# The Curse of the Self



## Daniel (Sep 14, 2004)

I just read the August issue of Psychology Today.   Its article "Get Over Yourself!" is an excerpt from the new book "The Curse of the Self."  

The premise of The Curse of the Self: Self-Awareness, Egotism, and the Quality of Human Life is nothing new:  Self-awareness is a double-edged sword and the "_the primary cause of your unhappiness will be you_."   

The best part of the article lists ways to quiet the self:



> *1. Reduce self-chatter.* ("The techniques of meditation can minimize self-thought.")
> *2.  Resist the urge to defend your ego. * ("Remember that threats to your ego usually have no real implications...")
> *3.  Practice self-compassion.*  ("When failures occur...be gentle with yourself.")
> *4.  Don't overfeed the self.*  ("Chronically setting and pursuing goals can lead to seeing the purpose of life today as the achievement of some goal tomorrow.")
> *5.  Don't believe everything you think.* ("Recognize that you do not always have an accurate view of yourself and of the world.")


The article reminds me of Buddhism (the "self" is a painful illusion), Zen Buddhism (live spontaneously--"If you are hungry eat, if you are tired sleep"), Schopenhauer (the intellect can't compete with desire), Dr. Dyer  ("connecting to source"), and the late Joseph Campbell (we need "myths to live by").

I think this article/book may help anxiety more than depression because "quieting the self" may be more calming than energizing.  

For depression, the best advice in the article is probably "don't believe everything you think."   Of course, this suggestion is the hallmark of classic self-help book "You Can't Afford the Luxury of a Negative Thought" by Peter McWilliams.  (All of Peter McWilliams's self-help books are now available free online.)

The article also reminds me of a quote from the book  The User Illusion:  


> Although we are unaware of it, our brains sift through and discard billions of pieces of data in order to allow us to understand the world around us. In fact, most of what we call thought is actually the unconscious discarding of information...*What our consciousness rejects constitutes the most valuable part of ourselves.* No wonder that, in this age of information, so many of us feel empty and dissatisfied.



Some more info:
WFU psychologist explains the 'curse of the self'


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## David Baxter PhD (Sep 15, 2004)

*The Curse of the Self (New Book)*

Interesting -- thanks for the references, Daniel.

There have been a few interesting books and articles in recent years approaching a synthesis of Buddhism and psychotherapy (e.g., Thoughts Without A Thinker, Journey of the Heart). I find this quite fascinating.


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## Ash (Sep 15, 2004)

*The Curse of the Self (New Book)*

I'm very glad that you brought up those points, Daniel.  It's true that we are our own worst enemies.  I personally have major issues calming myself.  Anxiety can be a royal pain in the butt.  I've tried meditation but quieting my mind is extremely difficult.

I especially liked the point of resisting the urge to defend your ego.  That seems to be in line with Taoism and I find it to be very important.  The ego gets in the way of living a happy, productive life.  It also causes you to deal with others in a way that is not healthy.

Thanks again for sharing this!


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## Daniel (Aug 19, 2011)

*Re: The Curse of the Self (New Book)*

Know Thyself: Easier Said Than Done
_NYTimes.com
_
...I suspect the real problem may be not that we know  too little about our mental states but that we know too much. We are  asked to say “what it’s like” — to dream, to imagine, to feel — as if  there ought to be a simple answer: colored or not, single or double, in  the head or in the heart. But, when it comes to it, the rich totality of  our experience will not fit the Procrustean bed that philosophy, and  everyday discourse also, tries to impose on it...


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## Daniel (Aug 27, 2011)

*Re: The Curse of the Self (New Book)*

Related video interview with Mark Epstein:

Can Buddhism and Psychology Co-Exist? - ABC News

(May not play outside of the U.S.)


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## Daniel (Nov 11, 2011)

*Re: The Curse of the Self (New Book)*

Eckhart Tolle on How to Free Yourself from Your Ego Armor - OWN TV

Vanity and pride are what most of us tend to think of when we think of ego, but ego is much more than an overinflated sense of self. It can also turn up in feelings of inferiority or self-hatred because ego is any image you have of yourself that gives you a sense of identity—and that identity derives from the things you tell yourself and the things other people have been saying about you that you've decided to accept as truth. 

One way to think about ego is as a protective heavy shell, such as the kind some animals have, like a big beetle. This protective shell works like armor to cut you off from other people and the outside world...


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## Daniel (Dec 12, 2011)

*Re: The Curse of the Self (New Book)*

One Brain, Many Selves? | Neuroself

...In my own work, I have come to the conclusion that the self, as western society understands it ? the private thing, the private conscious experience, which has always co-varied with a single brain or body or named individual ? is not what Wittgenstein called a natural kind.  It is a social construct. But once our technology makes this evident, what is going to happen to our Enlightenment assumptions about the individual?


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## Daniel (Feb 27, 2012)

*Re: The Curse of the Self (New Book)*

From a new episode of Shrink Rap Radio:



> Well, it turns out that pretty much everything your brain is doing is running under the hood of conscious awareness; your
> brain is constantly performing these tremendously complex operations
> that you have no access to or no acquaintance with so you know,
> when you do something really simple like pick up a telephone to your
> ...


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## Daniel (Feb 27, 2012)

*Re: The Curse of the Self (New Book)*

Source:  http://www.shrinkrapradio.com/274.pdf


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## Daniel (Sep 24, 2018)

Re:  the ego as a painful illusion

"Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to die before you die — and find that there is no death." 

— Eckhart Tolle


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## desiderata (Sep 24, 2018)

I first learned of the self and mindfulness well over 20 years ago reading "wherever you go there you are" by Jon Kabat-Zinn. He also liked to use quotes from Emerson.


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## David Baxter PhD (Sep 24, 2018)

desiderata said:


> He also liked to use quotes from Emerson.



