Layers of self - peeling back the onion

Trying to clarify some of my thoughts on the topic of self and how it manifests in experience, I came up with this:

I as the observer - There is sometimes the experience that I am the one looking through my eyes, I am the one listening or thinking, I am the one all of this is happening to. It can be a subtle experience to connect to even though we can often see it without any effort. It has been my experience that resting in this experience can be a good way to begin to unravel it.

The historical self - This is the person all of this has been happening to. Looking back on my memories, there is the sense that all of this has happened to one person - me. Similarly, thinking about what may happen tomorrow or 5 years from now, this will all happen to me as well. I see this part of the self as the projection of the observer over time, both past and future.

The psychological I or identity is the story we keep about ourselves. I find it useful to break it apart into two parts - the personal story and the relational story giving rise to the personal I and the relational (or interpersonal) I. I may talk about them as two separate things but the border between the two is quite murky.

The personal I is composed of my own view of myself: that I am smart, I am a good person, I am a meditator, I am a boyfriend, I go to burning man, things I like, things I’m not good at and so on. This part of my identity is helpful in making decisions, it helps maintain a sense of continuity. In similar ways it also limits what I do. For example since I have the story that I’m not good at sports I’m not likely to try out for a sports team. This part of the self is most concerned with being, becoming and having (things, views, opinions, etc).

The interpersonal I is in some ways an expansion of the personal I into the interpersonal field. It is concerned with the stories other people may have of me. Am I being seen as a good person? Am I being seen as a failure? Am I likely to be praised or blamed for this action? This may be related to Freud’s idea of a Super-Ego and often manifests as the judgmental voice. This part of the self is often occupied with the different roles I play and with my position in my family, community or job. It can be helpful in navigating those complex relationships but just like the personal self, it can be limiting.

If we pay attention, we can notice which part of the self we’re most identified with at the moment. And if we keep paying attention we may notice this identity shifting. One moment I’m the observer, the next moment I’m remembering something similar that happened before and the moment after that I am righteously indignant because some sense of my personal self feels threatened. With some attention it is easy to see that my idea of who I am is constantly in flux and yet there appears to be a solid layer behind that. It seems that there is something in common to all of those different sensation. As if they are all pointing at something that is beyond the momentary sense of self and this something that is being pointed at, is solid and is the real me!

A key sensation in exploring this core sense of self is the sensation of clinging. It appears that this part of the self is intimately connected to that solid feeling of tightening around the heart center that is characteristic of the mental experience of clinging. Indeed we often cling to a story about ourselves, or to a fear of losing a part of ourselves. This clinging is common to many instances of holding on to a rigid sense of self and gives rise to the phantom core self. If we start looking at this clinging more clearly we may start to unravel this deeper layer as well. Obviously this part of the self can bring up a deep division between what is self and what is other. It is related to strict, uncompromising thoughts and behavior. I'm not sure if it has a positive side but I'm not ruling it out.

Final note: except for that last part, the different layers of self all have some positive functionality. I'm not advocating throwing them away, instead I believe that holding them lightly, or even not at all, just allowing them to do their thing with any clinging would lead to more freedom and ease.

Very thorough, Eran. How does the location of our senses play into this do you think?

-cmarti

Thanks Chris.

If you're talking about the location of senses, I guess you're focusing here on the observer/witness, right? I'll try to answer from that perspective but let me know if you're pointing at something else.

My main connection to the sense of an observer (and the reason why I often use observer rather than witness) was through seeing. Connecting to the sense of someone looking through my eyes was relatively easy and the location of the observer then was most strongly behind the eyes. I have had some experience with checking out hearing when the focus seemed to be more on the ears. I've not explored smelling or tasting very much but I suspect they'll also support the witness being somewhere in the head. I've had some experience, I think when exploring thought, of the witness being in the back of the head and when exploring the sense of the body, I often end up at the heart center.

I've found that resting in those places helps dissolve the sense of a witness related to that sense door, making experience feel more unified. It's definitely helpful in breaking apart the identifying with the witness, when you can see that you're identified with this spot now and with another spot later. There's also something about attention bouncing back and forth between outside experience (that) and inner experience (this or me).

