Polishing the self-image (and success is not your proof)
In a comment to A damnable heresy recently, I stated that:
The problem really is that people study this subject for a short while and then quickly conclude that they basically know what they’re doing. Sure, they’ll often claim that they’re humble, and that they know they’re still a beginner, and that they’ll never stop learning, but from very early on they assume that they’re basically on the right track.
and that:
What a lot of people do, instead of looking past the self-image, is just to polish it. They make actions as if they are trying to genuinely “assess” the self-image, but the problem is that they’re trying to assess it from a position of valuing their self-image in the first place, and that’s going to distort their perception.
By a startling coincidence, a prime example of both mistakes has just appeared over on Lashtal.com.
“IAO131” or “Aum418” will be familiar to readers of this blog as a classic example of a newcomer to Thelema rapidly getting ideas above their station and a vastly overinflated perception of their own understanding.
A recent thread over at Lastal.com has dealt with, amongst other things, the nature of the “true will” and the question of distinguishing fantasy from reality, which we have often covered in depth on this site. In one post, “IAO131” asks:
how would one know whether one is acting out of one’s ‘real/true nature’ anyhow?
Leaving aside the rather odd spectacle of a self-professed “authority” on Thelema (although not the sole authority on Thelema, in his own words) apparently not having the first clue as to how one would determine whether or not one was acting in accordance with one’s actual nature, we can examine the source of his confusion, which he conveniently supplies for us:
Most fantasies dont have ‘facts’ to contradict them.
What we have here is a great example of “polishing the self-image”. What IAO131 wants to do here is compare fantasies with other qualititatively similar phenomena, and somehow judge between them. As we said in the aforementioned comment, this is completely the wrong track:
So, you’re starting off looking at “evidence” which is actually just some mental wanking about how you think you’d act in a particular situation, and how you think you’d act is going to be primarily determined by your idea of how you’d like to act, which is itself coming from your self-image…In other words, you’re assessing some mental nonsense by paying attention to more mental nonsense, and you’re polishing your self-image…To get out of this you have to take a qualitatively different approach. You can’t just do exactly what you’ve been doing and kid yourself that you’re just doing it better, that you see more clearly now you’re a super-special Thelemite with knowledge of subtle occult forces. As long as you’re placing any importance at all on that self-image, you’re always just wanking, no matter how refined you think you have things now.
There are no facts to “contradict” the fantasies of self-image, and IAO131’s misconception and lack of experience in this area is why he’s experiencing so much difficulty understanding what the primary antagonist in that thread – “Los” – is generally quite correctly presenting. What there are are facts to pay attention to instead of the fantasies of self-image. In the words of The Book of the Law, it is a “great miss” to attempt to discover which of your fantasies are relatively accurate, and which are not: they’re all inaccurate, because they’re all fantasies.
IAO131 borrows an example from Los and states:
Yes, we might think we are a people person and find, in fact, we arent but this is the exact process most of us go through: we find what works and discard what doesnt. In that sense, following various ideals will lead us to ourselves…
Here we see quite clearly that what he’s talking about is attempting to refine the self-image: “following various ideals will lead us to ourselves.” Ironically, he’s at the edge of spotting the error in his thinking himself, because he immediately follows this up with:
this brings me to another point. Do we even have a ‘true nature’ or a ‘real nature’?
Any concept of “real” or “true” nature is bound to be nonsensical if one thinks the way to discover it is to evaluate one fantasy against another. But, instead of thinking, “well, maybe I’m not really understanding what ‘discovering the true will’ actually entails if the understanding I think I have is so self-evidently silly” he instead rejects the whole idea, and goes on to repeat another of the absurd ideas self-professed Thelemites suffer from these days:
And, like I said, if success is your proof, and falsity is successful…then why should we even bother to be ‘true’ or ‘real’?
This echoes another subject the thread in question touched on, which was the issue of “reality” in itself. IAO131 professes to advocate what he calls “pragmatism” which, in his own words, means “what works is provisionally ‘true'”.
Any half-alert amateur philosopher will be able to immediately spot the gaping flaw in this argument, which is that in order to determine whether or not something “works”, you have to be able to determine whether or not the statement “it works” is actually true. Earlier in the thread IAO131 asked:
How does one distinguish one’s ‘real nature’ beyond saying its ‘not fantasy’ which is basically the same as saying its ‘real’ which is another tautology.
