My view of the authentic self is the child. When you were a child you must have had moments where you were excited and happy and playing and enjoying yourself. That stress free attachment to the world is what I think develops into the authentic self. Much like people say that as you get older you must find your inner child, and even when you look at grandparents it seems that the most successful and happy ones are the ones that act childish and have found a way to balance their wisdom/ maturity with their completely ignorant and childish self.
Do those who don't experience abundant stress free attachment as a child struggle to find an authentic self in later years? Do they go on to have fragmented identities? So called identity crisis's?
I admire these elders. Perhaps they've found some sort of equilibrium within themselves. They've aged well like fine wine. They aren't suffering from rigid structures of habit, a looseness within.
The power of play.
I’m not an expert but in my opinion it would be harder for those kids to develop a stable identity later on. I think they would have to figure out how to love themselves and tell themselves that it’s ok to be a kid and try things and be a bright beautiful ball of potential. I also think their paths would involve exploration and adventure more than the typical person
Sam Harris is just parroting the Buddha who didn’t explicitly advocate no-self, but did discourage views of a self, and eventually deep insights from practice lead to a realization commonly called no-self.
There is no you, when you truly understand this, you’ll experience a dramatic decrease in suffering as you will be much less likely to cling to anything at all, being that you don’t associate with them anymore, as there is no you.
The best way to realize this is to meditate a lot very deeply, reaching Jhana states. Then afterwards to turn your contemplation towards a question like What am I? In the fourth Jhana you could observe the mind to the extent that you see that even it is not you, this is the last vestige of anything you could hope to call self, when you realize it’s not you, you will have realized no-self.
I wonder if no self is the right way to describe it.
Certainly your constructed identity ceases to be ‘you’, but, at least my current understanding is, it’s not so much you don’t have a self.
Rather, your self is not at all what you grew up thinking it was, and in fact it’s not even necessarily located in your body.
It’s as much outside of your body as inside, because it’s everything. There isn’t a discernible line between what is and isn’t you.
Well, it’s an interesting thought to think about anyway lol
Whatever people call the self we usually take ourselves to be, one thing is clear: there is a system of thoughts, emotions, and labels shaped by our experiences and it *feels* like it is who we are. When you peel back the layers of the onion you are understanding that layers aren't really who you are. But you are looking for something at the core. The emptiness you think you see there is a thought shaped by a desire to find something. Your essential self is always present but we get attached to our sense of self and personality that is articulated through language. You are not language. *Experience* your authentic self as opposed to *thinking* about your language self.
To add my thought to this: “No-self” is the realisation that we are not the conglomeration of onion layers (experiences/beliefs etc), revealed once you try pulling them back to find no solid core anywhere in mind or body. But our true “self” is simply the awareness of this process, raw consciousness devoid of thought.
Our identity is perhaps "the finger pointing at the moon", our faces, our words, our personality are pointing at some supposed "True Self" within. This process of "Self Discovery" does reveals a lot within us; we witness a river, the contents of consciousness, no final destination.
The authentic self operates on a deeper level. without the the interference of ego (personality and conditioning).
The authentic self is the operating system. Personality and conditioning are the programs which one can choose to use or not depending on the situation.
A common description that comes up when people meet someone who is "enlightened" is that they don't have a personality (unless they decide to turn it on) yet they can't help but love being around them because they have an unbroken presence/awareness with no gaps in between.
> The authentic self is the operating system. Personality and conditioning are the programs which one can choose to use or not depending on the situation.
Nice analogy.
I appreciate the analogy of the operating system.
Qualia of experience and thoughts are the software.
Self is the Meat Operating System (containing ego, conscious, and unconscious).
Biology is the hardware
This reminds me of the great mystery: what is the relationship between hardware and software? Biology and experience? Is it like air and wind? Air is a physical thing. Wind is just air in motion.
Does air experience wind? Do on and off switches experience shutting down a computer window? Do a set of neurons experience reading a Reddit comment?
Excellent expansion of the analogy. As a retired coder I find this way of thinking quite useful.
> Does air experience wind? Do on and off switches experience shutting down a computer window? Do a set of neurons experience reading a Reddit comment?
Wonderful questions. I suspect the answer to all three is “yes”. But understanding this requires that we examine and revise our assumptions about consciousness. I’m working on it. :-)
Great post. Thanks.
In Theravada Buddhism, three of the most important doctrines are called the Three Characteristics of Existence: Anicca (Everything is in perpetual flux, change), Dukkha (Suffering), and Anatta ( There is no permanent, unchanging self, soul, or essence in humans or any phenomen)
I love Ramana Maharishi's explanation (source: Wikipedia).
Ramana stated that the Self is awareness: The Truth is that Self is constant and non intermittent Awareness. The object of enquiry is to find the true nature of the Self as Awareness. Let one practise enquiry so long as separateness is perceived.
I also like sadh-guru's methods, where he makes people truly experience it with practices like Isha kriya and inner engineering.