"One moment I’m the observer, the next moment I’m remembering something
similar that happened before and the moment after that I am righteously
indignant because some sense of my personal self feels threatened. With
some attention it is easy to see that my idea of who I am is constantly
in flux and yet there appears to be a solid layer behind that."

Which of your many selves likes making all these categories of mental activity and putting them in neatly labeled boxes?

Which of your many selves likes making all these categories of mental activity and putting them in neatly labeled boxes?

Joking or serious, Ona?

Well, both I suppose. I am being a bit sassy, but there is this tendency sometimes to really focus on sorting experience into neatly labeled categories, and (depending on where you are in your practice) it can be a form of clinging/aversion.

"these things are signs of progress" vs "these things are antagonistic to progress"
"these types of mental activity are impediments" vs "these types of mental activity are leading me to awakening"
"this kind of experience is bad or false" vs "this kind of experience is good and true"
"this is a spiritual experience" vs "this is a waste of time experience"

It can be useful to look at the desire to control experience by organizing it and analyzing it. Sometimes that desire itself is a very interesting thing to look at. Who is wanting things to be in boxes? Who is aware of the distinctions of experience? Who is preferring or rejecting one kind of experience or another?

Having met Eran in person and talked to him for some time, my impression was that his practice was at a place where he might find the suggestion both a friendly teasing and also potentially useful.

It can also be chucked in the trash if it doesn't resonate or make sense.

@ Chris--- (simultaneous post with Ona) Maybe That's sort of what I thought, although without an emoticon it's hard to tell-- it was ambiguous to me whether it was a sincere question, or possibly slightly snarky

In any event, I think it's interesting and can be quite helpful to categorize the types of identity-patterns that can arise in mind, since they can have such different functions. Categorizing can be a helpful tool for mindfulness. The complexity or simplicity of the categorizations could reflect temperamental differences between people, or differences between a practitioner and themself from day to day, hour to hour.

There are some traditional schemes I like better than others for this; for instance, in Tibetan traditions the six desire realms (hell, hungry ghosts, animals, humans, jealous gods, desire gods), form and formless realms (eight jhannas) sum up the sorts of dualistic identities we can have. Some are more personal-autobiographical, some more instinctual, some more "pure impersonal observor" like (jhannas). It's interesting

I also like to articulate these things for myself, based entirely on my own experience, like you've done here Eran. Personally I find these self-articulated versions really helpful in that they tend to be deeply based in how I experience life, individually, and so can help me dig in to my own experience to see how it functions.

Eran: what do you think this sense of a "solid layer behind" the fluxing flow of ideas of who you are is?

Well, both I suppose. I am being a bit sassy, but there is this tendency sometimes to really focus on sorting experience into neatly labeled categories, and (depending on where you are in your practice) it can be a form of clinging/aversion.
"these things are signs of progress" vs "these things are antagonistic to progress"
"these types of mental activity are impediments" vs "these types of mental activity are leading me to awakening"
"this kind of experience is bad or false" vs "this kind of experience is good and true"
"this is a spiritual experience" vs "this is a waste of time experience"
It can be useful to look at the desire to control experience by organizing it and analyzing it.



-ona

Hi Ona, sorry for the simultaneous post

So I see where you're coming from better now.

It's interesting that there are whole traditions which are based on rigid dualisms of this sort-- many contemporary Theravada masters seem to insist that theirs is one (wholesome vs. unwholesome emotions, conditioned vs. unconditioned, etc). Concentration is measured rigidly in terms of concentration vs. distraction and so on.

Even some masters of more nondual, laid back traditions can present their teaching in rigidly dualistic ways-- many neo-advaitans do this, or Tulku Urgyen's presentation of Dzogchen for instance (although in the latter case, when you read him carefully with an understanding of the context he's teaching in, the apparently extremely rigid and uncompromising dualism between thinking and thought free wakefulness disappears like the contrivance it is...). Anyway, I do appreciate what you're getting at.

This reminds me of the on-point comments in the recent Unlearning Meditation thread here, and the comments directed to Jason Siff on the Tricycle forum in which many readers of the article felt the need to insist that Jason wasn't teaching "real meditation" for the simple reason that he was presenting an approach that was careful NOT to engage those rigid dualisms, or that need to control experience. I'm very sympathetic to that approach.

