shoshin

It's always there, smirking in the background...

Jeffrey

Sense of self is constructed of thinking.

And then where is thinking? In the mind? It makes me think of:

A famous example of meditation on this question can be found in the life of Milarepa, the great Tibetan yogin. A young shepherd boy came and asked him for instruction. ‘In the house of the body is there just one mind, or are there several?’ It’s a good question; after all, we experience many moods, even sometimes what seem to be different personalities. Aren’t these different minds? What is a mind, after all? Milarepa told the boy to find out for himself. ‘Just have a look at your actual experience.’ And straight after work that night the boy did so. Returning next morning to Milarepa’s cave, he said,

Dear Lama, last night I tried to find out what my mind is and how it works. I observed it carefully and found that I have only one mind. Even though one wants to, one cannot kill this mind. However much one wishes to dismiss it, it will not go away. If one tries to catch it, it cannot be grasped... If you want it to remain, it will not stay; if you release it, it will not go.... You try to see it; it cannot be seen. You try to understand it; it cannot be known.... It is something illuminating, aware, wide-awake, yet incomprehensible.’ [2]

One might expect a lad who looks after sheep all the time to be unimaginative or dull: not this one!

http://madhyamavani.fwbo.org/3/mind.html

Shoshin

According to Ven. Piyasilo (A Malaysian Buddhist monk and taken from a booklet called "On Being Your True Self" )

WE ARE A "BUNDLE" OF SELVES

"In our every day lives, very often we are but a bundle of selves - of which only normally one is operative at any time. One self decides at night to get up early in the morning, but what happens ? When we get up in the morning we find that another self has taken over in the night. The new self has now taken over and he (or she) does not want to get up.

We all know that from time to time we are subjected to what are called 'moods'. For example, we may feel depressed, or angry, or restless. The moods take possession of us and we do no know why we are simply 'not ourselves'. And to the extent that they persist, we feel as through that we are someone else. If we analyse ourselves, we will discover that we are not so much a self as a succession of selves- a "bundle" of selves like a cable of wires- transmitting messages all at the same time.

NO UNCHANGING, PERMANENT SELF

There is no single unified, completely integrated self that is continually operative inside us. We can even say that we are each a collection of selves, each of which is fighting for supremacy,and this explains why we so often fail to do the things we have set out to do.

Another way of looking at this situation is that we are always going through an ever changing process without any unchanging, permanent self. We are but the totality of this "bundle" of selves, which are often in conflict with one another. It is as if we were a bundle of selves loosely tied together by the thin string of personality with' a label bearing our name and address.

GETTING "ON THE LEVEL" WITH OURSELVES

In order to harmonize our various conflicting "selves", we should learn to know ouRSELVES better. This is done through the practice of awareness, of which there are four aspects: the awareness of oneself, of others, of the environment, and of the truth. The awareness of oneself is best cultivated through the practice• of meditation. Such meditation methods, like the Mindfulness of Breathing, helps us become more calm and more aware of ourselves. When we reach a state of mental calm during such a practice, we are said to have reached "horizontal integration" - we are "on the level" with ourselves.

"VERTICAL -INTEGRATION"

As we become more and more of ourselves, we get a clearer understanding and experience of other people and our environment. We begin to see our untapped energies and enjoy our own higher potentiality. Our consciousness becomes more and more developed. This is called "vertical integration", that is, the integration of our conscious mind with the Unconscious (or the "higher mind").

As our consciousness becomes more and more developed, our experience of things begins to deepen and the horizon of our thoughts begins to widen. People and things around us no more delude us, but appear as they really are. No more do we see merely the surface of things, but we begin to "see through" them!

Shoshin

I AM LOST...I've gone to look for myself. If I should return before I get back...Please tell me to wait...

FoibleFull

As per "The Heart Sutra", we are and we are not.

A student once asked our teacher, "Is it true we aren't real?" He thought for a moment and said "Try slamming a car door on your hand and THEN saying you aren't real"
We DO exist. It is just that we misinterpret what "me" is about. Which is why we do mindfulness/Vipassana meditation.

Jeroen

Being lost and being not yourself is a wonderful state to be in... it is a great freedom to wander and experience new things.

