rachMiel

Advaitins are wont to say: Stand as awareness. This can be understood to mean: Identify as awareness. But this is I think a common misunderstanding. When you identify as X, you are positing (unconsciously probably) two things: a you and an X. Subject-object duality ensues. Standing as X otoh is the knowing that there is no difference between 'you' and X, there are not-two. ?

Let's say you do not identify as a human ego, what do you identify as: awareness, brahman, God?

@Breakingthewall What are you when you do not identify as a human ego?

@BreakingthewallThe ego is, by nature, self-centered, right? It may learn (be conditioned) to be kind, giving, loving, compassionate, generous. But its highest priority is always itself. Regardless of evolutionary fitness. Does that resonate with you?

@gettoefl Guess you are the wrong person to share my Enlightened Ego theory with? ;-)

@gettoefl Are you speaking from the pov of Guro-vinavian solipsism? (I'm not very familiar with.) Or gettoefl-inarian I-am-ianism?

@gettoefl What mean you by "I identify with everything"?

@gettoefl Who-what is the I you're I'ing?

Depends! Ego is a good conquerer, builder, thinker. Creative as all get-out. But not terribly kind, open, generous, altruistic. And capable of egregious behavior, perhaps even species-threatening. Should come with an instruction manual everyone's required to work through. License to deploy ego.

I don't know whether the self's sole desire is to serve itself. Big desire, primary desire, sure. But sole doesn't seem quite right. I think the self (small s) is bigger than this, though perhaps not all that much! What is your meaning: to serve the Self? How does it differ from serving the self?

Like this thanks!

You're suggesting ego emerged from species-survival instinct, right? Is it ironic that the greatest threat to that survival may be ego?

All this tawk about God, it's giving me a growing-up-Catholic flashback! What is the self, what does it want?

The self wants whatever it wants whenever it wants it. Pleasure, joy, safety, comfort, pain, sorrow, fear, challenge, good, bad, tall, short, fat, skinny, meaning, nonsense. It wants reality to obey its every whim. ? Alternately, the self’s primary drive/want/desire may be its own survival. This may entail the survival of the ‘host’ organism’s body. But the self doesn’t stop there, it posits its own continued survival *after* the death of the body: reincarnation, afterlife, eternal being. ?

I like the notion that we are organs of perception that enable the universe to experience itself fully, all nooks and crannies. No experience is ultimately better than any other experience. From this pov the purpose of our existence is to keep doing what we are always doing: experiencing. It's all good.

Along with the thought that "it is completely relative." Emptiness is empty. Nothing is ultimately 'privileged.'

I am with Whitehead and the process thinkers on this: Everything we think and do is grounded in the past, individual and collective. Every event arises from the totality of every previous event. But along with this dependency on the past, every present event has something truly new in it.

I feel, therefore I am "Music is feeling, then, not sound" - Wallace Stevens

Exakkley!

Were brahman seen to be a process, the Process, rather than unchanging, Advaita would feel a whole lot righter to me.

Those who are interested in metamodernism should hie themselves over to Brandon's channel: https://www.youtube.com/@BrendanGrahamDempsey. He and his merry band are attempting to build a metamodern 'religion' from the ground up!

@Keryo Koffa Whitehead and the process theologists see God as processual.

And it's easy to interpret Advaita teachings, even brilliant beautiful teachings, as reifying brahman, imputing attributes to it, trying to nail down the unnailable. It's definitely my Advaita bugaboo, and that's a toughie considering how fundamental it is to Advaita teachings!

@WillCameron I'm familiar with the basics of process theology, though not with the book. Process philosophy makes a whole lot of sense to me, I've folded the ideas of Whitehead on process into my worldview.

Is the view of Leo Gura (solipsism) similar to Advaita's ekajivavada?