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Nameless Reflections
NamelessRiver
Veteran
Sometimes I come here and I just space out a bit. Sometimes I learn something new, but I like the times when I do feel I make progress.
Recently a few queries of the people in this forum along with some things happening in my life led me to find out one or two things about myself.
The first one is that anger is also a form of fear. When somebody made me angry, I realized that my mind was trying to deny them or simply desired they didn't exist. If they made me really angry I would wish they were dead. But why? What is the point if nobody likes to be angry?
I realized that when someone said something hurtful they were also forcing something new in the way I see myself. For example, if someone calls me ugly, the idea that I have of myself as being beautiful is shaken a bit. It is like the idea I make of who NamelessRiver is is being torn asunder by the feedback I get from the world outside of me, and I have to keep defending it.
I get angry because when people say mean things, they attack me, and they show me how frail I really am, they show how easily this self can be attacked and how hard it is to keep it safe, and it seems to me that this fear of annihilation is at the bottom of my problems.
Usually I defended myself by attacking people, saying the bastards that "did this to me" really suck. After going through this process of realization, I started to first ask myself whether or not this person is right or wrong. I wouldn't create an idea that the person is the devil incarnate, nor I would try to convince myself I was the perfect human being. If someone would say I have no talent for arts, for example, I would just satisfy myself with a simple "I don't know" (I never tried arts, so I really don't, and they rationally wouldn't be able to tell it either).
I also noticed that many people have an idea of themselves based on a fantasy. Someone close to me compared herself to a 'heroine', and I thought this was so funny. If you try to pull the carpet of someone that has crazy ideas about herself they will totally loose it because, since their ideas are irrational, they have no ground to say something like "this person is wrong, I am not ugly" and really trust their views.
After that I started pondering about what is it that I am really defending? What is this person I call me? It is hard to pinpoint, but it doesn't mean I don't have a vague idea. Self to me seems like a vague idea that exists but you can't really pinpoint what it is. If someone calls me ugly and I feel hurt, it is probably because the idea I make of myself includes being ugly and I don't like that or because it includes being beautiful and I don't want to loose that idea. I have aversion to what defies my idea of self, and I grasp for things or behaviors that reinforce it.
How did these vague ideas take place anyways? I realized that they take place in the real arena of life. There is no beauty without context (oh, I like this one
), there is nothing without context, no self either. It is the tension between the life outside and the idea I make of myself that shows me whether or not I am funny, evil, good, whatever.
Is this idea I make of myself real then? When I say to myself I am beautiful, I am completely eliminating the context where this idea arose. I could be amazingly beautiful, but if people called me ugly all my life what would be the idea I have of myself? All I am trying to say is that we want a fixed self that deals with a fixed world in a way we can stand without freaking out. The self is not fixed and neither is the world, so we layer it with a fantasy because if we really admitted how limited we are the ground beneath our feet would disappear.
We like to believe that the self we have is able to handle the world we live in, like we knew all about them both, except we don't. We never take into consideration the limits of our cognition neither the fluidity of the human experience, so we label everything in a way that makes us comfortable, NOT in a way that makes us see reality as it is.
The point here is to show that what we call ME and what we call the WORLD, are coated by illusions, adaptative ones nonetheless, but they are not real.
The separation between them both is also unreal. The way we see the world and the way we see ourselves is fundamentally linked. The same way there is no Nirvana without Samsara for some, there is no Me without Other.
At this point, I can feel much better in terms of emotions, but I still have behaviors I want to change - I think that is the hardest part. Ultimately you can say that what you do is dependent upon the idea of who you are, and vice-versa. When you try to change one, you are changing the other, so you are messing with the idea of Self. There will be a struggle, but maybe if I keep in mind that it is all my stubborn illusion fighting for its life and be mindful of what I am doing the process of change will take place.
These are my reflections. :-)
Recently a few queries of the people in this forum along with some things happening in my life led me to find out one or two things about myself.
The first one is that anger is also a form of fear. When somebody made me angry, I realized that my mind was trying to deny them or simply desired they didn't exist. If they made me really angry I would wish they were dead. But why? What is the point if nobody likes to be angry?
I realized that when someone said something hurtful they were also forcing something new in the way I see myself. For example, if someone calls me ugly, the idea that I have of myself as being beautiful is shaken a bit. It is like the idea I make of who NamelessRiver is is being torn asunder by the feedback I get from the world outside of me, and I have to keep defending it.
I get angry because when people say mean things, they attack me, and they show me how frail I really am, they show how easily this self can be attacked and how hard it is to keep it safe, and it seems to me that this fear of annihilation is at the bottom of my problems.
Usually I defended myself by attacking people, saying the bastards that "did this to me" really suck. After going through this process of realization, I started to first ask myself whether or not this person is right or wrong. I wouldn't create an idea that the person is the devil incarnate, nor I would try to convince myself I was the perfect human being. If someone would say I have no talent for arts, for example, I would just satisfy myself with a simple "I don't know" (I never tried arts, so I really don't, and they rationally wouldn't be able to tell it either).
I also noticed that many people have an idea of themselves based on a fantasy. Someone close to me compared herself to a 'heroine', and I thought this was so funny. If you try to pull the carpet of someone that has crazy ideas about herself they will totally loose it because, since their ideas are irrational, they have no ground to say something like "this person is wrong, I am not ugly" and really trust their views.
After that I started pondering about what is it that I am really defending? What is this person I call me? It is hard to pinpoint, but it doesn't mean I don't have a vague idea. Self to me seems like a vague idea that exists but you can't really pinpoint what it is. If someone calls me ugly and I feel hurt, it is probably because the idea I make of myself includes being ugly and I don't like that or because it includes being beautiful and I don't want to loose that idea. I have aversion to what defies my idea of self, and I grasp for things or behaviors that reinforce it.
How did these vague ideas take place anyways? I realized that they take place in the real arena of life. There is no beauty without context (oh, I like this one
), there is nothing without context, no self either. It is the tension between the life outside and the idea I make of myself that shows me whether or not I am funny, evil, good, whatever.Is this idea I make of myself real then? When I say to myself I am beautiful, I am completely eliminating the context where this idea arose. I could be amazingly beautiful, but if people called me ugly all my life what would be the idea I have of myself? All I am trying to say is that we want a fixed self that deals with a fixed world in a way we can stand without freaking out. The self is not fixed and neither is the world, so we layer it with a fantasy because if we really admitted how limited we are the ground beneath our feet would disappear.
We like to believe that the self we have is able to handle the world we live in, like we knew all about them both, except we don't. We never take into consideration the limits of our cognition neither the fluidity of the human experience, so we label everything in a way that makes us comfortable, NOT in a way that makes us see reality as it is.
The point here is to show that what we call ME and what we call the WORLD, are coated by illusions, adaptative ones nonetheless, but they are not real.
The separation between them both is also unreal. The way we see the world and the way we see ourselves is fundamentally linked. The same way there is no Nirvana without Samsara for some, there is no Me without Other.
At this point, I can feel much better in terms of emotions, but I still have behaviors I want to change - I think that is the hardest part. Ultimately you can say that what you do is dependent upon the idea of who you are, and vice-versa. When you try to change one, you are changing the other, so you are messing with the idea of Self. There will be a struggle, but maybe if I keep in mind that it is all my stubborn illusion fighting for its life and be mindful of what I am doing the process of change will take place.
These are my reflections. :-)
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