You have to feel sorry for Lake and Palmer. They almost never get quoted.


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## desiderata (Sep 25, 2018)

Good one.


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## Daniel (Nov 27, 2018)

“When you get out of the driver’s seat, you find that life can drive itself, that actually life has always been driving itself. When you get out of the driver’s seat, it can drive itself so much easier—it can flow in ways you never imagined. Life becomes almost magical. The illusion of the “me” is no longer in the way. Life begins to flow, and you never know where it will take you.” 

― Adyashanti, _The End of Your World_


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## Daniel (Apr 20, 2019)

The Acceptance Paradox | Feeling Good
by David Burns

Let's say you struggle with anxiety and shyness. You may have the fear that others will judge you because you are inferior, or not "good enough", and this thought can cause tremendous suffering. But this thought is based on the notion that you have a "self" that can be evaluated or judged. When you see through this notion, you can experience liberation from your fears.

The Buddhists called this "The Great Death". Of course, we all fear death, and struggle to keep our egos alive. But once you've "died", so to speak, you can join the Grateful Dead, and then life suddenly opens up in unexpected ways. And for those who may misread me, or interpret my words literally, I am not referring to physical death, but death of the "self".


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## Daniel (Apr 26, 2019)

"You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level." 

— Eckhart Tolle


“We don’t realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme self who is eternally at peace.” 

— Elizabeth Gilbert, _Eat, Pray, Love_


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## Daniel (Nov 2, 2019)

You're a Completely Different Person at 14 and 77, the Longest-Running Personality Study Ever Has Found

If your patterns of thought, emotions, and behavior so drastically alter over the decades, can you truly be considered the same person in old age as you were as a teenager? This question ties in with broader theories about the nature of the self. For example, there is growing neuroscience research that supports the ancient Buddhist belief that our notion of a stable “self” is nothing more than an illusion.

Perhaps this won’t surprise you if you’ve had the experience of running into a very old friend from school, and found a completely different person from the child you remembered. This research suggests that, as the decades go by, your own younger self could be similarly unrecognizable.


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## Daniel (Dec 16, 2019)

'Humans were not centre stage': how ancient cave art puts us in our place | Art and design | The Guardian

_
The Cave of Altamira in Spain_

In the Paleolithic age, humans were probably less concerned about the opinions of other humans than with the actions and intentions of the far more numerous megafauna around them. Would the herd of bison stop at a certain watering hole? Would lions show up to attack them? Would it be safe for humans to grab at whatever scraps of bison were left over from the lions' meal? The vein of silliness that seems to run through Paleolithic art may grow out of an accurate perception of humans' place in the world. Our ancestors occupied a lowly spot in the food chain, at least compared to the megafauna, but at the same time they were capable of understanding and depicting how lowly it was. They knew they were meat, and they also seemed to know that they knew they were meat –- meat that could think. And that, if you think about it long enough, is almost funny.


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## Daniel (Feb 7, 2020)

The Key to a Good Life? Lose Yourself in Something.

Unfortunately, the current ethos promotes self absorption. Examples include social media; the supposed importance of building a “personal brand”; or the self-improvement and self-esteem movements. More than ever, it seems, we’re being being sold the idea of a separate self. This is a trap. And while there are a handful of ways out, I want to briefly explore two of the most dependable ones.

Pursue Mastery (In Anything) 

Be Kind


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## Daniel (Feb 8, 2020)

Scientists Say Your "Mind" Isn't Confined to Your Brain, or Even Your Body

Our mind cannot be confined to what’s inside our skull, or even our body, according to a definition first put forward by Dan Siegel, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA School of Medicine and the author of the 2016 book, _Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human_...

"In our modern society we have this belief that mind is brain activity and this means the self, which comes from the mind, is separate and we don't really belong. But we're all part of each others' lives. The mind is not just brain activity. When we realize it's this relational process, there's this huge shift in this sense of belonging."

In other words, even perceiving our mind as simply a product of our brain, rather than relations, can make us feel more isolated. And to appreciate the benefits of interrelations, you simply have to open your mind.


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## Daniel (Feb 12, 2020)

"You are not what others think of you; you are not even who you think you are. Thoughts label but do not live."

~ Robert Rosenbaum, _Walking the Way_


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## Daniel (May 23, 2020)

"Now" is not only a cognitive illusion but also a mathematical trick, related to how we define space and time quantitatively. One way of seeing this is to recognize that the notion of "present," as sandwiched between past and future, is simply a useful hoax. After all, if the present is a moment in time without duration, it can't exist. What does exist is the recent memory of the immediate past and the expectation of the near future. We link past and future through the conceptual notion of a present, of "now." But all that we have is the accumulated memory of the past--stored in biological or various recording devices--and the expectation of the future. 

~ Marcelo Gleiser, There Is No Now


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## Daniel (May 23, 2020)

Interview: Susan Blackmore -- Philosophy Now

I don’t have a theory of consciousness now. I have had in the past, but each time I decided it was wrong. Doing five years in parapsychology and then having to change my mind about almost _everything_ has made me good at letting go of theories. I think Dan Dennett is right that almost all the theories of consciousness we have today are basically forms of Cartesian materialism in disguise. If you ask, “What is in my consciousness now?”, and you think that there must be an answer, then you are a Cartesian materialist. You are still assuming that there is some part of you separate from your thoughts which owns your thoughts, which experiences them. Every time you ask yourself “Am I conscious now?”, it seems to me you draw a backwards story of what you must just have been thinking about. This gives you the illusion of a conscious self who was already there, but it is an illusion. The stream of consciousness and the person experiencing it are both illusions. The interesting question is then how and why are we so deluded?...

An illusion is something that is not what it seems to be. If I seem to be a persisting self having a series of experiences I am wrong. Actually there are parallel, multiple streams that stop and start and join up. And the self is a verbal construction.