As we’ve described before, people get themselves into all kinds of trouble by failing to comprehend basic terminology and believing themselves to have discovered some kind of truth when in fact that have merely discovered an amusing word game. The issue here is that IAO131 fails to understand that “fantasy” in this context means “imaginary”, and that “reality” – when use in conjunction with the former term – means “non-imaginary”. Since most half-way competent individuals will have no difficulty at all distinguishing, for instance, a real apple from an imagination of an apple it is certainly not a mere “tautology” to state that fantasy can be recognized as fantasy because it is, indeed, imaginary. To call it a tautology makes no more sense than to label the statement “that’s a cat” in the same way, purely on the grounds that “it’s only a cat because ‘cat’ is the word you give to such things. If you used the word ‘dog’ to describe such things then it would be something else. Your statement means nothing.”
If, as IAO131 does, you lack the ability to reliably distinguish fantasy from reality, then success is most certainly not your “proof”. An example I have used previously asks that if I perform a raindance, and it rains shortly afterwards, is that “success” that “proves” the efficacy of my raindance? It most certainly is not, and this demonstrates that if you attempt to distinguish what is “true” on the basis of what “works” you’re going to end up talking gibberish, because to determine the latter you first need to determine the former.
Like so many others, IAO131 has completely confused himself with this issue of “reality”, insisting as he does that it must refer to some metaphysical concept of the kind Bishop Berkeley like to indulge in. What “pragmatism” actually refers to is the idea that any sensible concept of truth can only be determined through observable consequences. In a nutshell, it involves the line of reasoning that if something has no observable consequences, and its effects can never be felt, then not only can its “truth” never be determined but that even if it could it would be irrelevant, because it wouldn’t affect anything we can actually observe. For instance, we might observe some strange interactions between particles at a quantum level, and what pragmatism would suggest is that the only measure of “truth” we can ever hope to arrive at is essentially a description of how those particles actually do interact, as opposed to speculating on the nature of the “underlying reality” which causes them to interact in that way. What pragamatism is most certainly not is some vague newage idea that if we attempt to evoke demons and demons “seem to appear” then we can justify the statement that “demons are real” because our evocation “worked”. The real key to pragmatism is the observation, and a fundamental part of observation is figuring out what actually is happening as opposed to what we think might be happening. And, once more, we need a reliable way to determine that and hence we need to discover a measure of “truth” before we can do that.
What sounds like a paradox turns out to be – yet again – the result of word game confusion, because there’s truth and then there’s truth; or, alternatively, there’s reality and then there’s reality. We can easily distinguish between a real apple and an imagination of an apple, just as easily as we can distinguish between a real demon (if such a thing existed, that is) and the imagination of a demon. With that ability, we have accomplished our objective of distinguishing fantasy from reality, of distinguishing “imaginary” from “non-imaginary”. Then, armed with that knowledge, we can plug our “non-imaginary” observations into the type of framework that pragmatism would suggest and come up with some kind of underlying explanation which would attempt to provide a measure of some other type of reality than the one we just figured out. Pragmatism, despite IAO131’s protestations, does not get us out of having to distinguish fantasy from reality, and it does not enable us to resolve that question on the basis of “what works”. Those who continually peddle the “success if your proof” mantra are actually only saying “I justify my beliefs by believing that they bring me success.” To then go on to criticize others of propagating “tautologies” is simply bizarre.
So, to go back to the point with which we opened this entry, what we have is a self-professed “authority” on Thelema who is clearly not on the right track at all, because he has not yet grasped the very fundamental importance of distinguishing fantasy from reality; indeed, he lacks a good understanding of what “fantasy” actually means in this context, putting him squarely into the “you’re assessing some mental nonsense by paying attention to more mental nonsense” category which results from the insulated lack of any objective experience of your self-image being clearly wrong, and hence a failure to grasp the nature of the raw material that the Thelemite is supposed to be working with. The continual comments about “how would one know whether one is acting out of one’s ‘real/true nature'” and “Do we even have a ‘true nature’ or a ‘real nature’?” cements this observation, because anybody who does have a good grasp of the raw material being worked on is going to have personally observed that real nature and is going to have personally observed the self-image that is so often mistaken for it, and will have direct experience of the extent to which the two can diverge. It’s a qualitative distinction which is all but impossible to successfully communicate unless the individual receiving that communication already has at least some relevant experience upon which to hang the words.
