Rupert Spira on thoughts

[andyjohnsonman]

 

 

Rupert talks about how whatever we take ourselves to be we enquire into this as we are experiencing it. To most people the self is awareness plus thoughts, feelings and perceptions but none of these are essential to what we are as they are constantly changing. Everything is constantly changing a tree is not the same today as it is tomorrow - maybe fundamentally we are that which is constantly changing and therefore we are our thoughts. A thought is an experience as you are experiencing your thought and Spira talks about that which you experience is real so why are we not our thoughts? The whole idea of self enquiry is to use thought to get to what you are so the argument of not being able to understand this rationally can't really be given. 

[Nadosa]

How can anything that comes and goes be you?

Edited March 19, 2020 by Nadosa

[andyjohnsonman]

My thinking is you could be impermanence just like everything else which comes and goes which is defined as them. Every species alive comes and goes constantly changing from the cells in their body to the thoughts they are having, with this defining them. Why can't you be that which is changing? Why can't you be thoughts you are experiencing as they are real and you experience them? I'm more playing devils advocate rather than this being my definitive stance but it is interesting how in spirituality this point seems to be neglected for being seen as too rational, but self enquiry is using rationality to find what you really are.  

[Spaceofawareness]

What if there is no you? There is the image of you, in the self model. What the concept of “you” is, is an essence or location from which awareness resides and a “who” to which awareness belongs. But, without a who or where as the source of this awareness, it is left locationless and universal not personal. The whole idea of a self is a concept which needs to drop away somehow. 

Before, you took yourself to be the ego, the sense of a person, which the self model had constructed to make its way in the world, an entity which has likes, dislikes, limitations, can run a certain speed, can jump a certain height, is a certain age, has a certain skin colour, a certain hair colour, eye colour, with a certain job, a certain demeanour. This was you, or what you took yourself to be. Mostly these characteristics were stable. But, thanks to memory, over time, it seemed like many of these aspects you took to be an essential part of who you were, began to change, so slowly you never realised until they had changed completely, and, as the self model continually updated these newer characteristics, you never questioned the “new” you, until you looked back at who you were, as a child, a young person, and compared it to who you take yourself to be now and realise the two have great differences. Yet, you still feel yourself to be the same one as that one back then.

Maybe what you think you are isn’t that which you feel to be, but rather, what you are told you are by this self model. Maybe, there is no you, no essence, just a localised awareness believing it is a self.

[andyjohnsonman]

Yea you described the stance that is conceived within all spirituality. I am aware of this stance but i'm contemplating it's flaws. The flaw I see is I could be awareness or i could be awareness and thoughts feelings and perceptions. I guess the main point I am trying to make is why cant The Self be that which is always changing? Just because something changes doesn't mean it doesn't exist or isn't real. Or maybe it does? I am just contemplating this rather than having fixed thinking, but up to now I can't see why it wouldn't be the case.

[Spaceofawareness]

@andyjohnsonman if you are able to collapse the distinction of self and other, essentially non dual awareness, you will be awareness AND everything it perceives, supposedly. I haven’t experienced this so I can’t confirm, though that is what others say. So, there are two options, you are nothing, but awareness, or you are everything.

It seems the self other distinction is strongly tied to the conceptual world, which is a world of things, a thing being something separate and distinct from the self. This might be why those who are steeped in non dual teachings seem to have such contradictory ways of communicating, as, when self and other become non dual, contradictions and impossibilities unravel. But then, that is from a limited dual perspective, from that non dual perspective (if a perspective is possible, as that would entail a single point projecting out at a world) it might be totally consistent.

[Nadosa]

3 hours ago, andyjohnsonman said:

Yea you described the stance that is conceived within all spirituality. I am aware of this stance but i'm contemplating it's flaws. The flaw I see is I could be awareness or i could be awareness and thoughts feelings and perceptions. I guess the main point I am trying to make is why cant The Self be that which is always changing? Just because something changes doesn't mean it doesn't exist or isn't real. Or maybe it does? I am just contemplating this rather than having fixed thinking, but up to now I can't see why it wouldn't be the case.

Not rationality. Only direct experience can give you a taste of what you truly are.