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You are not your thoughts. What is meant by the self being an illusion is that there is no thinker behind your thoughts, no entity in your brain that is the 'yo
by nugga 9y ago
You are not your thoughts. What is meant by the self being an illusion is that there is no thinker behind your thoughts, no entity in your brain that is the 'you'. Most people do not even realize they are constantly submerged in thought and/or dialogue with their 'inner voice'. That is not the real you though.
If you've suffered some mental problems you can even have multiple thoughts in your conscious scope at once or thoughts whirling past so fast you can barely make out what their contents are. You may not even want to think or like these thoughts. Some traumatized people are affected by what they describe as intrusive thoughts that have so much momentum or energy that they greatly modify their consciousness and behavior and emotions, for example cause depression.
The false ego is a tough nut to crack because it has so much invested in thinking it is real and acting out whatever. Whatever the consciousness or your brain or body experiences as you is an accumulation of traits, thought patterns, reactions all layered up to form a somewhat consistent/cohesive/continuous experience.
If you have the drive to look behind the curtain or are interested in altered states of consciousness, you can experience these insights into the nature of consciousness by prolonged daily meditation practice, with or without psychedelics. Eventually with enough awareness you may be able to simply 'step outside' of thoughts or witness thoughts happening and see as they pass through your consciousness without being involved in or affected by them.
Despite all this, you may still want to put that body before someone else and that may be totally ok.
- monktastic1 9y agoNice summary. As another poster points out in this thread, this "witnessing" phase is not yet the fully Monty, nor is even the unitive consciousness phase that can come after that. The full non-self experience is beyond the no-ego experience. Which all probably sounds like mumbo-jumbo to someone who hasn't traveled the path.
- nugga 9y agoYou are right in that the ability to be beyond the thoughtstream is only the beginning. You probably know all this, but I think with further inquiry and experience it is inevitable to come to the conclusion that there is no free will, it's just atoms dancing and vibrating and from that an elaborate interconnected mechanism rises. With no free will there is no doer or you as a person, it is simply the universe unfolding and these bodies are only 'pawns' reacting to stimuli or whatever variables these human biocomputers work on. Us humans have the capacity for pretty advanced heuristics and we can become aware of the underlying mechanisms and the subconcsious, and through that awareness manipulate the system but that still forgoes any doers. I guess you could say they're revelations and be grateful you stumbled on them in this life. We need to go deeper.
- monktastic1 9y agoI find it useful to allow for the possibility that your entire model of reality (including such "obvious" features as space and time, let alone biology) will evolve on the path. Some traditions maintain that this is all a dream. What might this be pointing to? Of course, it can be very hard to avoid thinking "sure, my model will evolve, but those things will still be there." Our metaphysics is very hard to give up!