This is precisely how people get willingly off track, by failing to have the relevant experience necessary to understand what is being communicated. But, instead of considering the possibility that maybe it is their lack of relevant experience that is preventing someone from understanding (which really should be the first thing to occur to a newcomer) it is merely discarded as being spurious and some other nonsensical poorly-conceived theory is put in its place. Now, what ideally should happen is that one day such a person does acquire some relevant experience, and at that point he can reflect: “Aha! So that’s what he was talking about!” and throws their spurious alternatives where they belong. It’s considerably harder – but not impossible – to do this when you’re already convinced you were on the right track to begin with, because you’re going to be less receptive to the evidence.
The correct track, as we have repeatedly stated, is to discard the fantasies altogether, and to focus the attention instead upon what is real. IAO131 suggests some weird process of “following various ideals” in order to discover whether or not one really is a “people person”, but a far more sensible alternative is to simply pay attention to how you actually react in the company of others. He says that “I recognize how simple it sounds in words put into practice, I feel its quite meaningless,” because “this is the exact process most of us go through: we find what works and discard what doesnt” (incidentally rubbishing his own “pragmatism” approach in the process, which advocates doing just that). But that isn’t the “exact process most of us go through” at all, because “most of us” omit the fundamental practice of distinguishing fantasy from reality, and focus on what we think is going on instead of what actually is going on. It does indeed sound “simple in words”, but the difficulty is not the simple process of observation itself, but the ability to distinguish what is imaginary from what is not. Without this ability, we shouldn’t be surprised if it seems “quite meaningless” in practice, because without that fundamental element, it is meaningless, and misses the whole point of Thelema.
The correct approach is to altogether abandon the tendency to tell yourself nice stories about yourself, and to forget about getting your “self-image” right. Instead, bypass the fantasy altogether and get straight to the reality. Why insist on obscuring reality by perceiving it through a veil of murky mental guff? Of course, as the number of observations grows, you will be able to draw tentative conclusions about what the will is, i.e., about what the preferences of the self are. But this is not “self-image”. It’s no more a story about what type of person you are than the statement “I don’t like sausages” is. There aren’t many people around who feel proud of the fact that they don’t like sausages but that they do like cheese, and there aren’t many people who will go around feeling self-satisfied and “fulfilled” armed with that knowledge. Yet, change it slightly to “I like helping people,” or “I don’t like people being cruel to animals,” or “I’d like to be a politician” and that’s exactly what people go around feeling, and they call it “self-knowledge”. Self-image in its entirety is enormously unnecessary, always distracting, and always a product of the mind, and it is a grave error for anybody to mistake this for “will”, certainly for anybody who wants to be taken seriously as an “authority” on Thelema.
12 Comments on “Polishing the self-image (and success is not your proof)”
93,
Did you bother to read the first post where I announced I would play devil’s advocate with Los? Are you aware of the private messages between myself and Los where we actually speak about I really think? Do you find it disingenuous to attack someone for believing something when theyre merely stating it as a Devil’s advocate technique to try to get Los to say what he means in the first place?
Of course not, Erwin. You will sit here on your own blog and criticize people and have 2-3 recurring visitors who, for some reason, enjoy their masochistic relationship with yourself, instead of simply messaging me a complaint, posting on the forum, or, say, handling the whole thing like an adult and not name-calling incessantly. You arent doing anything close to ‘removing dogma from Thelema’ with your blogs, all you are doing is injecting malicious annoyance into the debate along with COMPLETE misunderstandings of people’s positions.
Once again, read closely, Erwin, and you might begin to understand other people’s positions. They arent as black adn white as you think, though, so you MAY have to strain your little brain a little bit to understand things. Sorry about that, but thats the way it is.
IAO131
93,
By the way Erwin, I never claimed to be an “authority” on Thelema. Youre the one who claims to be 8=3 like a pretentious kitty kat pretending it has claws. I simply create and people listen, you simply whine and give yourself titles and labels.
Even if I was an authority, most other adults come to me and speak to me when they disagree or have different ideas. Instead you preciously pontificate to yourself – its quite cute, really, and certainly flattering to see my name come up so many times in a delusional rant. You could’ve saved yourself a lot of breath (or typing) if you simply read clearly, read the entire thread, and didnt simply jump at any opportunity to call other people wrong and idiotic.
IAO131
Did you bother to read the first post where I announced I would play devil’s advocate with Los?
