what you are. your unique flava which is different than mine......i wold never be able to fathom yourself an you not mine..........your self is also more than what you know on certain occasions like ecstasy.....on those occasion your self may inclkude Nature, universe. some belief systems have tried to call the latter the 'Self' and belittle YOUR self, but i see it rathr as a continuum. potential of self in relation with dynamic reality
What am I? Am I my thoughts, my feelings, my actions, my past, my surroundings, ...? How can this be proven? How to prove that my "unique flavour" is different than yours? And what is this "unique flavour"?
Duendy, That's a rather useless definition, don't you think? I might have as well say "this". But how then can we know they are different? What makes you think that my "unique flavour" is different from yours? Again, how do I know they are indeed different than yours? How do you know yours are different than mine?
I have a few questions: Can the self (according to the definition you posit above) exist apart from experience? How does the self come into existence? How does the self end?
The self is a stream of conscienceness. Try to image your own existence if you had no perceptions such as sensory inputs, thoughts, emotions. To say that you(the self) existed, would be meaningless. The self comes in and out of existence as the stream starts and stops. If all your brain activity were shut down for 10 years, would it be meaningful to say that 'you' existed for those years? The body would be there, but where or what is the self in that circumstance? When the physical body that generates the stream gets damaged beyond a certain point, the stream stops forever and so do you.
No. The very first experiences we have lay the groundwork. They are like... an artist, drawing a rough sketch. Except that that artist does not yet know what he is drawing. Think of an artist who picks up a pencil and looks at a canvas without knowing precisely what he wants to draw - and yet the flow comes regardless. He finds himself drawing... something. From whence the inspiration? Hence the term "exponential". We learn from the very first experiences, and what we learn from those, shapes our reaction to the next. Thus no two people are the same. Experiences vary - reaction to them varies depending on the experiences which have gone before. The less experience a human has, the less "rounded" he eventually becomes. The more he has to draw from, the more complete the result. We are born computers with no program. We are born waiting to be filled. And like computers, the input decides the final output. That is the human, the brain, the intellect. Now, if you know computers, discern the difference between RAM and ROM. You have only to know or study those who have been bought up in differing environments - the "wild children" of legend, of study. We are eminently programmable. The ROM decides our most basic instincts - the RAM and programming decides how we accomplish them. We are nothing more. ...The Self ends only when we die.
The Self is thoughtless-Silence. In Physics this silence is the quantum-gap. Reality , the Self, is this Silence, Consciousness, Samadhi -- the Reality of dreamless-sleep, and the Universe is just its noise that it APPEARS to organize into thoughts like a filter seems to organize sound-light, thoughts when it, the filter, lens, does nothing. The Self is Everything and the noise it appears to organize into thoughts is its fiction, nothing. The universe is the Self's nothing, fiction. for more detail see the post in physics “the real Universe.”
So. Now that we have some definitions of what the self is, do tell me how this self is to be loved. We do often hear how one must love oneself. So how does one love this construct, meme, illusion, ...?
Duh! I don't know. Those people who prasie the self so highly seem to shy away once asked more specific questions!
The answer to the question, "Who/What is Self", seems to be what 'life' is about. Each of us must ask the question, in our own way, and 'answer' it (if) for ourselves. 'Self' is rarely, if at all, found in the teachings/opinions of 'others'. Access codes are ego specific! *__-
the self is the one, there is only one tree, you are but one leaf on one branch, so are we all, the self is as individual as the leaves are to the next leaves, but they still share the same roots, we are all but one, the outer self is just reflexion of the one, interpreted differently by each author, but the same words are spoken among the many, we dont know its name, but we call it, the dao, peace,
Until you meet the people who have such a knowledge of self that clarification becomes unworthwhile. Until that day, assume Spidergoat is cool. In posting this, I have just denigrated my own acknowledgment of self. Apparently.
