Do we fully realize who we are?
by Vic Shayne
author
13 Pillars of Enlightenment: How to realize your true nature and end suffering
Of all the things we know, we know the least about ourselves
We know so many things about life, relationships, work, history, science, psychology, how to write a letter or use a computer, how to drive or figure out a math problem (some of us, anyway) and on and on, but what we know least about is who we are; not as physical, biological bodies, but what we are at our essence as well.
We think we know who we are, but we really don’t know at all, because all that we know is an IDEA of who we are, not the actuality. The idea is thought, information, but we are not thought. What we are as a sense of an autonomous self is an illusion — an image. When you refer to yourself and say “I am this or that,” this is the self speaking.
I’ve written about the self for many years in books and articles. The conspectus of this topic is that the self is created when the mind and brain are psychologically conditioned by thoughts from others to create a center out of which all is regarded and to which all is compared. The process of conditioning begins at a formative and impressionable age. All sorts of ideas are implanted in, and impressed upon, you so that you gradually create a center out of which you relate to, the world. The biggest problem is that you believe this self-created center — the “me” —is real. But it is not real; it is an accretion of thoughts that forms a belief system of who you are. If your answer to “What am I?” is a baker, computer analyst, father, mother, artist, hippie, conservative, gun owner, pacifist, lawyer, American, or any other such designation, then you are speaking from the point of view of the self.
It is this sense of a self that creates all your suffering, as well as the suffering of others, the planet, nature, and so on. Almost all of us go through this process of psychological conditioning, and if we want to see beyond it then we have to do something extraordinary: We have to expose this “me” for what it is to realize what we are beneath the superficial.
If you truly knew your self, all the suffering would stop immediately.This leads to the issue of what you are in totality. Do you know? Most people do not, which is why this crazy world continues on its seemingly confusing, chaotic, unpredictable, and tortuous trajectory.
We are the sum total of the contents of consciousness
You, as the “me,” are the totality of all the contents of consciousness. And, of course, everyone else is also a representative of these contents. Many philosophers and sages have said this for millennia, but it really takes intense enquiry into the self to fully grasp this reality, if you so wish. If you do not, then you may see it as an intellectual idea and it will have no real effect on you except to give you something to talk about in a philosophy session or over dinner with your friends.
Is it better to be distracted than to know the truth?
This notion of being psychologically conditioned is a powerful one, and it is distasteful to the self, because it threatens its sense of security. The self believes it’s in charge and all-important. To find out that your self-image is based only on flimsy and fleeting thoughts is unsettling.
The self creates the kind of suffering that leads people to abuse others and themselves, take drugs, get drunk, engage in road rage, yell at their spouses, make excuses, lie, cheat, steal, point your finger at the foibles of others, stick out your middle finger to a passing driver, and pontificate on how God watches over us all. In less dramatic ways, the suffering makes us look for less destructive distractions as innocuous as losing ourselves in movies, sports, family, cooking, gardening, travel, entertainment, video games, or basket weaving. Obviously, not all is bad about the self. Think of how many wonderful people there are who uplift our lives and our world! So what’s the problem? There’s no problem if you don’t feel there is a problem. But there are some of us who do feel there is a problem, because our whole lives are marked by bouncing between pleasure and suffering and we want to know if there is a way off the roller coaster.
No doubt there are plenty of positive things attributable to the inclinations and actions of the self, including buying flowers, gardening, contributing to charities, trying to save the planet, throwing birthday parties, lending a friend a shoulder to cry on, reading to the blind, writing poetry, making films, visiting a sick friend, and so on. But today’s topic is about the relationship between the self and suffering, and suffering isn’t caused from kissing puppies or feeding the homeless.
The self causes its own suffering
Suffering — mental and emotional suffering — is caused by the self, if not for its own judgments, actions, and reactions, then for the way it regards the world as separate from itself. Yes, others can cause problems for you, but like it or not, it is how you perceive their words and actions that leads to suffering. If someone hits you in the head with a board, that’s pain, not suffering. If someone pushes you onto the ground in seventh grade, you will remember his/her cruelty far longer than your scraped knee.
