First off,
does it exist?
I maintain that it doesnt.
What exists is “self-” as a part of a composite term.
You maintain that you do not exist.
I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say that your self does not exist, but that your-self-existing exists.
How stupid. Instead of simply saying that things too are activities.
Still confused by the word?
Beings can enter into a relation with other beings. Self is a word we use to indicate that the related being is the same as the relating being.
Being values that same being.
We shorten it to being values self.
What you are saying is that there are no beings, only becomings. But not even this is true, strictly speaking. There are beings, it’s just that they are subsumed to becoming.
To us, self is synonymous with self awareness of an organism as a differentiated/unique biological unit, with innate, as well as externally acquired qualities. This is the default ‘self’. The first awareness of self (traditionally) is self as body, and other types of self are additions to it.
The tricky part is defining self awareness. We know that it’s a graduated process of differentiation, with humans being the most self-aware (even to the point where they differentiate their own conscious perception of self from itself, and often to their own detriment). But it could also be rudimentary. A person may cut a hole in a maple tree to collect its sap, but choose to leave the wound open, noting that a tree will take care of itself (heal the wound by itself). The statement that a tree will take care of itself presupposes that a tree has some form of what we might call an awareness of itself as a unit, even if it is strictly only on chemical level.
The human body will react the same way if wounded (if it’s functioning properly), and it would imply that the human body has an awareness of itself as a unit as well, but of course it is not the same ‘self’ perception, but more like that of a tree - on a strictly chemical level. A person’s conscious perception of self may not have the same interests as the body self (ex: an unsuccessful suicide attempt), so in that sense, either the two ‘selves’ of the same biological unit are not the same, or one of them does not really exist as such, but merely an extension of the other. If, however, we have only one self identity in a biological unit (body self), then that also raises the question of whether it is also developed to the point of being easily corruptible, even to its own detriment.
Pandora - I see your reply as most pertinent to this point; that when we observe the notion “self”, we immediately arrive at a dichotomy. A sign of a strictly metaphysical concept. The issue here is that pain causes a person to want to dissociate from what then would be seen as the self… or is it the self that represents the wish to get away from reality?
The self as people superficially use it refers to a behavior that goes about time, it is a pattern in time. The awarenesses that exist within this pattern are really very superficial most of the time; to overcome pain and adversity is the only way to become more aware of what ones patterns are like. The question is only how well we want to become aware of it. We ought to stick closely to our strongest values if we approach consciousness of this behavioral self. Psychosis is in the simplest of terms this: the result of knowing oneself in confusion about values.
The only way thus to have a self and know it is to select a set of values to put oneself to the test for it; the peaks of self-overcoming is what would grant some knowledge of the self, which would mean consciously embodying it; the purpose of self-sacrifice is self-knowledge. Somehow the human found a pleasure that is stronger and spans more time than what animals feel - for the sake of which they endure all sorts of pain. This pleasure is a flight from the directly physical into narratives, which in turn allows for far more physical discipline. So the contradiction pings on through time as language is thrown at life.
A shaman is someone who sacrifices his self in a cauldron that he has first carefully prepared to contain a process he wants to become.
At most basic, the self is the fact that we even wonder at all what the self is and if we have one. Consciousness became questionable to itself in human consciousness. The form of the question of consciousness to itself (self-objectifying) is the self.
More accurately, the pure form of the self is consciousness’s questionability to itself, while the pure content of the self is simply everything in your consciousness that composes the subjective conscious experience in any given moment (much of this content you are unaware of).
There is nothing wrong with strict metaphysics, but metaphysics isn’t even necessary to explain what the self is. Mystification arises because we lack a properly philosophical conceptual language to try and explain these things to ourselves.
If you want to know more and get deeper, simply start asking how and why of the “self-objectifying, questionability of consciousness to itself”. And when you get an answer, then ask how and why of it, too.
Or it could be an illusion or sorts, like the idea of a un/subconscious mind. If you’re not aware can it still exist… as you? If you’re not aware of your every breath or heart beat, does it mean they are not really part of you? For the explanation of this schism, I would prefer to return back to biology (body self) rather than metaphysics because metaphysics is dependent on biology (tinker with the brain = tinker with perception). We know that the body self is corruptible even on a biological level. It can turn against itself, as in cases of auto-immune disorders, and likewise, it can be tricked to accept what is foreign as its own, as in cases of certain viral infections.
I believe that the original schism (consciousness) within an organism had to occur in this particular way a way as a matter of efficiency. I recon an all inclusive consciousness would have been too much burden on an organism, energy wise, so a degree of separation and automation was just a matter of energy economy. If that is the case, then this method has been quite successful in humans (I’m thinking in terms of a body unit here). From here on, it has a potential to be corrupted and work against itself. Although I am curious if in the future, the conscious mind, with the help of technology, will be able to know and monitor (and even have a greater degree of control) over its own body systems.
What kind of pain are you talking about? If a person experiences physical pain, the conscious mind will be drawn to it, and the degree of physical pain will demand equally the appropriate amount of conscious attention. And organism (body self) exists in time, it is not stationary. Animals that live in body self, they will avoid pain if they foresee it, but they don’t constantly dwell on it. Once the wound is healed, they continue more or less as before. It is the conscious self, the conscious mind, that tends to hold on to a fixed point, while the body self moves on. So, you see many old people stuck at their young mental age, stuck in time, just as you see traumatized people not being able to let go.
Am I reading you correct? You mean to look at inner patterns of own behavior, to observe them objectively?
It is very difficult to stick to your own values, when you’re tinkering with the thing that is responsible for its creation, this way you will always get different and varying answers. The only way to remain ‘true to your values’ or preserve some sort of objectivity is to have an ‘objective observer’. Keeping a diary or a video blog that you can reference at another point in time should be able to do it. But I will maintain that you can’t always do it, while doing it, and that has to do with changing brain states.
I agree with you, but one should also try to preserve a degree of objectivity, again because of the changing brain states one cannot always trust one’s own perception. I suggest one first consider if there is another ‘why’ behind the ‘why’, a prior cause that is really driving it. How did one come to his values? Because if one gets on the wrong train, he may end up in the place that he may not come back from, even after realizing that he’s made a mistake.
Yes, but we are still tethered to the physical, the physical that supports it. At some point during its ascent, if continued, it will reach a point of self-harm because it is still connected to physical.
I would be more interested in knowing how this person came to have a desire to be seen and call himself as a shaman, to begin with. Not everyone wants to be a shaman. Where is the root of this need?