You mean this post? The one where you claim you’re going to “play Devil’s Advocate in this post” (which, incidentally, was not the “first post” at all)? “This post” being one I didn’t quote, and which regardless has nothing at all to do with anything I was talking about in this here current entry? That’s the “first post” you’re talking about, right?
Nice try, Chuckles, but you’re going to have to be a lot less stupid than that if you want to try and get one past me. You ought to know that by now.
Are you aware of the private messages between myself and Los where we actually speak about I really think?
I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about what private messages you send to anyone. I’m going to call you on the crap you write in public. If you don’t believe the crap you write in public, then either (a) don’t write that kind of crap in public; or (b) quit complaining when someone correctly identifies it as the crap that it is.
Do you find it disingenuous to attack someone for believing something when theyre merely stating it as a Devil’s advocate technique to try to get Los to say what he means in the first place?
I’ll tell you what I do find “disingenuous” – saying that you’re going to “play Devil’s Advocate” in one post and then trying to argue that you don’t really believe absolutely everything else you’ve written, especially when we’re talking about (erroneous) views which you’ve repeatedly stated in many other places on many different occasions. It’s a classic device of the archetypal internet weasel, and you know you’re in trouble when that’s what you have to stoop to doing in a hamfisted attempt to conceal your own foolishness.
Los was doing a perfectly good job of “say[ing] what he means in the first place” as it was. Repeated explanation on his part only seemed to be necessary because you couldn’t understand what he was talking about. This is how you usually operate, it’s nothing new – you lack both the knowledge and the experience to effectively “play Devil’s Advocate” in a discussion which clearly goes above your head. What you should have been doing is just listening and trying to understand what he was saying, since that would give you at least a fighting chance of actually learning something.
As I’ve told you before, I really couldn’t care less about whether or not you like being criticized. If you don’t like your views subjected to criticism, and you don’t like being called on your nonsense, then don’t post your nonsensical views to public forums. You’re completely wasting your time looking for sympathy from me, even if it wasn’t for the fact that while you routinely cry and whine about the criticism you get, you never seem to have much of a problem giving it to others. How about you take some of that “as brothers fight ye” and “opposition is the true friendship” advice that you continually and hypocritically dole out to everyone else? You know, you’re not going to generate much sympathy or respect from anyone if you habitually criticize others and then immediately whine and cry like an infant whenever someone does it to you. What you need to do is to learn to take your own medicine.
instead of simply messaging me a complaint
“Messaging [you] a complaint”? Really, who talks like that? I don’t give a hoot what you write about, certainly not on someone else’s forum, and I definitely don’t care about it enough to “complain” about it to anyone – least of all to you. You might want to try taking yourself a little less seriously in future; you’ll look less of a self-righteous little twit that way. Refraining from posting petulant responses like the one you just posted will have a similarly positive effect on your public image.
posting on the forum
Yeah, because lord knows it’s clearly completely irrational of me to write on my own blog, right? Especially when it directly relates to another recent blog entry. What on earth can I have been thinking, eh?
handling the whole thing like an adult and not name-calling incessantly
It’s not “name-calling” to correctly describe an inexperienced upstart with delusions of grandeur as an inexperienced upstart with delusions of grandeur. It’s only “name-calling” when you don’t like being correctly identified in that manner, and you’re just going to have to get over it. I made a general observation on another post, you almost immediately provided a perfect illustration, and I correctly and appropriately highlighted that. If you don’t like it, too bad – try to be less of a perfect illustration in future, if it bothers you that much.
all you are doing is injecting malicious annoyance into the debate along with COMPLETE misunderstandings of people’s positions. Once again, read closely, Erwin, and you might begin to understand other people’s positions.
My goodness, I wouldn’t walk near any big magnets with irony like that, if I were you. We can add “unbelievably warped self-image and total lack of self-insight” to the list of things from my previous blog entry that you exemplify, now. Do you want to try and make it four?
By the way Erwin, I never claimed to be an “authority” on Thelema.
Yes, you did – you claimed to not be “the sole authority on Thelema” in that ridiculous snivelling podcast you did. To claim you aren’t the sole authority implies a claim that you are an authority.
If, on the other hand, you’re saying that you’d like to go on record as denying that you think you’re an authority on Thelema, then you’re more than welcome to do that here. Is that what you want to do?
Youre the one who claims to be 8=3 like a pretentious kitty kat pretending it has claws
So much for “not name-calling incessantly”, eh? You do seem to have an inordinate problem with taking your own advice, don’t you?
