Self awareness

[the_end_of_me]

First off, I'm into self improvement and becoming more aware of the self, whatever that is. Sometimes during journaling and daily reviews, I notice I tend to watch "myself" do irrational things but are either too lazy or weak to stop it.

Who is doing the irrational things, and who is watching it? 

For example, I am in the midst of quitting smoking. Again. When I was still smoking cigarettes, I usually craved and enjoyed the first two or three of the day. For the last year, I had worked my way down to only 5-6 per day and only at work. After the first few of the day, the next 2 or 3 would get increasingly more disgusting. They would taste horrible, make my mouth feel gross, and make my throat feel like scorched sandpaper. I would scorn myself for not stopping at the first few of the day. For sometimes doing it out of complete boredom, not even so much the addiction anymore, outside of the first few of the day, of course. 

And yet I couldn't help "myself" from doing it. I was completely aware of what I was doing to the body and brain chemistry, and how disgusting it was and smelled, but it just kept happening. As if in auto mode. But that auto mode also seemed to have an opinion, and  it wanted it. It didn't care if it was gross or killing the body. It wanted to smoke. Either out of being tricked by the addition that it needed a cigarette to feel ok, or out of complete boredom, to pass the time.  I would literally be out there, cigarette in hand, telling myself that this is stupid as I go for another drag. 

Who was doing this? Opposing "my" wishes for health and survival? And who was the "me" who kept trying to stop it?  Are they both just more sides of my dualistic ego? They both feel like me, at least when one or the other is in action....and both seem to agree on the fact that they are "Justin" (my name). And I realize that Justin is just a very small part of my whole.  But even Justin seems to be hard to identify, as he seems to be a different person depending on the hands of the clock. 

[Nahm]

@the_end_of_me What’s a who? 

[the_end_of_me]

@Nahm hmm... I guess I don't know. It seems unanswerable. 

Edited June 2, 2018 by the_end_of_me

[Faceless]

Could it be perhaps an abstraction? A movement of thought. 

Edited June 2, 2018 by Faceless

[the_end_of_me]

@Faceless hmm... Im not sure I understand what movement of thought means... Could you rephrase it in another way? 

 

[Faceless]

8 minutes ago, the_end_of_me said:

@Faceless hmm... Im not sure I understand what movement of thought means... Could you rephrase it in another way? 

 

Well let’s start with this for example...

If you woke up tomorrow without ‘any’ memories of the past would you know who “you” were? 

 

[the_end_of_me]

No, I would be somebody else. The old me would be dead, but the only thing we would have in common is that we have shared the same body. 

Although neither "me's" existed in the first place, I understand that.  But someone or something still wants to be relevant, and I tend to pity the thing by trying to make it happy.

Edited June 3, 2018 by the_end_of_me

[Faceless]

11 minutes ago, the_end_of_me said:

No, I would be somebody else

It would take a series of memories to identify as an entity “i” 

if you had no capacity to remeber there would be no identification, would there? 

Knowledge, experience, through memory responds as a movement of thought/the thinker/The Who. 

See that deep in “your” bones? 

Edited June 3, 2018 by Faceless

[Ananta]

I had this same issue in the past. I smoked for many years, then vaped for 6 yrs. It seemed as though one part of me hated it and another loved it. It was an internal battle.

Anyways, my teacher said it was do to vasanas and which ever is strongest wins! So, if your vasana to smoke is stronger then your vasana for health, then it's a difficult condrum and the vasana to smoke will win. Vasanas can be neutralized though, if that's the case, then you could resist the need to act on them. I quit nicotine completely a year ago. 

So what are vasanas?

"Vasanas are a bundle of tendencies or desires which drive man to think, feel and act according to the nature of the vasanas. Thus, it would be perfectly right, to say that a man is what he is because of his vasanas. Vasanas create desires in the intellect. If the person does not use his discrimination but permits the desire to ‘gain strength’ or to ‘take root’, the intellect passes it on to the mind where the desire produces agitations. Emotions and feelings become so strong that the body is then ordered and forced to carry out actions to satisfy the desire!"

Extracted from “A manual of Self Unfoldment” by Swami Chinmayananda, pg 173

[the_end_of_me]

@Anna1 thank you, I had never heard of vasanas before, but seems easy to understand. Mine was definitely stronger to smoke than health for too long, and a half used box of patches finally started getting used again on Thursday last week and I don't plan on stopping. 

@Faceless you're right, I guess I should have said I would  soon become someone else, as a new set of memories would start forming immediately. But I can see that at the beginning I world not identify as anyone or anything. 

[BuddhaTree]

I understand that addictions are hard to lose (I still have some too), but I think you've already taken the first step to drop it.

You are conscious of that and that is great.