The Curse of the Self

[Daniel E.]

The Self is a Unicorn - Dr. Rick Hanson

In this excerpt from Dr. Rick Hanson's book Neurodharma, he offers a contemplation on the question: Who am I?

www.rickhanson.net

A “Self” Is Like a Unicorn​

Rick Hanson, PhD

To sum up, our experiences of “I,” “me,” and “mine” – and their neural foundations – are impermanent, compounded, and interdependent. In a word, the apparent self is empty. This alone should encourage lightening up about it and not clinging to it. But I’d like to take this a step further.

We can have empty experiences of things that do actually exist, such as horses. Just because the experience of a horse is empty does not mean that the horse is not real. But we can also have empty experiences of things that do not exist, such as imagining a unicorn. If there is no creature with the defining characteristics of a unicorn – a horse with a long pointed horn – then unicorns are not real.

The presumed self is like a unicorn, a mythical beast that does not exist. Its necessary, defining characteristics – stability, unification, and independence – do not exist in either the mind or the brain. The complete self is never observed in experience. Subjectivity doesn’t mean there is a stable subject, a one to whom things happen. And the sense of being or having a self is not needed for consciousness – nor for opening a door or answering a question.

Realizing this often begins conceptually, and that’s all right. These ideas can help to highlight different aspects of experience. Then we can observe and practice with the mind and gradually there will be a felt knowing of what’s true.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Some very good points there.

I wrote a paper on this several years ago in connection with social identity theory ¹ (to be honest, I can't recall if it was ever published in print or just created for a conference).

We all talk about "the self" as if there were only one, but in reality it is much more complex than that and typically there are several versions of the self. Certain aspects of the self are displayed in certain contexts but not at all in other contexts. I think in my paper I argued that this does not necessarily eliminate a possibility of a "core self" that exists in all contexts but we can only infer that from what we see in the various contexts.



I am currently a father, a grandfather, a sibling, an uncle, a friend, a patient, and a web professional. In the past I have been a professor, a researcher, a therapist, and a public speaker, among other things. I have also been a husband and a partner in various relationships. In each of these roles, people would see certain aspects of me, some consciously selected and others selected unconsciously or subconsciously according to the specific expectations and demands of the role. What I display can also be interpreted in different ways depending on the needs of the person with whom I am interacting.

Anyway, it's a fascinating concept (at least to me ). Thanks for the reminder, @Daniel.

¹ More on Social Identity Theory

Social Identity Theory | Simply Psychology

www.simplypsychology.org

social identity theory | Definition, History, Examples, & Facts

Social identity theory, in social psychology, the study of the interplay between personal and social identities. Social identity theory aims to specify and predict the circumstances under which individuals think of themselves as individuals or as group members.

www.britannica.com

APA PsycNet

psycnet.apa.org

Social Identity Theory and and Its Impact on Behavior

Social identity theory describes the conditions under which social identity becomes more important than one’s identity as an individual.

www.thoughtco.com

 

[Daniel E.]

 

[Daniel E.]

"Nothing is ever at rest--wood, iron, water, everything is alive, everything is raging, whirling, whizzing, day and night and night and day, nothing is dead, there is no such thing as death, everything is full of bristling life, tremendous life, even the bones of the crusader that perished before Jerusalem eight centuries ago."

~ Mark Twain

 

[Daniel E.]

"An identity crisis is a marvelous opportunity
to trade in a small and limiting self-image
for a greater and truer one."

~ Alan Cohen

 

[Daniel E.]

"How many yous in a day?"

~ Chris Niebauer, PhD, No Self, No Problem

 

[Daniel E.]

“The self is a mystery. In our efforts to pin it down or make it safe, we dissociate ourselves from our complete experience of whatever it is or is not.”

"Far from eliminating the ego, as I naively believed I should when I first began to practice meditation, the Buddha encouraged a strengthening of the ego so that it could learn to hold primitive agonies without collapse.”

― Mark Epstein, The Trauma of Everyday Life

 

[Daniel E.]

David Burns:

The website of David D. Burns, MD | Self-Acceptance–Are We All Defective? | Feeling Good

If you are reading this blog from Facebook or Twitter, I appreciate it! I would like to invite you to visit my website, http://www.FeelingGood.com, as well. There you will find a wealth of free goodies, including my Feeling Good blogs, my Feeling Good Podcasts with host, Dr. Fabrice Nye, and the...

feelinggood.com

Although these themes may seem abstract, they have powerful, practical, emotional consequences. Just one small example, let’s say you struggle with anxiety and shyness. You may have the fear that others will judge you because you are inferior, or not “good enough,” and this thought can cause tremendous suffering. But this thought is based on the notion that you have a “self” that can be evaluated or judged. When you see through this notion, you can experience liberation from your fears.