I simply create and people listen, you simply whine and give yourself titles and labels.
Well, we both know at least one person who avidly listens to me, don’t we? This post wasn’t up for a day before you jumped in responding to it. Twice, now.
As for “creation”, taking what other people have created and wrapping it up in a shit-coloured cover really doesn’t qualify.
most other adults come to me and speak to me when they disagree or have different ideas
“Most other adults” come and speak to you when they “have different ideas”? Good grief, your delusions are worse than I thought.
I don’t write for your benefit, sonny. If you don’t like me disagreeing with you then you can come and find me, not the other way round. The fact that this is exactly what you had to do should prove that to you.
Instead you preciously pontificate to yourself
You mean I write on my own blog? How shocking! Naturally, I should restrict all my writings to private messages to you. That way you can repackage them later as your own ideas and call it “creation”. Wait a minute – why does that sound familiar?
its quite cute, really, and certainly flattering to see my name come up so many times
It was a post about you. Of course your name is going to come up several times, you utter dimwit. No wonder you have such an overinflated sense of your own importance if you think this type of post is “flattering”.
Always a pleasure, Master Erwin.
Satyr
“Maliciously annoyed by precious pontifications since 1998”
Long time no see. Where’ve you been hiding out all this time?
Oh, I’ve been here and there, mostly far, far away from occult circles – and generally the better for it.
You’re doing one Hell of a thankless job on this blog, but I heard from a former Caliphyte that she’d made you required reading for anyone interested in Thelema. Perhaps there’s hope for these fools after all.
How’s life your end?
mostly far, far away from occult circles – and generally the better for it.
Amen to that.
You’re doing one Hell of a thankless job
So what’s new?
but I heard from a former Caliphyte that she’d made you required reading for anyone interested in Thelema
Is that this Berkeley “class” I keep hearing about? Someone told me one of my essays was on the reading list. Then again, I also heard that a bunch of Mr 131’s ramblings were also on there, so I’m not entirely sure what to make of it, but I guess it’s probably a positive development in the scheme of things if someone’s at least trying to take it seriously.
How’s life your end?
Peachy, as ever. The sun is shining, the leaves are on the trees, and I haven’t had to find out who’d win a fight between my car and a moose, yet.
all you are doing is injecting malicious annoyance into the debate along with COMPLETE misunderstandings of people’s positions
Here’s another prime example from the same thread of you doing exactly what I said you were doing:
You say that you’d “like to hear an answer that isnt a rewrite of old posts”, but the problem is that you are just completely failing to understand what those “old posts” say.
Your problem, in a nutshell, is that you’re trying to think your way to the will. You’re getting trapped in definitions, and you appear to think that finding the will is a process of getting the definitions right, and it isn’t: “The will is what is not fantasy, what is fantasy is not real, what is real is the will, the will is what is real and what is real is not fantasy” The only reason you think it’s “talking in circles” is because you lack the relevant practical experience to understand what is being discussed.
When you say that “all you have as a definition is firstly, what you consider fantasy” you’re demonstrating this lack of practical experience, because anybody who does have practical experience will know that you don’t just have a definition at all – you have a practical ability of identifying fantasy. It is, in fact, easy to do, and it’s easy to do without sitting around thinking about how you’re going to define what you’re doing. All that’s happening here is that you’re utterly confusing yourself by paying attention to your nonsensical thoughts instead of to what’s actually happening.
When you identify fantasy in this context, you don’t do it by “defining what is not real in a ‘negative’ way” – you identify things that look like fantasies. As you keep getting told, it’s really easy to determine imaginary things from non-imaginary things because they don’t look anything like each other – you can’t take an imaginary six-inch nail and hammer it into your head, for instance. Much of the time it’s an absolutely trivial exercise, and the only way to confuse yourself so completely as you are doing is to pay attention to definitions instead of to what’s actually going on. The reason you’re having such difficulty understanding what’s being said, and the reason you think the argument is “circular”, is simply because you lack the relevant practical experience to understand what those definitions actually mean, and because you don’t understand what they mean you’re all over the place trying to make sense of what’s going on. You’re focusing exclusively on the definitions and failing to look at the things those definitions actually represent. You’re the classic example of someone failing to listen to the old “finger pointing a way to the moon” chestnut.