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## Daniel (Jun 10, 2020)

How does Personal Identity Persist through Time? | Closer to Truth

How Does Personal Identity Persist Through Time? | Episode 1205 | Closer To Truth - YouTube

How do identity and consciousness persist through time? Is the self an illusion? Decades roll by; every molecule of our bodies changes many times. Yet our sense of self remains the same; continuous, a unity. How can this be? Featuring interviews with Simon Blackburn, Stephen Law, Richard Swinburne, Robert Bilder, and Roger Walsh.


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## Daniel (Jun 14, 2020)

Awe May Promote Altruistic Behavior
_American Psychological Association_
May 19, 2015 

    "Our investigation indicates that awe, although often fleeting and hard to describe, serves a vital social function. By diminishing the emphasis on the individual self, awe may encourage people to forgo strict self-interest to improve the welfare of others. When experiencing awe, you may not, egocentrically speaking, feel like you're at the center of the world anymore. By shifting attention toward larger entities and diminishing the emphasis on the individual self, we reasoned that awe would trigger tendencies to engage in prosocial behaviors that may be costly for you but that benefit and help others.

    Across all these different elicitors of awe, we found the same sorts of effects-people felt smaller, less self-important, and behaved in a more prosocial fashion. Might awe cause people to become more invested in the greater good, giving more to charity, volunteering to help others, or doing more to lessen their impact on the environment? Our research would suggest that the answer is yes."


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## Daniel (Oct 2, 2020)

The Self Under Siege

How much of our identity or 'self' is truly representative of our own wants, needs, and goals in life and how much does it reflect the desires and priorities of someone else?  Are we following our own destiny or are we unconsciously repeating the lives of our parents, living according to their values, ideals, and beliefs? In this thought-provoking book [_The Self Under Siege_], noted clinical psychologist Robert Firestone and his co-authors explore the struggle that all of us face in striving to retain a sense of ourselves as unique individuals. The self is under siege from several sources: primarily pain and rejection in the developmental years, problems in relationships, detrimental societal forces, and existential realities that affect all people.

Through numerous case studies and personal stories from men and women who participated in a 35-year observational study, the authors illustrate how Voice Therapy, a cognitive/affective/behavioral methodology pioneered by Firestone, is used to illicit, identify, and challenge the destructive inner voice and to change aversive behaviors based on its prescriptions. The theory they describe integrates the psychodynamic and existential approaches underlying Voice Therapy and is enriched by research findings in the neurosciences, attachment research, and terror management theory (TMT)...


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## Daniel (Oct 25, 2020)

Our basic suffering is rooted in a kind of original separation anxiety, which he called a "fear of life." We fear what has already irrevocably happened―separation from the greater whole―and yet we also come to fear the loss, in death, of this precious individuality. "Between these two fear possibilities," Rank wrote, "these poles of fear, the indivdual is thrown back and forth all his life, which accounts for the fact that we have not been able to trace fear back to a single root, or to overcome it therapeutically."

― Mark Epstein, _Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective _


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## Daniel (Nov 9, 2020)

"Self-consciousness is not knowledge but a story one tells about oneself."

“Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it.” 

― Simone de Beauvoir


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## Daniel (Nov 15, 2020)

Humanistic Approaches and Their Existential Roots 

The authentic self is fluid, in the moment, without rigid, predetermined reactions, but open to new experiences.


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## Daniel (Nov 19, 2020)

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.”

~ William Blake


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## Daniel (Nov 22, 2020)

Volunteering and Why It's Good for You

Dr. Deepak Chopra, author of _You Are the Universe_...said the philosophical underpinnings in India come from the Vedas and Buddhist traditions, where all human suffering is a result of the hallucination of the separate self.


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## Daniel (Jan 9, 2021)

The Science of Spiritual Narcissism - Scientific American

“Our results illustrate that the self-enhancement motive is powerful and deeply ingrained so that it can hijack methods intended to transcend the ego and instead, adopt them to its own service.... The road to spiritual enlightenment may yield the exact same mundane distortions that are all too familiar in social psychology, such as self-enhancement, illusory superiority, closed-mindedness, and hedonism (clinging to positive experiences) under the guise of alleged ‘higher’ values.”

...Healthy transcendence doesn’t stem from an attempt at distracting oneself from displeasure with reality. Healthy transcendence involves _confronting_ reality as it truly is, head on, with equanimity...

Perhaps it's time for all of these yoga and mindfulness centers to chill on all of the extrinsic purported benefits they are claiming (“Better heath!” “Better sex!” “Amazing concentration!” “Great success at work!”), and just focus on the benefits of such spiritual practices for allowing us to realize that such concerns of the ego are just the ego doing its thing. That awareness, in and of itself, is enough of a benefit to last an enlightened lifetime.


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## Daniel (Jan 9, 2021)

"Control is suffering. Control is the bars that lock us in our cage of identification with our suffering as being all we are."

- Stephen & Ondrea Levine


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## Daniel (Jan 9, 2021)

“Simply put, mindfulness is moment-to-moment non-judgmental awareness.”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, _Full Catastrophe Living (Revised Edition): Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness _


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## Daniel (Jan 18, 2021)

225: The Self-Centered Podcast  Feeling Good
by David Burns

Although Wittgenstein did not focus [on] emotional problems, his solution to all the problems of philosophy is very similar to cognitive therapy. Here is the parallel: You don't try to solve the classic "free will" problem. Instead, you see through it and give it up as nonsensical, as language that's "out of gear," so to speak. Once you "see this," and understand why it is true, it is incredibly liberating. But it can be a lonely experience, because you suddenly "see" something super-obvious that seems to be invisible to 99.9% of humans. It's as if you had a "third eye," and could see something incredible that people with only two eyes cannot see.