Suffering leads the people to take refuge, become distracted, or to do something about itself, such as harm itself or others, go to therapy, seek the counsel of a friend, pray in church, or even kill itself. Rarely does the suffering lead people to seek a permanent way to eradicate the beliefs that bind the self together as the prime “operating system” of their lives. The self perpetually seeks security, pleasure, and the avoidance of pain. To end its self-created, suffering, it goes to great lengths to invent one or more higher powers to be in control of life, whether this means God, angels, spirit guides, a so-called “higher self,” interdimensional beings, or some intelligent universal force of a different name, to care for and protect it. Religion, cults, and spirituality movement serve this role, but none of them have any real means of eradicating the suffering or any way to transcend the self.
The die has been cast
We cannot change our psychological conditioning in the same way that we cannot perfectly restore a broken mirror or piece of pottery. What’s done is done. What has happened to you in childhood is irreversible, and so is the sense of self that has been shaped and defined by all that has impressed you. This will certainly raise a red flag with some therapists and psychologists who are sure to read these words, but I can assure you that the self has been created and cannot be undone.
You are what you are, no matter how effective you are at temporarily allaying your fears, repulsions, traumas, prejudices, anger, or preconceived ideas. They are all still in you and can never be removed. There would be no self without the conditioning and no a sense of a personal “me” that is identified and associated with family, friends, work, nation, sports teams, schools, titles, awards, fashion statements, or memories needed to perpetuate itself.
The basic goal of psychological therapy is to make you a better person and get past the conditioning that causes you so much grief. Can this be done? Not really, not completely. Sure, you can feel better about yourself or learn to better cope with the hand that life has dealt you, but you cannot undo the self. Does this sound like defeatism or surrender? Only if you consider this through the judgment of the self.
The reason why you cannot change your conditioning goes beyond psychology and is rooted in consciousness.
The hard problem of consciousness
Consciousness is problematic to define. Scientists, philosophers, spiritualists, religionists, and psychologists cannot come to a clear consensus. The word tends to evoke different definitions dependent on one’s discipline. So here’s what I mean: Consciousness is the totality of all that is; it is life and all that is contained within life, including (perhaps most importantly to our discussion) all emotions, suffering, pleasure, phenomena, personalities, feelings, archetypes, characteristics and traits, and physical expressions. All of what you feel, sense, like, dislike, and experience is consciousness. And all thoughts arise spontaneously from consciousness.
The self is a perceived fragment of consciousness. It believes itself to be separate from the rest of the contents of consciousness because it has split itself off from all of its own conditioning and has the hubris to say that it can improve itself or change its own nature. The self is the contents of consciousness masquerading as a locus out of which consciousness arises and can be experienced. It is in denial, distracted, and utterly unaware of this truth. The self is actually not a fragment (though it believes that it is), and is a representation, or mirror, of the contents of consciousness, and it cannot be otherwise; and therefore it cannot improve or be changed to become something else.
The unchangeable self
The question arises as to whether someone can be a better person. The answer is yes, but he/she still remains a person, which is the egoic self. Psychology typically works to recondition the already conditioned self, but it has no methodology to move beyond the self. At best it can shift the attention from one’s problems and attachments to something else, including perhaps something more pleasurable, constructive, interesting, or creative. If successful, such psychological therapy can be life-changing, but it is not self-changing.
Now what does it imply when I suggest that the self is unchangeable and cast in stone? It implies that the self is like a character in a story, whether a film, novel, documentary, biography, or myth. It is imbued with characteristics that are common to everyone else. These are the fundamental building blocks of the self, and the psychological conditioning that occurred since birth is made up of these building blocks.
If you can truly see who you are, as a person, as the self, then you will be able to leave the self to the movement and unfolding of consciousness. By the way, all of what you experience is already due to the total movement of consciousness, but it’s just that the self takes credit or blame because it views itself as the doer, creator, thinker, experiencer, and seer.
Leaving matters up to consciousness does not, of course, suggest that you should just pillage a village, steal from your boss, or drive a hundred miles an hour through a school zone, although if this is the kind of person you have been conditioned to be, then it will be probable that you will do so anyway. As numerous neuroscience studies have shown, the mind becomes conscious of a decision seconds after the brain has already reported the decision. This means that the sense of self, the conscious mind, is not the doer.
I want to leave on a positive note here: Though the self is created by thoughts that have led to beliefs, you are not doomed to suffer. Quite the contrary. If you can observe the self, how it thinks, what it thinks about, all of what it is, etc., then in this astute and thought-free observation you will realize that you are not the self. And in this alone is freedom from suffering.
