Are you who you think you are?
It may be more apt to ask ‘what are you?’
In recent writings I ventured into the notions of what it is we need to let go of, when we are trying to overcome difficulty or wanting to make a change for the better. What necessarily follows from that is the notion of what it is we are holding on to. All roads lead to what we call the ‘self’ or what we think our identity is. In holding on to aspects of self, or the self itself (ha!) we suffer.
Through many experiences of my own, and viewing many other instances of the restoration of health, life and peace of mind, the change comes not from forcing changes or adding layers of identity but more from letting aspects of self or identity go. Surrendering.
Without declaring it outright or even realising it, If we are to let go, we are automatically detaching from the faith we had in what we thought we were. Put a slightly different way, letting go is believing or realising we are something different than before.
But what?
It’s necessary once again to state the features of the self, because in disproving their reality we are presented with what we might then be instead.
The Features of Self
When I think ‘me’ I immediately think of what I look like, my personality, the way I talk, the way I view things, the way I interact with people. The beliefs and views we have, which gives us a system of values and preferences ie what we want to happen in the world,
My sense of self is also tied up in a sense of story, a narrative of events that makes sense i.e. ‘This happened, and this happened, and then this happened which caused this and then I done this..’ including all the emotions I felt, and the thoughts I thought along the way.
A good example of this is when people do autobiographies. When writing all about ‘me’ it’s a life story. The life story with a label (name) and appearance attached to it.
All of this material exists in, or as memory. It really is odd, when you think of it.
The fixed sense of Self is an illusion because…
Firstly none of these features are fixed, as in they change in either time or in different contexts, or they even disappear, by the second.
Our personality or behaviour for example is dependent on our surroundings including mostly the people that are in it. The physical body and it’s attributes is the outward facing depiction of millions of micro-processes that are moving, changing, dying and birthing each and every millisecond. Cells are ending and being replaced constantly.
Secondly a sense of story is based on the past and entirely subjective. It’s an interpretation of events that is unique, even peculiar, to us. Identity is both a subjective interpretation of events and even more strangely, something that becomes, and remains, an abstract thought in the mind.
More importantly, it is apparent that the Self has lots of features that are FIXED. ‘We’ are comprised of many individual pieces and attributes sort of glued together. Forms. Things that are given names and labels. Just ‘things’.
How features of Self cause suffering
I have found that my own suffering, its existence and severity, is dependent on my sense of self. The notion of suffering its important in this enquiry because it can tell a lot about our identity, both that we which we cling to and can let go of, and also what is there underneath or behind that. This certainly is not unique to me and my experiences. My account is one of probably millions you can know about through other writings and accounts or even other people in our lives. Instead of any certainty coming merely from the word of others, yet more ideas to believe in, it’s worth verifying this in direct experience.
Our sense of self with all its attributes comes with a value system.
Integral to the Self is how we see the world and how we want it to be.
When things happen not in accordance with the preferences of our value system, something is wrong for us and usually we will want to change it.
We could say that what we want to happen in the world is that which would fortify our sense of self. We want an environment where our needs are met and catered for. But then, real life comes along, and doesn’t meet those needs. A lot of what is happening out there in the world is not to our liking. We go about trying to design the life around us that will reflect our value system, on which our wellbeing depends.
So we suffer, well like, duhhhhh
You may say, well so what? Life has suffering and misfortune in it, a genius isn’t needed to know that. Just because we suffer, doesn’t mean we have no fixed identity or that our sense of self is an illusion?
Well, it’s just that the fixed sense of self just doesn’t stand up when we reflect on human transformation that occurs when people decide to act on the assumption that the features of self are indeed illusory, which is usually provoked by suffering.
Most of the time, and in my own life, it’s not a conscious decision framed in this way. It just becomes apparent that that is what happened, once the transformation has occurred. Many occasions of personal transformation or growth, or increase in wellbeing, recovery from pain and trauma that I have encountered have been accompanied by a sense letting go of what I thought were parts of me.
Yes, there have been occasions where willpower, and a sense of adding something to my already existing self has brought about change. A bit like wanting to look good by going to the gym. It has certainly worked. Muscles became larger, stamina increased, powered by willpower. There are without doubt millions of examples of this everywhere. I personally however have found willpower gets so far before running out of steam. It comes into conflict with other desires, it changes, and it also plays right in to the structure of the sense of self that eventually, somewhere along the line, causes more suffering. Willpower a lot of the time is a tool provoked into action by insecurity or fear, which are the very things in need of attention and integration, with a view to letting them go.
I’ve used willpower to give up smoking. So what’s the problem?
Well, my habit comes back from time to time. What really works, and just feels a lot more ‘right’, is when I look at what purpose I am trying to serve by smoking. The urge to have a smoke follows some kind of fear that if I don’t, there will be some kind of physical or mental discomfort. This is nicotine addiction. The body ‘needs’ the substance and wants it to be replaced. Successfully giving up smoking for me is letting go of that fear that if I don’t smoke I will feel incomplete. Letting go of them thoughts, that mind pattern, that narrative. It’s like ‘unsubscribing’. It comes from acknowledging the urge, witnessing it, and not trying to resist it or force it away. When accompanied with an internal ‘asking’ for this part of me to be taken away, this I find the most successful.
I have mentioned how our story forms part of ourselves, and that pain and resentment is part of that story. That letting go of either pain and resentment proves that the conception of self we held onto was never fixed. Retaining faith in the fixed sense of self prolongs the misery.
It really throws the door open and demands a new understanding of self and identity if we can transform even once and even in small ways. If this is possible with either giving up smoking, or any aspect of pain or resentment, then it is possible multiple times over and with much larger features, like more harmful addictions or compulsive behaviours. What and who would we be then? What kind of Self or identity is waiting for us? Well, life and history is littered with such accounts, if you know where to look that is. More on that later…
What if what we actually are is something formless?
It’s not just a playful postulation. Regardless of the trump card which is people’s experience itself of this phenomenon, something we will address more later, it’s by sheer logical deduction that we arrive at the conclusion about what we really are. If the fixed, subjective interpretations of self are all washed away when under inspection and in the phenomenon of transformation, then the opposite to fixed forms is what remains – the formless. The nameless.
Some just refer to this as conscious awareness.
You can experiment for yourself when you answer the question ‘what has been the one constant throughout my life and experiences?’
The French philosopher Descartes tried this for himself and concluded after experimentation and logic that his existence rested on what he believed to be one other factor – thought.
“I think therefore I am” the saying goes.
Eckhart Tolle updated this in a contemporary sense with ‘I am conscious therefore I am” because even thought subsides and when it does there is still something there. In fact, the attachment to thought is attachment to one of the appendages of the Self. The two go hand in hand.
This is where some people may be a bit spooked, at the prospect of having their identity taken away or threatened. For the record, this conclusion doesn’t mean we have no individuality, uniqueness or independence. There is something definitely localised and specific to our body and mind. It takes time to reconcile these ideas. It’s difficult detaching from one system we are used to, and understanding another.
End of Part One. Continued in Part 2…
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