"when you read him carefully with an understanding of the context he's teaching in"

This is a bigger deal than most people consider, I think. Imagine you are a highly realized dharma teacher with fifty years experience. You have to give a talk or write a book to a general audience, which will include beginners and advanced meditators. Do you get into gory details in a way that will baffle the beginners? Do you try to make the practices seem do-able and comprehensible to the less advanced members of the audience?

What you would tell a private student on a three month retreat might be vastly different from what you will talk about at the Peoria Dharma Center on a Saturday afternoon. That doesn't mean that either teaching is a lie or more true, but the Saturday afternoon talk might be utterly irrelevant or even "wrong" for an advanced student, and the private teaching might be quite shocking or baffling to a general audience or even to a different private student.

I am lately of the opinion that private teaching is a seriously beneficial thing for advanced students and should not be skipped.

Thoughts?

Yeah, those are good points. I'm ambivalent about it though. There are other Dzogchen teachers (to stick to one lineage for comparison's sake) who don't do the Saturday afternoon thing at all, and the reasons why some of them do have more of an exoteric/esoteric split are many and diverse. Some of it is just based in cultural stuff, elitism and aristocratic social structures, that just suck IMO On the other hand, in the case of Tullku Urgyen, I think it's more a matter of translation and that when he uses the English word "thought" it stands for nam-tok, Tibetan for dualistic mind-movement. He speaks of sherab, which is wisdom mind-movement that's not conditioned by dualistic tension, as thoroughly compatible with Rigpa, just not very often. When he does though he mentions some interesting and important phenomenological details of the difference between nam-tok (such as anger, fear, lust) and sherab which are readily understandable if you have the experience (and as usual, not nearly as far out there as the foreign terms suggest). Again, I think this is less a matter of reserving challenging teachings for serious students and more a matter of how a certain lineage tends to articulate things, with a certain emphasis, coupled with an uneccessarily confusing translation (the choice to translate nam-tok with the term "thought" may have seemed a way of keeping it more down to earth, but is less precise than "dualistic fixation" for example, and gives the impression that anytime there are "thoughts" in the loose sense of mind-movements at the mind sense gate, there must be dualistic fixation, which isn't so, hence the confusion).

I don't think this is the case for mainstream Theravada, which is unabashedly dualistic (unwholesome states are simply unwholesome, and are to be dropped, renounced). That's why this path is called the Path of Renunciation (of fetters) by Vajrayana. The pragmatic dharma scene is heavily influenced by Theravada, even though in its first incarnation a la MCTB there is a definite rejection of the more dualistic models of awakening, right? But nevertheless, Prag Dharma seems to be returning to its roots. I'm hesitant to criticize this, since although I don't resonate with such a dualistic framework, I do see what it is pointing to, and think it's a valid path. In short, I would say that perhaps the original Prag Dharma dogmas of enlightenment are giving way to more traditional forms in the wake of peoples' experience, and the first wave to catch on in that scene is naturally enough aligned with its roots in the Path of Renunciation. I'm interested in whether deep, long term transformations arising in other practice contexts (Paths of Transformation and Self-liberation of fetters) will look the same, similar, or very different.

//Tangent off//

Back to this thread though, I didn't get that dualistic thing from Eran; I'll wait for his clarification. I didn't get the feel from his OP that he was categorizing these things in order to control them per se, but maybe I missed something. I think it's entirely possible to use intellect in its more perceptual mode in order to create a model of how a phenomenon or family of phenomena function(s), in this case identity, which is what I think he was doing. To what purpose, I'm not entirely sure; I assumed as an aid to mindfulness, though, not as a means for exerting control over experience.

Right on, Ona! You know what is funny to me lately? Here we are in postmodern, over-educated America, where the theory of relativity was developed and every schoolkid is a techno-savant-- and virtually every time someone not a professional philosopher in an academic setting runs into a real-life example of relativity, out comes the sword to whack the knot rather than try to untie it. There is such a culture-wide suspicion of nuance and paradox that it comes down to absolutely choosing a side. Gradual or sudden? Transparency or secrecy? Public or private? Avatar or fraud?