Seriously now, this is a very simple concept and to an extent it’s something that everybody does every day. The fact that you’re having such extreme problems grasping what’s being discussed reveals how much elementary knowledge and experience you lack, that you’re right at the bottom of the attainment ladder (which is where you’d expect someone of your tenure and station in life to be, so there’s no cause for shame) and that you have a long way to go in this field. You can bluster and complain about that if you like, but for as long as you have a vastly overinflated perception of your own understanding and abilities, and for as long as you waste your time thinking about how things must be instead of how they actually are, then you’re not going to make any progress. You’re really out of your depth in this type of discussion, and what you need to be doing is listening and trying to understand instead of arguing and pretending that you know something useful. Of course, if you don’t want to make any progress, then by all means continue to knock yourself out.
Erwin wrote: “The continual comments about “how would one know whether one is acting out of one’s ‘real/true nature’” and “Do we even have a ‘true nature’ or a ‘real nature’?” cements this observation, because anybody who does have a good grasp of the raw material being worked on is going to have personally observed that real nature and is going to have personally observed the self-image that is so often mistaken for it, and will have direct experience of the extent to which the two can diverge.”
In my experience, even before personally observing that “real nature”, it was possible to get a basic grasp of these concepts. Once one understands that what we think about reality is not reality itself, that our thoughts are illusions the mind creates in an attempt to model what is actually real, then it becomes pretty straightforward to recognize that self-image is just another illusion to be dismissed.
The question “do we even have a “true nature”” is irrelevant, because the answer, whether yes or no, is dependent on defining what one means by “true nature”, and since that definition is a thought created by the mind in an attempt to model what is actually real, it too is a fantasy to be dismissed. Just thinking about how thoughts are not real (not as much a paradox as it may seem) can go a long way.
For people whose sense of self is heavily dependent on image, ‘what they are’ and what they think and feel, this is an entirely frightening perspective. All their words and ideas, the foundation of their self image, become essentially meaningless fantasies to be discarded, and for many, it may appear that there’s nothing left. Which of course is another illusion… Erwin, you once told me something that’s relevant here: “It’s not what you are that’s important, and it’s not what you feel, either: it’s what you do, because action is the only thing that exists.”
In my experience, even before personally observing that “real nature”, it was possible to get a basic grasp of these concepts. Once one understands that what we think about reality is not reality itself, that our thoughts are illusions the mind creates in an attempt to model what is actually real, then it becomes pretty straightforward to recognize that self-image is just another illusion to be dismissed.
You’re right, although I’m not sure I’d agree it’s so “straightforward” as you imply. There are certainly plenty of times in which the opportunity is easily there to recognise the difference between reality and what we think is reality, and so if I say to someone that “self-image is just another illusion to be dismissed” then sure, that’s going to have some meaning to them.
What’s not so straightforward is actually figuring out what this means to you, in real and concrete terms. Understanding that idea in abstract terms is very different to actually being able to directly perceive your own self-image doing what it does, and from the perspective of Thelema as an actual functioning scheme this is a critical distinction.
Routinely what happens is this: people identify some factor of their self-image that is illusory, and for the sake of argument, let’s assume that they can successfully discard that illusion. Maybe they get two or three of those things that seem significant. Then, consciously or unconsciously, what they inevitably think is “right, now I understand my self!”
Then, time passes, you talk to them a little more, and they start coming out with things like, “I’m really annoyed with myself, I found myself paying attention to this illusion the other day, and I really ought to be over doing that sort of thing by now.” You point out to them what they’re doing, and they think “crap! I guess I didn’t really understand myself at all!” But then, sooner or later – and again, consciously or otherwise – the sequel almost inevitably comes: “but now I do!”
This continues, going round and round and round, until they either die, or finally realise that the point is not really to “dismiss” illusions in the sense of getting rid of them, but to stop believing in them. In other words, they need to realise that whatever that thing is that thinks it ought to be acting in this way or the other, and then gets upset with itself when it doesn’t, is not the self. It’s the mind, and it really doesn’t matter a crap how much the mind wants to hold itself to some imaginary standard once it stops believing that it’s the self. Once you start to figure out that that’s just what the mind does, that’s when you really start to “get” the issue of self-image, because that’s when you start to actually see that it’s not just a question of discarding illusions, but a question of perceiving that the whole structure is just a house of cards, that the whole big picture it’s presenting you with is false, not just the details. For as long as you are identifying with that mind, no amount of rational understanding of the “illusions of self-image” is really going to convey the crux of the matter to you, and that’s why I say it’s not quite so “straightforward” to get this. It is, of course, always possible to get indications, and that’s a good thing too, because if it wasn’t you’d never be able to get where you’re going except by chance.
