Friday, August 12, 2011

Deeply Personal Mental Representations

Just been listening to Eckhart Tolle again. The guy is brilliant, both to help get you to the Gate, and to lay out life after seeing that there is no "little I".
You are probably familiar with his concept of the pain body.
Short version:  The pain body is an energetic formation of thoughts that act as a entity, causing unfortunate and self-ish behaviours.
Adyashanti refers to "the shape-changing self" which is able to represent its interests in any situation. He talks of its grasping nature, the way each thought is turned to self-reflect.
Studies in evolutionary psychology and neuroscience tell a similar story. 
Humans appear to have a mental representation of the world, with an "I" at the centre.
This is useful for calculating what is good for YOU, in relation to the world you perceive. And perception helps construct a world as a mental representation, with an changeable representation of your 'self' in the centre.
This look a tad circular to you?
Constant referencing of self, in a world that is constructed as related to a 'self".  A closed loop. 
Yeah, makes me dizzy, too.
So Tolle, Adyashanti, psychology, neuroscience, and some western philosophers are saying that there is evidence for a self-representation, but not an actual, permanent, you.
There is an idea of self, but not an actual self.
Self is a deeply personal mental representation.
What we have been thinking of as our core self, is deeply, deeply unreal. Constructed. Impermanent.
What the sages and buddhas have been telling us is true.
If you actually see that the self is a remarkable illusion, you have seen what they saw.
If you would like a chance to step outside that closed loop of constructed self, and see what they saw, there is a simple and powerful directed process that points to no-self. You can start with someone on this blog, or the other blogs, or go to the Ruthless Truth site and start there.
It's free, and you do it while living your usual life.
I kind of like that, as tickets to India were not cheap, and you still had to come back and explain the neo-Buddhist stuff to your parents. Back in the day, y'all.
Yeah, I love the internet.









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