The Buddhists called this “The Great Death.” Of course, we all fear death, and struggle to keep our egos alive. But once you’ve “died,” so to speak, you can join the Grateful Dead, and then life suddenly opens up in unexpected ways. And for those who may misread me, or interpret my words literally, I am not referring to physical death, but death of the “self.”

 

[Daniel E.]

"It is my conviction that man should not, indeed cannot, struggle for identity in a direct way; he rather finds identity to the extent to which he commits himself to something beyond himself, to a cause greater than himself."

~ Viktor Frankl

 

[Daniel E.]

A ‘Self-Aware’ Fish Raises Doubts About a Cognitive Test

A report that a fish can pass the “mirror test” for self-awareness reignites debates about how to define and measure that elusive quality.

getpocket.com

One thing on which most scientists in the field do agree is that there’s a link between recognizing yourself in a mirror and being social. The species that perform well on mirror tests all live in groups. In an intriguing 1971 study by Gallup and others, chimpanzees born in captivity and raised in isolation failed the mirror test. The chimps that passed the test had been born in the wild, in social groups. Gallup thought this finding supported the ideas of the philosopher George Herbert Mead of the University of Chicago, who said our sense of self is shaped by our interactions with others. “[T]here could not be an experience of a self simply by itself,” Mead wrote in 1934.

 

[Daniel E.]

"What we conceive of as an unbroken thread of consciousness is instead quite often a train of discontinuous fragments. Our awareness is divided. And much more commonly than we know, even our personalities are fragmented—disorganized team efforts trying to cope with the past—rather than the sane, unified wholes we anticipate in ourselves and in other people."


― Martha Stout, The Myth of Sanity: Divided Consciousness and the Promise of Awareness

 

[Daniel E.]

“In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight.”

“Learn to watch your drama unfold while at the same time knowing you are more than your drama.”

~ Ram Dass

 

[Daniel E.]

"Our energy and the energy of the universe are always in flux, but we have little tolerance for this unpredictability, and we have little ability to see ourselves and the world as an exciting, fluid situation that is always fresh and new. How we relate to this dynamic flow of energy is important. We can learn to relax with it, recognizing it as our basic ground, as a natural part of life; or the feeling of uncertainty, of nothing to hold on to, can cause us to panic, and instantly a chain reaction begins. We panic, we get hooked, and then our habits take over and we think and speak and act in a very predictable way."

~ Pema Chödrön, Taking the Leap

 

[Daniel E.]

“If you’re living a goal-focused life, then no matter what you have, it’s never enough.”

~ Russ Harris

 

[David Baxter PhD]

“If you’re living a goal-focused life, then no matter what you have, it’s never enough.”

~ Russ Harris

Surely that depends on how you define your goals, or what your goals are.

 

[Daniel E.]

More context, e.g. journey vs. destination:

 

[Daniel E.]

A quote from the author of the novella Memories of Amnesia:

Lawrence Shainberg — Reviews | MEMORIES OF AMNESIA

www.lawrenceshainberg.com

"The ability to laugh at the brain is liberation from it. But the degree to which one identifies with one's brain is the degree to which one suffers.''

 

[Daniel E.]

The Antidote To Digital Disconnectivity | NOEMA

Community requires ritual and narrative.

www.noemamag.com

Community requires ritual and narrative.

“The paradoxes of the information age make the mind swim. The more we are informed, the more we are disoriented. The more we connect, the more we are divided. The more new content there is to consume, the less we are ever satisfied. The faster the network speed, the shorter our attention span becomes."

“The inwardly turned, narcissistic ego with purely subjective access to the world is not the cause of social disintegration but the result of a fateful process at the objective level. Everything that binds and connects is disappearing. There are hardly any shared values or symbols, no common narratives that unite people.”

 

[Daniel E.]

"The life of an individual is a constant struggle, and not merely a metaphorical one against want or boredom, but also an actual struggle against other people. He discovers adversaries everywhere, lives in continual conflict and dies with sword in hand.”

― Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Suffering of the World

 

[Daniel E.]

“Yet I also recognize this: Even if everyone in the world were to accept me and my illness and validate my pain, unless I can abide myself and be compassionate toward my own distress, I will probably always feel alone and neglected by others.”

― Kiera Van Gelder