Lionduck

We are both self and non-self. We are aware of self innately. We are individuals with specific needs and wants. It is part of the survival mechanism of our sentience. At the same time, we are aware, to a greater or lesser degree, of our interrelations, our interconnectedness with others and our surroundings (environment). Sometimes we lose the self completely in an action or a task. Sometimes we forget our interconnectedness. in this constant flux,we can say "I am" when not and "I am not" when we are and be both correct and incorrect at the same time. It is a constant shifting, the self and the non-self, the I and the We. We are both seperate from and an integral part of our environment. For we are both and we are neither at the same time. this is neither a philisophical execise nor a Zen Koan. This is our reality.

Peace to all

Shoshin

At times we sentient beings can be quite a SELFish bunch

Dimmesdale

It seems to me our sense of self early on is dependent on our interactions with others. So in that sense a self is learned socially, in community. Relevant are things like honor and shame, love and respect; these are integral to "having" a sense of self, and not simply looking at yourself in the mirror.

Before this one in some sense knows he exists (of course, I'd say). But this sense of existing is still couched in social terms. Some people (narcissists) are so dependent on social input from their milieu that without it (narcissistic supply) they don't even feel that they exist. They are "dead" for lack of a better term. Attention in other words acts as a buttress against them falling into nothingness.

Healthier individuals on the other hand learn to be resilient in their "walk with self" and form an actual inner life, in which they know who they are in a deep way (i.e., meditation, the capacity for "being" alone).

Others, who lack this development, or are scarred in such a way that their sense of self is buried (due to trauma) may substitute drugs, sex or food to fill in the gap as it were. We are all striving in some way towards peace I'd say. But the peace the world can give is only temporary. Perhaps death is the final "dive" into the self.

Shoshin

@Dimmesdale said:
It seems to me our sense of self early on is dependent on our interactions with others. So in that sense a self is learned socially, in community. Relevant are things like honor and shame, love and respect; these are integral to "having" a sense of self, and not simply looking at yourself in the mirror.

Our conditioning/programming ...Dharma practice de-programmes this sense of self...Cuts conditioning's strings so to speak..

Before this one in some sense knows he exists (of course, I'd say). But this sense of existing is still couched in social terms. Some people (narcissists) are so dependent on social input from their milieu that without it (narcissistic supply) they don't even feel that they exist. They are "dead" for lack of a better term. Attention in other words acts as a buttress against them falling into nothingness.

We are all somewhat selfish...some more SELFish than others ...example narcissists..

Healthier individuals on the other hand learn to be resilient in their "walk with self" and form an actual inner life, in which they know who they are in a deep way (i.e., meditation, the capacity for "being" alone).

I guess it's when one gets a glimpse of this...

AWARENESS is fundamentally non-conceptual before thinking splits experience into subject and object...It is empty and so can contain everything, including 'thinking'..It is boundless...And amazingly it is intrinsically KNOWING

Others, who lack this development, or are scarred in such a way that their sense of self is buried (due to trauma) may substitute drugs, sex or food to fill in the gap as it were. We are all striving in some way towards peace I'd say. But the peace the world can give is only temporary. Perhaps death is the final "dive" into the self.

Death of the sense that there is a permanently abiding self that pulls the strings...

Anicca Dukkha Anatta ...The Three Marks of Existence...

lobster

Healthier individuals on the other hand learn to be resilient in their "walk with self" and form an actual inner life, in which they know who they are in a deep way (i.e., meditation, the capacity for "being" alone).

👍🏻😎🧘🏼‍♂️🧘🏾‍♀️🧘🏽‍♀️

An unhealthy being is tight, clasping, shut and closed around ignorance.
The spacious, emptying, healing being is set loose, giving, open and centred around wisdom, compassion and is kinder all around in experience and calmer karma.

Who knew?

David

@Shoshin said:

How often are we fooled/duped by our sense of self ?

Our sense of self isn't really bad in my books as long as we know the illusory and conditional nature. Then it is a tool of exploration and a method of expression.

You are surely on to something because before we use the illusion as a tool, we often mistake our tools for self.

Like thoughts and feelings. Even though they are fleeting, they can sometimes feel like they are self. It can really be confusing then when thoughts start disagreeing and we lose sight that we should be weighing the thoughts, not identifying with them.

In the Upajjhatthana Sutta, Buddha says we own our actions. Thoughts and feeling inform and often dictate our actions but Buddha didn't say we own our thoughts and feelings. So our thoughts and feelings are tools we can use to guide our words and other actions.

In turn, our sense of a separate self or our self awareness is also illusory but that doesn't mean there is no purpose behind it nor that it should be abandoned. It just needs to be understood and used accordingly.