By the same token, when you suddenly "see" that the idea that you have a "self" which could be "superior" or "inferior" is nonsensical, it is also incredibly liberating. This, in fact, is the cognitive therapy version of spiritual "enlightenment." And that's also one of the goals of the TEAM-CBT that my collegues and I have created.


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## Daniel (Jan 18, 2021)

“An entire mythology is stored within our language.” 

“Hell isn't other people. Hell is yourself."  [Wittgenstein commenting on Sartre's "Hell is other people.”]

― Ludwig Wittgenstein


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## Daniel (Feb 22, 2021)

A Quiet Ego Quiets Death Anxiety: Humility as an Existential Anxiety Buffer

The recognition of the dark side of the self has generated an interest in the “quiet ego” in recent years (Wayment & Bauer, 2008).                   

• Self-compassion (Neff, 2003)​• Ecosystem vs. egosystem perspectives (Crocker, 2008)​• Hypoegoic self-processes (Leary & Guadagno, 2011)​• A quieter ego would be less under the “curse of the self” (Leary, 2004).​​


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## Daniel (Mar 17, 2021)

Me, myself, and I: self-referent word use as an indicator of self-focused attention in relation to depression and anxiety
					


Self-focused attention (SFA) is considered a cognitive bias that is closely related to depression. However, it is not yet well understood whether it represents a disorder-specific or a trans-diagnostic phenomenon and which role the valence of a given context is playing in this regard...





					www.frontiersin.org
				




Self-focused attention (SFA) is considered a cognitive bias that is closely interconnected with the experience of acute and chronic negative affect (Mor and Winquist, 2002). It is defined as “an awareness of self-referent, internally generated information that stands in contrast to an awareness of externally generated information derived through sensory receptors” (Ingram, 1990, p. 156)...

SFA in the context of negative but not positive events is associated with symptoms of depression and anxiety, and more strongly with depression...

The present findings close a gap in the literature by showing for the first time that first-person pronoun use during negative but not positive memory recall is positively related to brooding which is considered the more maladaptive subcomponent of ruminative self-focus.


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## Daniel (Mar 27, 2021)

Why Your ‘True Self’ Is An Illusion
					


And why it still can impact the way you behave and see the world.





					www.vice.com


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## Daniel (Apr 4, 2021)

A more positive spin for this thread:









						Expand Your Sense of Self With Creativity
					


Creativity coach Michele Jennae provides top tips on the creative life.





					www.psychologytoday.com
				




"An expanded sense of self is a strong sense of self. It is a self that is centered, connected, and confident. The alternative, which is stagnation or contraction, often leads to a life of frustration and dissatisfaction. In psychology, self-expansion theory asserts that a satisfied life comes from a person’s ability to expand and grow throughout their lives."


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## Daniel (Apr 21, 2021)

The Self is a Unicorn - Dr. Rick Hanson
					


In this excerpt from Dr. Rick Hanson's book Neurodharma, he offers a contemplation on the question: Who am I?





					www.rickhanson.net
				



*A “Self” Is Like a Unicorn*​Rick Hanson, PhD

To sum up, our experiences of “I,” “me,” and “mine” – and their neural foundations – are impermanent, compounded, and interdependent. In a word, the apparent self is _empty_. This alone should encourage lightening up about it and not clinging to it. But I’d like to take this a step further.

We can have empty experiences of things that do actually exist, such as horses. Just because the _experience_ of a horse is empty does not mean that the horse is not real. But we can also have empty experiences of things that do _not_ exist, such as imagining a unicorn. If there is no creature with the defining characteristics of a unicorn – a horse with a long pointed horn – then unicorns are not real.

The presumed self is like a unicorn, a mythical beast that does not exist. Its necessary, defining characteristics – stability, unification, and independence – do not exist in either the mind or the brain. The complete self is never observed in experience. Subjectivity doesn’t mean there is a stable subject, a one to whom things happen. And the sense of being or having a self is not needed for consciousness – nor for opening a door or answering a question.

Realizing this often begins conceptually, and that’s all right. These ideas can help to highlight different aspects of _experience_. Then we can observe and practice with the mind and gradually there will be a felt knowing of what’s true.


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## David Baxter PhD (Apr 21, 2021)

Some very good points there.

I wrote a paper on this several years ago in connection with social identity theory *1* (to be honest, I can't recall if it was ever published in print or just created for a conference).

We all talk about "the self" as if there were only one, but in reality it is much more complex than that and typically there are several versions of the self. Certain aspects of the self are displayed in certain contexts but not at all in other contexts. I think in my paper I argued that this does not necessarily eliminate a possibility of a "core self" that exists in all contexts but we can only infer that from what we see in the various contexts.



I am currently a father, a grandfather, a sibling, an uncle, a friend, a patient, and a web professional. In the past I have been a professor, a researcher, a therapist, and a public speaker, among other things. I have also been a husband and a partner in various relationships. In each of these roles, people would see certain aspects of me, some consciously selected and others selected unconsciously or subconsciously according to the specific expectations and demands of the role. What I display can also be interpreted in different ways depending on the needs of the person with whom I am interacting.

Anyway, it's a fascinating concept (at least to me  ).  Thanks for the reminder, @Daniel.

*1* *More on Social Identity Theory*






						Social Identity Theory | Simply Psychology
					







					www.simplypsychology.org
				












						social identity theory | Definition, History, Examples, & Facts
					


Social identity theory, in social psychology, the study of the interplay between personal and social identities. Social identity theory aims to specify and predict the circumstances under which individuals think of themselves as individuals or as group members.




					www.britannica.com
				









						APA PsycNet
					







					psycnet.apa.org
				












						Social Identity Theory and and Its Impact on Behavior
					


Social identity theory describes the conditions under which social identity becomes more important than one’s identity as an individual.





					www.thoughtco.com


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## Daniel (May 6, 2021)




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## Daniel (May 6, 2021)

"Nothing is ever at rest--wood, iron, water, everything is alive, everything is raging, whirling, whizzing, day and night and night and day, nothing is dead, there is no such thing as death, everything is full of bristling life, tremendous life, even the bones of the crusader that perished before Jerusalem eight centuries ago."