The question “do we even have a “true nature”” is irrelevant, because the answer, whether yes or no, is dependent on defining what one means by “true nature”, and since that definition is a thought created by the mind in an attempt to model what is actually real, it too is a fantasy to be dismissed.
Well, it is, and it isn’t. Thoughts actually are real – thoughts are real thoughts – but it’s being able to distinguish between a thought of what is real and what is actually real that’s important. This is the perennial problem – it’s all well and good saying that everything is an illusion, but you still need a way to get from A to B, and the fact is that you just have to find a way to sensibly work with the mind, so dismissing all mental constructs whatsoever is never going to work. The important thing is to take those mental constructs for what they actually are, and not mistaking them for the things that they purport to represent.
For people whose sense of self is heavily dependent on image, ‘what they are’ and what they think and feel, this is an entirely frightening perspective.
It is, and the modern world thrusts the importance of “self-worth” onto people. People get into this state of mind where they become attached to their self-worth, or their self-image, and get themselves into some type of metaphysical crisis where they worry about what they’re going to be left with if that self-image or self-worth goes away. And the answer, of course, is exactly what they had to start with. The self-image really does add absolutely nothing to the quality of life, and most often detracts from it. It’s self-perpetuating, in that the only thing that really cares about the self-image is the self-image itself, and if you succeed in getting rid of it then what’s left really doesn’t care a jot that it’s gone.
Erwin, you once told me something that’s relevant here: “It’s not what you are that’s important, and it’s not what you feel, either: it’s what you do, because action is the only thing that exists.”
As good now as it was then. There’s what’s actually going on that doesn’t upset or worry you, and then there’s some grotesque image of what’s going on that does, and being able to tell the difference does wonders for one’s well-being.
As an elementary example that almost everyone should have some familiarity with, you often find yourself waking up after some extended reverie about an argument at work, or some guy who gave you the finger on the way home in the car, or whatever else preoccupies you, and you can sometimes spend hours paying attention to this picture, replaying it in your mind, thinking “ha! If they’d have done this, I’d have done that, and then they’d be sorry!”, or thinking about what you should have said instead, or wondering if you reacted in the right way, justifying to yourself how walking away was the right thing to do and that it’s just sheer coincidence that you were feeling fearful and that it’s actually your courage and strength that made you walk away, and on and on and on it goes. You actually have real physical emotional reactions to this type of fantasy, you start questioning yourself, and worrying, even making yourself frightened by doing it.
With a bit of practice, you can wake up from this type of daydream with a feeling resembling bemusement – “what on earth have I just been doing? My goodness, I think some strange things sometimes.” Again, it’s just a question of practice, a question of developing a skill. Once you’ve seen this type of thing in this light often enough, you can learn to snap back to a much more sensible state as soon as you detect its presence. Similarly, with practice, you stop being worried about the fact that it happened because you know that that’s just what the mind does, distracting you into paying attention to its own creations instead of to reality. You don’t pass judgment on it, you just come back to your senses and let it go with as much disinterest as if you’d seen someone else doing it. And once more, with practice, you become able to snap out of this type of reverie sooner because you become more adept at detecting its occurrence, and over time you become less and less afflicted by it, and less and less concerned on the occasions your mind does succeed in encouraging you to indulge.
Glad to see you’re alive and kicking.
Thanks, I’m glad to be alive and kicking too!
Speaking of which, preparing for surgery was a fine chance to put much of this into practice. There were a few situations that at first seemed difficult, but it was because of something imaginary, and when I’d realize this they became easy to deal with.
For example, as I started planning, I knew I’d need all sorts of help during the 2 weeks after. At first I complained to myself “But it’s hard to ask people to do things for me!” Then at some point thought, “Why?! Because I’m ‘not that kind of person’? WTF?” These thoughts led me to just shut up and write an email to a bunch of friends asking for help, no problem.
It’s not like I consciously said to myself “Your attitude is a result of your self-image, self image is an illusion, thus your attitude is not based on reality.” It was more like realizing there was no substance to the claim “this is difficult for me”, so then that thought no longer had influence over my actions. I guess I’ve been calling that shift in perspective ‘dismissing the illusions’, but your description to ‘stop believing in them’ is much better. Suddenly the thoughts aren’t meaningful anymore, then they just fade away.