What is the self, what does it want?

[rachMiel]

What is the self? (The small self, ego-I.) Thoughts, memories, desires, habits? Real, imagined, illusion, mirage? Tulpa, egregore? Nothing, nonexistent? 

What does the self want? Reality to obey it? Power? Eternal life? Nothing, the self is not an agent, is unable to want? 

[NoN-RaTiOnAL]

it is a way you undestand yourself. you are actually much more than the small self but you are anaware of that so what you are left with is surface level awarness so to speak. Its like the tip of the iceberg of consciousness. The loudest part.
Its like that annoying kid in your class - everyone gets to know his name before anybody else. 

It wants whatever it percieves as lacking. if you lack power you want more of it, if you lack appreciation you want more of it.... 
It wants the world to obey its will and it wants it to happen effortlessly = suffering because thats almost never the case. 

[Atb210201]

Focus more on God

Forget about the self or ego

[rachMiel]

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. ?  

[Hojo]

To be accepted by God. Basically any thought that keeps coming back are ones that you as God do not accept.

Edited September 3 by Hojo

[gettoefl]

I anointed myself the god of man rather than the man of god

[rachMiel]

40 minutes ago, gettoefl said:

I anointed myself the god of man rather than the man of god

All this tawk about God, it's giving me a growing-up-Catholic flashback! 

What is the self, what does it want?   

[Breakingthewall]

The ego is an energetic structure that the human brain creates, built on genetic bases after millions of years of evolution, and that is constantly evolving, like everything that lives. It feeds on the interconnection with all other egos through language, and its foundations are the survival of the human species. 

[Malekakisioannis]

@rachMiel I is the point of intersection between infinity and finitude. When you say "I want" you mean "let there be"

Edited September 3 by Malekakisioannis

[Salvijus]

1 hour ago, rachMiel said:

All this tawk about God, it's giving me a growing-up-Catholic flashback! 

What is the self, what does it want?   

To serve the self is the only desire. The perception that you're only body and personality corrupts the desire to serve the Self which is everything. Into serving only itself. 

[rachMiel]

54 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

[ego's] foundations are the survival of the human species      

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

[rachMiel]

1 hour ago, Malekakisioannis said:

I is the point of intersection between infinity and finitude 

Like this thanks! 

[rachMiel]

48 minutes ago, Salvijus said:

To serve the self is the only desire. The perception that you're only body and personality corrupts the desire to serve the Self which is everything. Into serving only itself

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? 

[Yimpa]

1 hour ago, rachMiel said:

All this tawk about God, it's giving me a growing-up-Catholic flashback! 

What is the self, what does it want?   

My best friend in Catholic school was Hindu. 

This was a glimpse into the possibility that what is different does not necessarily mean is it wrong.

[Breakingthewall]

7 minutes ago, rachMiel said:

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

 

It depends on how you look at it. 100,000 years ago, humans were another species fighting against extinction, and like other species, they could disappear at any moment. The average life of a species is 500 thousand years, many last less, others longer.

Now humans are the dominant species on the planet and their projection is the conquest of other planets, galaxies, the dominance of matter, biology, immortality. It doesn't seem like the ego is doing it wrong.

[Salvijus]

18 minutes ago, rachMiel said:

What is your meaning: to serve the Self? How does it differ from serving the self? 

Every desire is in service to something. Either it is in service to the body. Or it is in service to the mind. Or it is in service to universal Self. What you identify with, that will your desire serve.

One who identifies with everything, his/her actions become all inclusive, wholesome. One who identifies with something less than everything, forms an ego identity. Then desires get geared to serve only personal interests. Aka, selfishness. 

 

[gettoefl]

2 hours ago, rachMiel said:

All this tawk about God, it's giving me a growing-up-Catholic flashback! 

What is the self, what does it want?   

I claim the best life ever lived, I deserve it, I am worthy, I am special, I am needed, I am sanctified, I am the one the world has waited for, I am existence's finest ever accomplishment, I am the culmination of the space time continuum's most exalted configuration, I am the number one

I take nothing less and all else is taken as a sneering mockery of my blazing magnificence

[rachMiel]

 

30 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

doesn't seem like the ego is doing it wrong

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. 

[rachMiel]

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

[gettoefl]

2 minutes ago, rachMiel said:

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

All ego, amigo