The trick about 'advanced students needing private teaching' is that there is an art to establishing the sort of relationship in which this would be possible-- and I kinda doubt that this art has been widely transmitted, or that we have much of an idea what criteria to use in evaluating prospective advanced-level teachers. Or students, either. At least, I don't feel any certainty about it. My impression was that 'lineage' was what was meant to address these issues-- but lately, I've seen more about its failure than its success.

I've seen two things: people [teachers AND students] making various bold claims [let the buyer beware]; and teachers with so much discretion that it starts seeming possibly-- and perplexingly-- evasive. If I weren't in winter semi-hibernation, I'd probably be kinda disturbed. As it is, I'm just waiting to see.

[If this is wildly off-topic, I apologize. I go through these seasonal fluctuations, it seems.]

Re: Eran - sorry for the tangentialness. But meanwhile...

<tangent on>

" I'm interested in whether deep, long term transformations arising in
other practice contexts (Paths of Transformation and Self-liberation of
fetters) will look the same, similar, or very different."

What do you mean, Jake? Is this back to the old question (I think Jackson has brought it up before) of whether awakening is awakening, or whether there are dozens of different kinds of awakening based on what kind of practice you have? And (perhaps the key obsession for some) whether different kinds of awakening (if such exist) can be ranked as good - bad - better - best?

@Kate - posted before I saw your reply. Indeed, perhaps figuring out how to select a teacher is an art in itself and quite impossible to write up as a simple instruction.

I think we all suffer when we substitute this (online medium) completely for face to face personal interaction. Time will tell, but I suspect there is a price to be paid as it's now possible to spend years and years in practice with only reinforcing points of view to consider. There are potentially many fewer boundaries (in a live sangha folks are more likely to call you on your bullshit and there is a teacher available who can serve as mentor, coach, etc. and etc. I'm not advocating a return to the mushroom culture but just a little more privacy and a little more restraint could be a good thing.
As for awakening, I believe it is multi-faceted and non-linear.


-cmarti

Yeah, this is a great point. Like everything online, it is very easy to just float in a self-reinforcing bubble with online sangha. No doubt about it! Pluses and minuses I suppose, since it also opens up a world that may not be available in one's physical vicinity.

Re: Eran - sorry for the tangentialness. But meanwhile...
<tangent on>
" I'm interested in whether deep, long term transformations arising in other practice contexts (Paths of Transformation and Self-liberation of fetters) will look the same, similar, or very different."
What do you mean, Jake? Is this back to the old question (I think Jackson has brought it up before) of whether awakening is awakening, or whether there are dozens of different kinds of awakening based on what kind of practice you have? And (perhaps the key obsession for some) whether different kinds of awakening (if such exist) can be ranked as good - bad - better - best?


-ona

Yeah, I'm just commenting that A) the initial wave of pragmatic dharma, rooted in the paradigms of MCTB, had a very non-traditional version of enlightenment. I see a parallel in the neo-Advaita scene actually; at any rate, compared to traditional models, a real lowering of the bar. Meanwhile, there seems to be a resurgence of people discovering outcomes much more similar to traditional models of awakening, and in that light, I was just pointing out, that many traditions (even strict, orthodox Theravada, but certainly mahayana, vajrayana, and non-buddhist systems) report multiple different possible outcomes, some mutually compatible, some mutually exclusive, but all as far "beyond" technical 4th path as that is beyond a completely unexamined life, and generally yes they are said to arise based on different views and practices, for instance: a dualistic view draws a sharp line between wholesome and unwholesome states and practices based on renunciation (complete renunciation). More nondual views see all mind movements as compatible with mind nature, and recommend seeing negative emotions in light of mind nature. No need to renounce them-- in Vajrayana, the poison is used as medicine. In Theravada, the poisonous plant is uprooted. Clearly this point to: different views, different practices, different outcomes.

Actually, it seems to me that the location of our senses (on this body) contributes to the sense of location (I'm in the middle of everything and everything happens around me). This then contributes to the shape of the map we all hold in our heads all the time, which in turn helps create the illusion of a permanent self, somehow managing it all....snip...

