2020 Week 31 Contemplation Thoughts
Love thy self
- What is the Self? Consciousness? Awareness? Are we each a singular self or is self a collective of different consciousnesses with us?
- Self is not just the body, I’m sure, but maybe the body’s awareness/consciousness is a component somehow? Some level of us is regulating our heartbeat, breath, hormone levels,etc. We are little chemical factories, after all
- Self and identity aren’t the same. Identity is what we build on top of and around the self. Identity is our roles, preferences, personal stories. Self is more fundamental than that
- Is Self entirely contained within the human body? I don’t think so. Because we experience everything about our physical reality through our body, it seems like it. The Self’s only way of interacting with and perceiving physical reality is through our bodies’ physical senses
- Actually, is that the only way?
- Is there any sense in asking where the self is? Am I just trying to attribute a physical location to a non-physical entity? But I suppose that is the value. Asking where something is and realizing that there may not be an answer. It stretches our mind a bit
- I feel like my Self is whole and the personality and character traits I attribute to my identity are little glimpses, sometimes filtered or warped, of that much bigger Whole Self
- So it’s not that the me that I know as me, my identity, is a false construct, rather than it’s simply not the whole picture
- I find it highly unlikely that the self is matter. When I try to think of what it would be like the closest things would be light or maybe even water. The self seems like it would be a still pond
- I think the Self feels still because it is not pulled this way and that by judgements, circumstances, etc. It is the part of us that stays centred
- Self is what remains when we dissolve everything that relates us in someway to the outside world
- If we define ourselves by our roles, status, stuff, positions, we create a lot of confusion and dependencies