~ Mark Twain


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## Daniel (Jun 18, 2021)

"An identity crisis is a marvelous opportunity
to trade in a small and limiting self-image
for a greater and truer one."

~ Alan Cohen


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## Daniel (Jul 21, 2021)

"How many yous in a day?"

~ Chris Niebauer, PhD,  _No Self, No Problem_


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## Daniel (Jul 21, 2021)

“The self is a mystery. In our efforts to pin it down or make it safe, we dissociate ourselves from our complete experience of whatever it is or is not.” 

"Far from eliminating the ego, as I naively believed I should when I first began to practice meditation, the Buddha encouraged a strengthening of the ego so that it could learn to hold primitive agonies without collapse.”

  ―      Mark Epstein,           _ The Trauma of Everyday Life _


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## Daniel (Jul 27, 2021)

David Burns:









						The website of David D. Burns, MD | Self-Acceptance–Are We All Defective? | Feeling Good
					


If you are reading this blog from Facebook or Twitter, I appreciate it! I would like to invite you to visit my website, http://www.FeelingGood.com, as well. There you will find a wealth of free goodies, including my Feeling Good blogs, my Feeling Good Podcasts with host, Dr. Fabrice Nye, and the...





					feelinggood.com
				




Although these themes may seem abstract, they have powerful, practical, emotional consequences. Just one small example, let’s say you struggle with anxiety and shyness. You may have the fear that others will judge you because you are inferior, or not “good enough,” and this thought can cause tremendous suffering. But this thought is based on the notion that you have a “self” that can be evaluated or judged. When you see through this notion, you can experience liberation from your fears.

The Buddhists called this “The Great Death.” Of course, we all fear death, and struggle to keep our egos alive. But once you’ve “died,” so to speak, you can join the Grateful Dead, and then life suddenly opens up in unexpected ways. And for those who may misread me, or interpret my words literally, I am not referring to physical death, but death of the “self.”


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## Daniel (Aug 20, 2021)

_"It is my conviction that man should not, indeed cannot, struggle for identity in a direct way; he rather finds identity to the extent to which he commits himself to something beyond himself, to a cause greater than himself."

~ _Viktor Frankl


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## Daniel (Sep 5, 2021)

A ‘Self-Aware’ Fish Raises Doubts About a Cognitive Test
					


A report that a fish can pass the “mirror test” for self-awareness reignites debates about how to define and measure that elusive quality.





					getpocket.com
				




One thing on which most scientists in the field do agree is that there’s a link between recognizing yourself in a mirror and being social. The species that perform well on mirror tests all live in groups. In an intriguing 1971 study by Gallup and others, chimpanzees born in captivity and raised in isolation failed the mirror test. The chimps that passed the test had been born in the wild, in social groups. Gallup thought this finding supported the ideas of the philosopher George Herbert Mead of the University of Chicago, who said our sense of self is shaped by our interactions with others. “[T]here could not be an experience of a self simply by itself,” Mead wrote in 1934.


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## Daniel (Oct 3, 2021)

"What we conceive of as an unbroken thread of consciousness is instead quite often a train of discontinuous fragments. Our awareness is divided. And much more commonly than we know, even our personalities are fragmented—disorganized team efforts trying to cope with the past—rather than the sane, unified wholes we anticipate in ourselves and in other people."


 ―      Martha Stout,           _ The Myth of Sanity: Divided Consciousness and the Promise of Awareness _


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## Daniel (Oct 21, 2021)

“In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight.”

“Learn to watch your drama unfold while at the same time knowing you are more than your drama.”  

~ Ram Dass


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## Daniel (Oct 21, 2021)

"Our energy and the energy of the universe are always in flux, but we have little tolerance for this unpredictability, and we have little ability to see ourselves and the world as an exciting, fluid situation that is always fresh and new. How we relate to this dynamic flow of energy is important. We can learn to relax with it, recognizing it as our basic ground, as a natural part of life; or the feeling of uncertainty, of nothing to hold on to, can cause us to panic, and instantly a chain reaction begins. We panic, we get hooked, and then our habits take over and we think and speak and act in a very predictable way."

~ Pema Chödrön, _Taking the Leap_


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## Daniel (Oct 21, 2021)

“If you’re living a goal-focused life, then no matter what you have, it’s never enough.”

~ Russ Harris


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## David Baxter PhD (Oct 21, 2021)

Daniel said:


> “If you’re living a goal-focused life, then no matter what you have, it’s never enough.”
> 
> ~ Russ Harris



Surely that depends on how you define your goals, or what your goals are.


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## Daniel (Oct 21, 2021)

More context, e.g. journey vs. destination:


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## Daniel (Oct 30, 2021)

A quote from the author of the novella _Memories of Amnesia_:






						Lawrence Shainberg — Reviews | MEMORIES OF AMNESIA
					







					www.lawrenceshainberg.com
				




"The ability to laugh at the brain is liberation from it. But the degree to which one identifies with one's brain is the degree to which one suffers.''


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## Daniel (Apr 25, 2022)

The Antidote To Digital Disconnectivity | NOEMA
					


Community requires ritual and narrative.





					www.noemamag.com
				




Community requires ritual and narrative.

“The paradoxes of the information age make the mind swim. The more we are informed, the more we are disoriented. The more we connect, the more we are divided. The more new content there is to consume, the less we are ever satisfied. The faster the network speed, the shorter our attention span becomes."

“The inwardly turned, narcissistic ego with purely subjective access to the world is not the cause of social disintegration but the result of a fateful process at the objective level. Everything that binds and connects is disappearing. There are hardly any shared values or symbols, no common narratives that unite people.”