-cmarti

Thanks, Chris, I haven't thought about the location issue in a while! There were a few exciting moments on retreat when I could see experience just shifting instead of the usual perception of "me" moving around in experience. For some reason I've avoided looking deeper into that once it stopped being an effortless part of experience but it definitely is a great place to explore. Possibly related to this is the sense of time but I've yet to give that more than a cursory look.

Which of your many selves likes making all these categories of mental activity and putting them in neatly labeled boxes?

-ona

That's actually just an empty habit... well, mostly empty

This line of thinking comes from a long running confusion on my part. In Buddhist circles we talk a lot about the self: no-self, not-self, empty of self, etc. Then we occasionally add to that psychological terms like ego, or self vs Self. On top of all of that there's the disconnect between what the Buddha may have meant when he said self (atta or atman in sanskrit) which probably was inspired by hindu philosophy of the time (atman vs. brahman and all that) vs what we mean today when we say self which in my case is a mishmash of half-digested psychological notions and a collection of views from various dharma teachers.

And yet with all this confusion, I'm supposed to somehow let go of this thing or see through it and the more I look at it, the more I see that there are many experiences, some of which seem to bear no resemblance to each other, that I tend to label as myself, not all of which (as was pointed out on this forum before) are actually a problem. Some are actually necessary to exist in the world. I think it would be helpful to try and unpack this very loaded term and maybe clear up some of the confusion while, hopefully, not creating too much additional confusion.

Eran: what do you think this sense of a "solid layer behind" the fluxing flow of ideas of who you are is?

-jake

My understanding of it right now is that it is purely made up illusion. An analogy I like is the one the illusion of smooth movement created when projecting in a series the discreet frames of a movie. There is no movie except the one created in the mind. The "fluxing flow of ideas" acts as the frames and the movie is the feeling of "me". It likes to get concretized into the experience of tightness around the chest but at the same time appears to exist almost beyond physical experience (it has no shape, or color, it may be resting above and behind me but I'm not sure). There may be more to it, or there may be something behind it but I can't clearly say that I've seen that yet.

A corollary to this, IMO, is our tendency to break up experience into things. My visual experience, for example, may be a collection of shapes and colors but I immediately see it as chair, table, couch, carpet, laptop, etc. I think those two are at the same level.

That's actually just an empty habit... well, mostly empty
This line of thinking comes from a long running confusion on my part. In Buddhist circles we talk a lot about the self: no-self, not-self, empty of self, etc. Then we occasionally add to that psychological terms like ego, or self vs Self. On top of all of that there's the disconnect between what the Buddha may have meant when he said self (atta or atman in sanskrit) which probably was inspired by hindu philosophy of the time (atman vs. brahman and all that) vs what we mean today when we say self which in my case is a mishmash of half-digested psychological notions and a collection of views from various dharma teachers.

-eran

That is a great point, and not one I'd bothered to think much about. But see below.

And yet with all this confusion, I'm supposed to somehow let go of this thing or see through it and the more I look at it, the more I see that there are many experiences, some of which seem to bear no resemblance to each other, that I tend to label as myself, not all of which (as was pointed out on this forum before) are actually a problem. Some are actually necessary to exist in the world....


-eran

Again this may be not relevant to the style of practice you prefer and you can chuck it straight in the trash if that's the case:

It is really normal to start worrying that you might lose parts of you that are functional in the world as you get deeper into practice. This is more ego activity, making excuses for spending time looking into things that are just expressions of fear. will I forget everyone I know? will my personality change? if I let go of thinking I'm the little guy in my head who runs my life, will my life fall apart? can't I hang on to this part and that part? it may not apply to you, but I suspect it does. When you have questions, it's often like therapy. "How does that question make you feel?" - what is the question really about? there is a place for intellectual curiosity, but in practice very often these intellectual and conceptual pursuits are detours or ways of avoiding just sitting with what's going on.

