The self you see and the self others see are both images

by Vic Shayne
author
The Self is a Belief: the idea that causes suffering

There is often an idea regarding one’s perception of the self versus the perception that is projected to other.

The self is created by an accretion of tightly held thoughts that form a “me” or a persona. This self does not actually exists and it comes about by way of psychological conditioning. It is this same self who you take yourself to be that also forms the image projected to others. There is only one self.

The self is conflicted, whether we are talking of the inner or outer — what you perceive and what others perceive of you. It is simply conflicted. How could it be otherwise, since it is an image, and all images are juxtaposed against other images, other ideas, other beliefs, other objects, and so on. Conflict of the self occurs because the self has bought into its own limited existence, walled off from all “others,” so it creates desires to get what it perceives it wants or needs. This creates conflict. Physicist David Bohm called this sustained incoherence — the state of being in conflict for a prolonged period of time. It is the self itself, the existence of the idea of a “me,” that creates and sustains this incoherence.

The self that others see — that is perceived by others — is a fragment of the entirety of the self, including all of its beliefs, ideas, memories, feelings, emotions, etc. The self is made up of all the possible aspects that we may see in others but not in ourselves — selfishness, greed, attachment, ugliness, fear, pettiness, anger, and so on. These are the contents of consciousness and exist as a whole rather than as parts; but the conditioned mind cannot behold the whole, so it fragments the whole into what it can handle, act upon, or think about. The self does not admit to the fact that its consciousness contains all manner of feelings and emotions, including good, bad, anger, patience, etc., mainly because it cannot do so due to its own limitations.

The self that you perceive is colored by your limited, conditioned brain, and it is in conflict, especially because you do not want to think badly of yourself or fully admit to your own negative feelings and attitudes and behavior. It’s easier to point at others and say, “That guy is a jerk,” or “She’s quite selfish.” There are things that you just do not see about your self, because the self is not objective and is trained to wall off, ignore, be indifferent to, hide from, or be blind to, itself.

To see the self for what it is — an illusory persona created from secondhand information — one must observe it deeply without criticism or judgment. Just observe, and you can see what this self is, how it behaves, what it tends to think about, the depth of it, the duality of it, what it is fearful of, and so on. You will find that, inner or outer, the self is a fictional character, but the more you believe that it is real, the greater your defense of it and the more you will argue that it is real and important. This defense is part of the reason that the outer projection may disagree with the inner one.

#enlightenment #journeysoul #spirituality #psychology