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## Daniel (May 16, 2022)

"The life of an individual is a constant struggle, and not merely a metaphorical one against want or boredom, but also an actual struggle against other people. He discovers adversaries everywhere, lives in continual conflict and dies with sword in hand.”

― Arthur Schopenhauer, _On the Suffering of the World_


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## Daniel (May 16, 2022)

“Yet I also recognize this: Even if everyone in the world were to accept me and my illness and validate my pain, unless I can abide myself and be compassionate toward my own distress, I will probably always feel alone and neglected by others.” 

― Kiera Van Gelder


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## Daniel (May 26, 2022)

"You've been somebody long enough. You spent the first half of your life becoming somebody. Now you can work on becoming nobody, which is really somebody. For when you become nobody there is no tension, no pretense, no one trying to be anyone or anything. The natural state of the mind shines through unobstructed -- and the natural state of the mind is pure love."

"In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight."

~ Ram Dass


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## Daniel (May 31, 2022)

Daniel said:


> reminds me of Buddhism (the "self" is a painful illusion), Zen Buddhism (live spontaneously--"If you are hungry eat, if you are tired sleep"), Schopenhauer (the intellect can't compete with desire), Dr. Dyer  ("connecting to source"), and the late Joseph Campbell (we need "myths to live by").



Regarding Schopenhauer:






						Psychotherapists: Should we meet Arthur Schopenhauer?
					


Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) is known as the pessimist philosopher and the psychologist of the will. He anticipated some features of cognitive neuroscienc...




					www.redalyc.org
				




Schopenhauer conceived the will as the universe’s essence; purposeful human actions are a small part of it. We do not directly perceive the will, but only its phenomena through the ‘Veil of Maya’, which, in contemporary terms, refers to the cognitive and perceptual limits imposed by our own biological species. This is why Schopenhauer posits that we have a representation (idea) of the world. We have a direct access to the will by perceiving our body’s desires. The will is insatiable and selfish.

Because of these will’s features, there is no possibility of collective or global salvation. However, individual or existential salvation may occur by denying the will through a path that includes: 1) an aesthetic experience particularly with the aid of art, that allows contemplation of the ´Platonic Ideas´, lessening desire and promoting knowledge through contemplation,; 2) the ethical experience refers to the insight about the unity of the universe, particularly by realizing the ubiquity of suffering and neediness, and 3) the metaphysical step which promotes compassion and asceticism. These philosophical principles may add to specific psychotherapeutic techniques in expanding the individual’s awareness beyond herself/himself, and thus arise and improve the psychological outcome...

How asceticism by conceived in contemporary terms? For our average fellow with emotional suffering, asceticism does not refer to the extreme self-denial and privations of worldly pleasures as depicted in some religious traditions. A parsimonious, but meaningful, asceticism can logically arise from recognizing the insatiability of the will and the restless lifestyle that derives from such insatiability. Hence, asceticism can be reframed as a healthy state of mind that includes some degree of austerity and detachment...

*Clinical vignettes*
In this section I briefly describe how I used Schopenhauer’s thought with four patients in my own clinical practice. Permission was obtained from these patients, and their identity is here concealed.


This is a 63 year-old college professor who, while preparing his retirement, sought therapy to address his defensive attitude and the need he felt for being the center of attention in social encounters. Both features strongly deprived him from enjoying otherwise pleasurable activities. Therapy focused on assessing his cognitive distortions and rehearsing copying strategies before social interactions. He was particularly impressed by Schopenhauer’s aesthetic step to salvation (see page 456 above) of knowing without desiring and felt that by practicing *contemplation*, he could control his excessive need for attention, and thus, enjoy the present moment. He constantly remembers Goethe‘s expression: “The stars we yearn not after delight us with their glory” (6).


This refers to a 46 year-old prosperous physician with a severe anxiety disorder. In spite of significant symptom reduction obtained through cognitive therapy and medication, he had a *pervasive feeling of emptiness*. He did an insightful reflection about the selfish and insatiable features of the will that he compared to his self-centered disposition, itself aggravated by the anxiety disorder. As an additional coping strategy during his anxiety crisis, he now sympathetically reflects about his families and friends’ unmet needs and how he can help them. He is thus developing compassion.


This is a 24-year old girl with mild attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, non-incapacitating phobias, moderate irritability and performing anxiety. She came to therapy asking for help to face a critical step in her university career and to treat vaginism and dyspareunia in a long-awaited romantic relationship. She was shocked to find out that, after having successfully passed her exams and overcoming her sexual dysfunctions, she became even more anxious and worried. When discussing the pervasive feature of the insatiability of the will, she thought Schopenhauer’ expression “yet for one wish that is satisfied there remain at least ten which are denied” was very compelling. She identified herself with that thought and adopted it as an *emphatic inner voice* that now assists her in counterbalancing her negative evaluation of her achievements.


After a very difficult divorce, a 50 year-old lady became obsessed about why things in her life happened the way they did. I introduced her to Schopenhauer’s approach to the art of tragedy (see page 457). Tragedies may arise from: extraordinary wickedness…, blind fate… but more commonly by the mere position of the dramatis persona with regard to each other, through their relations… (5). She found it very relevant when assessing her externalizing-prone attribution style. This reflection opened a door for her personal growth in such an important time in her life.


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## Daniel (Jun 11, 2022)

“The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd: the longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.”

- Fernando Pessoa

from _The Book of Disquiet_, ch. 196 (translated by Richard Zenith)


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## Daniel (Jun 12, 2022)

Source: Amazon product


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## Daniel (Jun 12, 2022)

Daniel said:


> “The self is a mystery. In our efforts to pin it down or make it safe, we dissociate ourselves from our complete experience of whatever it is or is not.”
> 
> "Far from eliminating the ego, as I naively believed I should when I first began to practice meditation, the Buddha encouraged a strengthening of the ego so that it could learn to hold primitive agonies without collapse.”
> 
> ―      Mark Epstein,           _ The Trauma of Everyday Life _


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## Daniel (Jul 23, 2022)

Ronald Melzack - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




"He proposes that we are born with a genetically determined neural network that generates the perception of the body, the sense of self, and can also generate chronic pain, even when no limbs are present."