Eran, I like to distinguish between authentic aspects of experience and identification (which turns something authentic into an imaginary solid separate self). So for instance, there are lots of different cognitive functions such as autobiographical memory (and foresight), semantic memory (the general information I "know" without necessarily remembering where and when I learned it) and operational memory (muscle memory, task memory, knowing how-to-do things like play guitar or ride a bike). All of these can be bases for identification, as in, fixating on a solid separate sense of self: "I am" the guy to whom these events happened, "I am" the guy who can play guitar, "I am" the guy who's not so good at geography but pretty knowledgeable about history, etc.

Meanwhile I've known (though by no means consistently lived!) since my first opening in adolescence that the "I am" bit is not necessary for those functions to operate: walking can walk, breathing can breath, eating can eat, playing the guitar can... without being turned into reference points for a fabricated identity. And suffering comes with that added gesture, because then we're expecting too much from these conditioned phenomena: if "I am" the guy who plays guitar, what happens to "me" if my left hand is chopped off? If "I am" the breath, what will happen to "me" after the last exhalation?

Then there are more primitive functions like the reward/desire system, the fight/freeze/flight system, and so forth which can also be used as reference points for a solid sense of self: "I am" angry, "I am" hungry, and so on.

"Normal" adult selves are more or less expected to manage the conflicts between these instinctual identities, the mores and roles of their society, and their personal reflective identity, which is a difficult position to be in--- ultimately unsatisfying, although given the right conditions, it can be temporarily viable.

And then there are the tricky senses of solid (yet formless) self that can arise, often in the context of spiritual practice but sometimes in everyday life if one is so inclined to have these experiences spontaneously, in which a more expansive or "primordial" mode of experiencing (like pure space, or pure consciousness) can become the target of the identification process: "I am" infinite consciousness, untouched by phenomena, etc.

I see these identification processes run through my mind all day long in different patterns, out of habit and ignorance, and for simplicity's sake I categorize them as personal, pre-personal (instinctual) and trans-personal. From what I can see they all fall into the fourth skandha, for what it's worth, and I find it interesting to discern the difference between the facets of experience which are naturally present (body, mind, spirit?) and the secondary process in the fourth skandha of turning (or pretending to turn) those natural facets into a solid identity (through a combination of mental representation and bodily tension, or "dualistic tension" for short). Recognizing, releasing and relaxing this dualistic tension leaves the natural functions (such as appetite, foresight/memory, openness, consciousness, the senses, feelings, appreciation, behavioral patterns, etc) but the dualistic sense of self which was being superimposed dissolves (in that moment).

I think it's worth noting here that it seems very natural, from a developmental standpoint, that instinctual and personal identifications arise as we grow from infancy into adulthood, although I think the transpersonal ones are optional (some spiritual systems like advaita, Vajrayana, and maybe Theravada encourage or tolerate them as transitional states, while other systems like Zen and Dzogchen seem to counsel against them, encouraging us to stick with relatively authentic, down to earth personal and instinctual identity-movements until mind is mature enough to spontaneously no longer seek identification through fabricated reference points).

Personally I'm wary of the transpersonal ones, as they can be the basis for spiritual bypassing, and consequently getting stuck half-awake and disconnected from one's own psychological patterns of feeling, thinking and behaving. But this is probably idiosyncratic; some folks have great results from intensive jhanna practice and witness practice.

I find those three categories pretty comprehensive in terms of my own experience (of identification), and I find it important that all three kinds of identifications are basing themselves off of authentic phenomenological facets of experience but merely adding the extraneous meta-process of turning these facets and functions into reference points to construct an abiding solid separate self. Whaddaya think?

Hey Jake,

Thanks for that! What you describe makes for a clear and concise mapping of the different manifestations of self. I think we're basically saying something very similar about the process of selfing, that there's some experience in the field that we pick up on and add some unnecessary (inauthentic) stuff on top off making it into me, mine, myself. And I like the term dualistic tension, it sums up that experience pretty well.

Also, it seems to me like the notion I was using for depth maps to the pre - personal - trans axis that you're describing. And it definitely is possible to use transpersonal insight to bypass personal roadblocks. Which brings me to the other reason I started working on this list - casting my net wider but not necessarily deeper, finding the tendencies to create a self that I've not yet fully confronted (and there are many) and working on those directly instead of saying something like "well, it's all empty anyway..."