The difference between Self and Being

[Spiritual Warrior]

The Difference Between Self and Being

I'm about to start reading the next chapter in Peter Ralston book "The Book of Not Knowing" where it talks about what the difference is between self and being. Before I start, I'd like to theorize to get the blood flowing. Feel free to join in.

The Self: the self is a combination of thoughts/pictures that describe who I think that I am as this human being that navigates through life. For example, I have a name, I have blonde hair and a red beard, I am a short guy, I am well intentioned, I once drove my car past a stopped school bus and received a ticket, I sometimes act like the victim. In conclusion, anything and everything that has happened to this self are things that I identify with, this is my personal story and it all plays a role in who I am. Or so I think...

The Being: Now, here's the juicy one, what is being? The being that I am is the part of me that is able to perceive and experience things in life. It is NOT the experiences themselves which is what the self is identified with, it is the thing prior to the experiences, it is the part of me that makes experiencing these things possible. And it has no properties and no characteristics and no location, it just is, it is just "being." This is what I actually am.

Conclusion: We can confidentially say that the self is a false sense of identity and the being is the true identity. The self is made up of mental constructions that are... I was about to say fragile.... But to the self, they do not feel fragile at all. And here lies the issue, the constructions in my head that I identify with feel so very concrete in my life. I have been living like this for 30 years! I have to find a way to dis-identify with the false self. I want to take a bat to this self that I have constructed and smash it into a million pieces. 

Edited April 12 by Spiritual Warrior

[Leo Gura]

When Ralston says "self" he means lower-case self, not uppercase Self.

[Greatnestwithin]

13 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

When Ralston says "self" he means lower-case self, not uppercase Self.

@Leo Gurawhy you think he hasn't realized God?

[Spiritual Warrior]

@Leo Gura thanks

[Leo Gura]

6 minutes ago, Greatnestwithin said:

@Leo Gurawhy you think he hasn't realized God?

I don't say he hasn't. It's a question of degree and kind.

[UnbornTao]

A suggestion: turn it into an open question, without filling in the blanks. 

[Sugarcoat]

It’s hard to get enlightened because your brain is literally wired to produce a self illusion. It feels like a solid center, not pictures, because you feel solid not only like an image, but the solidity can be imbedded in the image so you’re identified with the image that thus becomes solid, if you can recognize the image then it means there’s a separation in your “self” , the observer and the image, and it’s a step to self dissolution, dissolving the self. But it’s hard to dissolve the core observer because that doesn’t feel like an image but as solid. It is required to exist for you to be able to feel like you’re having an experience. No self= no sense of experience, because experience is duality, (I think, I haven’t been without a self so I can’t know how that is but it makes sense)

Edited April 12 by Sugarcoat

[Leo Gura]

55 minutes ago, Sugarcoat said:

No self= no sense of experience, because experience is duality

No

[Breakingthewall]

The self is not an illusion. The fact that if you fall from a height of 10 meters, your bones will break is not an illusion; it's a reality. It's not a false self that you create because you're mistaken; it's your human identity, and it's absolutely real.

What you can do is open to your absolute nature, realize that the essence of who you are—your being, your core, your substance—is the substance of reality. You are the absolute and total reality, since any part of the absolute is the absolute; there are no parts. But the point insnt knowing that you are absolute, is perceiving yourself as absolute and perceive the quality of your nature . That doesn't mean you can jump off a fifth-floor without consequences.

Edited April 12 by Breakingthewall

[Sugarcoat]

43 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

No

Why? It makes sense. Ive been in states of almost no self (sounds weird) and to me it was like ~almost ~ having no sense of experience/reality (time, space etc) I thought to myself, “it’s almost like there’s no reality” so i assume total no self must be zero experience 

Edited April 12 by Sugarcoat

[Leo Gura]

19 minutes ago, Sugarcoat said:

Why? It makes sense. Ive been in states of almost no self (sounds weird) and to me it was like ~almost ~ having no sense of experience/reality (time, space etc) I thought to myself, “it’s almost like there’s no reality” so i assume total no self must be zero experience 

Imagine nothing changes about your experience other that there is no sense of self to it. That's what no-self means. It does not mean lack of experience.

When you were a baby you had experience but no self. Animals also have experience but no self.