----------------









						The King of (Understanding) Pain: Q&A with Ronald Melzack - McGill Reporter
					


By Mark Shainblum Ronald Melzack is an emeritus professor of psychology at McGill who revolutionized the study and treatment of pain. His historic partnership with Patrick Wall of MIT led to the 1965 publication of the Gate Control Theory of Pain, which overturned the then accepted view of pain...





					reporter.mcgill.ca
				




"The future is research on how the brain creates our world: the world we see, hear, touch and feel. Pain is the doorway into that. I mean, right now, I am just a little upside-down person on the back of your retinas. You don’t see me upside down, or jumping around as your eye jerks around. Your brain creates me. Most people don’t want to hear such a thing. They want to think that what you see is what’s out there."

"Everything is subjective. Everything. But people don’t want to hear that."


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## Daniel (Jul 31, 2022)

The saying "no self, no problem" probably comes from Zen. In their cultures, where Buddhism is kind of taken for granted, as well as karma, causality, former and future life, and the possibility for becoming enlightened, then it's safe to skirt the danger of nihilism, which would be, I don't exist because Buddha said I have no self, and therefore I have no problem because* I don't exist*. That *would be a bad misunderstanding. *But in those cultures, it would not be as easy to have that understanding as it would be here* in the west, where we really are nihilistic.*

~ Robert Thurman


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## Daniel (Aug 5, 2022)

The Myth of Empowerment
					


The Myth of Empowerment surveys the ways in which women have been represented and influenced by the rapidly growing therapeutic culture—both popular and professional—from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The middle-class woman concerned about her health and her ability to care for...




					www.google.com


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## Daniel (Aug 23, 2022)

“Resist the temptation to be someone once again. Allow yourself to be no one; allow your mind to be empty of thought, unfurnished, until the identities gradually filter back in. Notice the space between your identities and the awareness of them. Notice if a similar gap appears at other times during the day, an empty space that you may have ignored before but can now lean into and prolong. Continue to open to the openness.” 

― Stephan Bodian, _Beyond Mindfulness_


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## Daniel (Aug 24, 2022)

Modern mindfulness meditation has lost its beating communal heart | Psyche Ideas
					


Ancestral blessings in meditation are not premodern residue. Attachment theory suggests they’re vital for compassion





					psyche.co
				




"Modern meditation and mindfulness, beginning with an atomistic sense of self, can reinforce an individual’s sense of disconnection."


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## Daniel (Aug 31, 2022)

Consciousness Is Overrated
					


After science discarded the soul, consciousness took its place.





					theapeiron.co.uk
				




For me, the joy of skiing is watching my body execute turn after turn, without me consciously doing much about it, other than letting it happen. When rock climbing, sometimes I will be frozen before a hard move, trying to sequence it. Then I let go and my body just does it, unconsciously, naturally...

It is foolish to think that we can change our consciousness without changing the rest of our mind. The mind is just one thing. It has to work together. We may be annoyed by crazy thoughts and feelings that arise from our unconscious, but they are part of ourselves. We need to embrace them, accept them, and understand them. Our consciousness cannot be a dictator inside our mind who decides what belongs there and what doesn’t. We need to love the entirety of our mind, with all its quirks. Because that is what we are, and what we will ever be.


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## Daniel (Aug 31, 2022)

The Subconscious Brain: Who?s Minding the Mind?
					


The Subconscious Brain: Who?s Minding the Mind?  By BENEDICT CAREY, New York Times July 31, 2007  In a recent experiment, psychologists at Yale altered people?s judgments of a stranger by handing them a cup of coffee.  The study participants, college students, had no idea that their social...





					forum.psychlinks.ca
				




Researchers do not yet know how or when, exactly, unconscious drives may suddenly become conscious; or under which circumstances people are able to override hidden urges by force of will. Millions have quit smoking, for instance, and uncounted numbers have resisted darker urges to misbehave that they don't even fully understand. 

Yet the new research on priming makes it clear that we are not alone in our own consciousness. We have company, an invisible partner who has strong reactions about the world that don't always agree with our own, but whose instincts, these studies clearly show, are at least as likely to be helpful, and attentive to others, as they are to be disruptive.


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## Daniel (Sep 4, 2022)

“Other people can be annoying, as Sartre famously suggested, but true hell is perpetual imprisonment in the self.”

― Barbara Ehrenreich, _Natural Causes_


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## Daniel (Sep 5, 2022)

What if your consciousness is an illusion created by your brain? | Aeon Essays
					


Phenomenal consciousness is a fiction written by our brains to help us track the impact that the world makes on us





					aeon.co
				




The subjective world of phenomenal consciousness is a fiction written by our brains in order to help us track the impact that the world makes on us. To call it a fiction is not to disparage it. Fictions can be wonderful, life-enhancing things that reveal deep truths about the world and can be more compelling than reality. Unlike Neo in _The Matrix_, you shouldn’t want to escape this fictional world; it’s a benign one, designed by evolutionary processes to help you thrive. But you shouldn’t mistake it for reality either.


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## Daniel (Sep 5, 2022)

From the author of _Seeing Myself_:






						Memes and the malign user illusion - Dr Susan Blackmore
					


Memes and the malign user illusion Paper presented at Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness Conference “Unity and Dissociation”, Brussels, 30.6-2.7.00 Abstract also published in Consciousness and Cognition, 9, S49, 2000 Many authors have suggested that the apparent unity of...





					www.susanblackmore.uk
				




Memes group together into co-adapted meme complexes, one of which is the self. This memeplex is constructed by the memes for their own propagation, not for our benefit. Indeed it is arguably the root of all human suffering. I conclude that both scientifically, and for living our lives, the illusion is malign.