Edited April 12 by Leo Gura

[Hojo]

Self has to do with memory. No memory no person existing, just existing. If you want to destroy yourself you destroy your memory by not engaging with mind. Your mind is constantly asking if something is true all day let it ask but dont answer. You dont know you dont exist.

Edited April 12 by Hojo

[Breakingthewall]

The difference between self and being is that self is created by barriers and has a form, while being has no form. The substance of the self is being, and being can exist without barriers or with them. An animal has a self, since it differentiates between good and bad for it's survival. The bias is the structure of the self, and its structural basis is survival. From here, a system of energetic barriers is created, which can be simple, as in the case of a tuna, or complex, as in the case of a human. 

Being without any structure is the absolute being, but being without structure is not an experience because it is not happening. Happening needs movement, and movement needs form. Without form there is no time, and the no time is not happening, even it's so real than the reality in movement.  Time is just subjective, same than experience . The absolute doesn't need experience to exist.  Experience is conciousness, without time there is not conciousness, but the absolute is.

Give to the self the meaning of the belief of what you are is wrong, this is just a layer of the self, it's exactly the same than hunger, just in another frequency 

Edited April 12 by Breakingthewall

[Malekakisioannis]

@Leo Gura thats a new one from leo the solipsist.

"Animals have experience"

-Leo Gura

I will make this into a quote and post it on my wall.

[Unlimited]

19 minutes ago, Malekakisioannis said:

@Leo Gura thats a new one from leo the solipsist.

"Animals have experience"

-Leo Gura

I will make this into a quote and post it on my wall.

But then you are the one who imagines the animals.

And I am the one who imagines that you imagine the animals.

[Sugarcoat]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Imagine nothing changes about your experience other that there is no sense of self to it. That's what no-self means. It does not mean lack of experience.

When you were a baby you had experience but no self. Animals also have experience but no self.

Ok but if reality is nothing then no experience and experience is the same or something like that. Also I thought babies had no experience because they lack self awareness

[Breakingthewall]

22 minutes ago, Sugarcoat said:

Ok but if reality is nothing then no experience and experience is the same or something like that. Also I thought babies had no experience because they lack self awareness

Experience is the same than consciousness. Conciousness is the absolute observing itself. Conciousness is something that the absolute does,  not the absolute. Of course the substance of consciousness, or experience, is the absolute, but the experience itself is relative movement. That's why it's difficult to open yourself to the absolute, because we identify ourselves with the experience, because the experience is what is happening and we can't think in other dimension than the dimension of happening 

Edited April 12 by Breakingthewall

[gettoefl]

11 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

Experience is the same than consciousness. Conciousness is the absolute observing itself. Conciousness is something that the absolute does,  not the absolute. Of course the substance of consciousness, or experience, is the absolute, but the experience itself is relative movement. That's why it's difficult to open yourself to the absolute, because we identify ourselves with the experience, because the experience is what is happening and we can't think in other dimension than the dimension of happening 

We all mistake ourselves as the experiencer, the part rather than the whole. And we don't see it possible to do anything else. I need to do me and look after me. A good pointer is instead of identifying with the consciousness, the doing, identify more with the awareness, the being, the true self. I am here to do nothing. Things like habits will happen through me but they are no big deal. The absolute will guide me and lead me much better than I ever can. I am here to be used. It's all me anyway so if I give I gain. I don't need to worry about myself. Here isn't my home and I am merely passing through to return my true home.

[Davino]

5 hours ago, Sugarcoat said:

Why? It makes sense. Ive been in states of almost no self (sounds weird) and to me it was like ~almost ~ having no sense of experience/reality (time, space etc) I thought to myself, “it’s almost like there’s no reality” so i assume total no self must be zero experience 

Don't confuse cessation with no-self.

Just by the virtue that Buddhist care about these two states of consciousness does not make an existential correlation between them.

[Davino]

4 hours ago, Hojo said:

Self has to do with memory. No memory no person existing, just existing. If you want to destroy yourself you destroy your memory by not engaging with mind. Your mind is constantly asking if something is true all day let it ask but dont answer. You dont know you dont exist.

There's a strong correlation between ego and memory but there are layers of ego that hold even without memory. In the same way, one can be in no-self and still have memories, like clouds fly in the sky.