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## Daniel (Sep 9, 2022)

You Don't Actually Have A 'Lizard Brain', Evolutionary Study Reveals
					


A new study has shown that the concept of the mammalian 'lizard brain' can be well and truly put to bed.





					www.sciencealert.com
				




Brain regions, anatomically distinct as they are, are highly interconnected, a web of humming neural networks. And with the advent of new techniques, we can start to better understand how brains evolved...

Most regions of the brain, the analysis revealed, have a mix of ancestral and newer types of neurons within them, challenging the notion that some brain regions are more ancient than others.

In fact, the researchers found that neurons in the thalamus can be separated into two groups based on their connectivity to other regions of the brain.


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## Daniel (Oct 29, 2022)

Charles K. Fink, The ‘Scent’ of a Self: Buddhism and the First-Person Perspective - PhilPapers
					


Buddhism famously denies the existence of the self. This is usually understood to mean that Buddhism denies the existence of a substantial self existing over and above the flow of conscious ...





					philpapers.org
				




Buddhism famously denies the existence of the self. This is usually understood to mean that Buddhism denies the existence of a substantial self existing over and above the flow of conscious experience. But what of the purely experiential self accepted by the phenomenological tradition? Does Buddhism deny the reflexive or first-personal character of conscious experience?

In this paper, I argue that even the notion of an experiential self is ultimately incompatible with Buddhist teaching—in fact, deeply incompatible.  According to Buddhism, I am an objectively existing person (though not irreducibly real). However, when I conceive of myself as myself, I conceive of myself as having a subjective mode of existence.

What Buddhism denies, then, is not that I exist, but that I exist in the subjective or first-person manner in which I conceive of myself as existing. The problem I take up in this paper is to understand how Buddhism can simultaneously affirm the reflexivity of conscious experience and yet deny that the experiential self is a self.


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## Daniel (Oct 29, 2022)

From Self to Nonself: The Nonself Theory
					


The maintenance/strength of self is a very core concept in Western psychology and is particularly relevant to egoism, a process that draws on the hedonic principle in pursuit of desires. Contrary to this and based on Buddhism, a nonself-cultivating process aims to minimize or extinguish the self...





					www.frontiersin.org
				




Because we realize the impermanence experientially, we arrive at the understanding of nonself. This is not a loss of the self. It continues to exist, but we don't see it the same way.


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## Daniel (Oct 29, 2022)

http://www.drpaulwong.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Self-Transcendence_A-Paradoxical-Way-to-Become-Your-Best-2016-Aug-15.pdf
		


May I suggest that you entertain the following ideas, which represent an alternative way for personal growth:

You need to lose yourself in order to find yourself.
It is more blessed to give than to receive.
Do not ask what you can get from life, but ask what you can give to life.
You must be willing to deny yourself in order to serve something greater than yourself.
I challenge researchers to systematically investigate the adaptive benefits of ST [self-transcendence]. Meanwhile, I want to leave these thoughts with you for your reflection:

The paradoxical way of ST offers the best chance to survive and prosper as an individual and society.
Take care good care of yourself and develop your potential for the common good.
The toughest mind is equipped with a meaning mindset because it can remain positive and hopeful even when everything seems bleak.
The strongest motivation is the intrinsic one of becoming one’s best in order to give one’s best to the world.
There is no failure or defeat when you are willing to lose everything in order to achieve a worthy life calling.


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## Daniel (Nov 6, 2022)

The many don'ts of depression
					


The many don'ts of depression by A.B. Curtiss  DON'T be caught unaware without a plan of action for when the next depression hits. You need a check list to prepare yourself just as if you are going on a trip. Because depression is a trip that you need particular things for that will help you get...




					forum.psychlinks.ca
				




Depression is self-focusing so you want to outer-focus. Depression is subjective so you want to think objective thoughts. Look around and connect to present reality by noticing the color of the wall, the pattern of the sofa.


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## Daniel (Nov 6, 2022)

Trauma and transformation – a psychologist on why difficult experiences can radically change us
					


https://theconversation.com/trauma-and-transformation-a-psychologist-on-why-difficult-experiences-can-radically-change-us-169591 November 16, 2021 by Steve Taylor        ...There is nothing religious about transformation through turmoil. Essentially, it’s a psychological experience, related to a...





					forum.psychlinks.ca
				




"In the process of breaking us down, turmoil and trauma may also wake us up."


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## Daniel (Nov 8, 2022)

Amazon product


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## Daniel (Nov 16, 2022)

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." 

~ John Muir


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## Daniel (Nov 16, 2022)




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## Daniel (Dec 8, 2022)

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17439760.2021.1991445?src=recsys
		


Thinking about MIL [meaning in life] in other-oriented terms might exert positive effects on well-being, whereas a more self-focused belief could have detrimental effects.


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## Daniel (Dec 8, 2022)

Are You Looking to Buddhism When You Should Be Looking to Therapy?
					


https://tricycle.org/magazine/buddhism-and-psychotherapy/  The ultimate goal of Buddhist practice isn’t about achieving mental health. By C. W. Huntington, Jr.  Spring 2018  ...The practice of psychotherapy is, accordingly, dedicated to a method of healing that leaves the conventional structure...




					forum.psychlinks.ca
				




Mindfulness meditation in its “ultimate” application—as a Buddhist practice aimed toward realization of nibbana—is not concerned with shaping a functional ego. It is, rather, a way to _dis_identify with both health and illness, happiness and sorrow, pleasure and pain. To disidentify, that is, with the unavoidably painful nature of even the most refined varieties of self-centered experience.


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