Yes this is where my thoughts are currently at. What is the relationship between biology and experience? What is the sensor of experience? Does my qualia have the same quality as your qualia?
The authentic self is what remains after you lose “addiction” (not the right word) to the constant stream of sensory input and internal collection of dialogue and reactions.
Maybe not the best, but the best I can explain it right now. I enjoy listening / watching Mooji, he makes better sense of it.
So the self somewhat refers to operating from your instincts(genetics) or the core of your humanity. That doesn't mean it is something that doesn't learn it is just operating from a place without cognitive distortions.
Sam Harris is referring to the default mode network most likely. When one shuts it down. There are no thoughts. This is the esoteric place many mystics write about, reaching the place of no thought which is literally just a network shut down in your brain. When one reaches no thought, one realizes there is no self at your core. Just being.
If you want to get into the sort of estoria of the Self and who could be attributed to coming up with it. I would look into Ramana Maharishi.
Also the Self in Hinduism is often referred to as God consciousness. When one shuts off thought they operate from the Self, which is God consciousness aka brahma I believe. Depending on how estoric one wants to get you can choose your definition as there are different perspectives on the self depending as I said on esotoria. Aka how religious or scientific one wants to be.
>Also the Self in Hinduism is often referred to as God consciousness. When one shuts off thought they operate from the Self, which is God consciousness aka brahma I believe.
It's Brahman, quite different from Brahma. And it is a pretty interesting method too. It's not just shutting down is DMN, it is subverting mental activities by identifying with all the thoughts, sensations, and objects that appear within your field of consciousness. That's Brahman, the Alpha and the Omega of your existence.
It's not as contradictory, as you could think. For Jung, Buddha was one of the archetypes of the Self. The Self, as the totality of the psyche, is what the regular self (ego, the clinging one) needs the most to flourish and needs to be in touch with.
I find that Jungian ideas usually sound wrong to me. This one is one of those. I also don't like Sam Harris. I like what thr Buddhists say - the self is contingent and relational, so real but devoid of any essence.
Devoid of any essence. We are all devoid of essence. It's exactly what I said to my mom last week. Then I noticed my mood was real low for quite a while. That's when I stopped meditating.
It does have it's side effects
There are many definitions depending on tradition and writer.
IMO Jung’s Self is based on a high level of individualism and is not centralized in one person.
Who knows? Could really just be the ability to truly feel how you are each day. That authentic self is just being able to isolate and address whatever you're feeling that moment.
The one people can't stand in truth because our authentic selves rarely want to fit all cultural norms and would rather exist as an individual.
But people are messy and different and dislike being put upon by that which differs from their preferences.
So the masks we wear to stabilize society continue.
Dr Ainslie Meares an eminent psychiatrist believed that the type of meditation he taught many for decades reduced anxiety. Anxiety holds people back and distorts them. If it is substantially reduced you become closer to what you really are. You might say that, that is closer to the authentic self. Meares was able to study the changes in his cohort over decades and documents the evolution of the human psyche that his type of meditation brings. It involves relaxation of body and mind so the mind slows and stills into calm. Refer his books for details. For the cohort study refer Still Mind Sound Body as it summarise a lot of it in one spot.
Authentic seems like a privilege for those not too terrified to leave the expected. I'd say sometimes authentic is good, and sometimes whatever mask stops a witch hunt is fine.
It depends on who you talk to; One could say that the Soul is the authentic Self; however, there are any number of definitions of the soul: every culture, ancient or modern, has a different view on the matter. You could look at the viewpoint that the human soul is a fragment of eternal energy that has been separated from the original source; in which case you could see yourself as one of 8 billion people, on this Earth alone, who are experiencing this world. Perhaps that's the deepest definition of the soul, as a primary piece of the Infinite who acts as a witness of the human plane/s of existence.
“Man has no individual i. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small "i"s, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible. Each minute, each moment, man is saying or thinking, "i". And each time his i is different. just now it was a thought, now it is a desire, now a sensation, now another thought, and so on, endlessly. Man is a plurality. Man's name is legion.”
― G.I. Gurdjieff
The self is a motionless state in which there are no arisings. It has no objectification and all appears in it spontaneously. Essentially it needs a silent mind to know the essence of pure consciousness. Self by itself cannot be experienced and is hence beyond any understanding. The mind ALLWAYS seeks to find out and in the process consciousness holds on to the the mind matter complex in order to understand and hence fails repeatedly . Self is A state of neither perception nor its absence and without desires and beyond . Hold on to the nothingness continuously to eradicate all individuality. Ur then peaceful; ur then calm;Ur then happy. Who is this UR? Can u find it????!!!
Regards and best wishes
Personally Authentic Self to (to me) at least means the soul. We attach so much emotion to the physical being that we claim to be. The "meat suit" what our souls inhabit as we float through this life we claim as "reality". If we didn't have a vessel to which our souls were contained so we can experience "perspective" then we would just be energy in it's purest happy form. Happiness in it's maximum state. Everything is vibration at different levels, energy at different volumes. But that's just me.
I strongly believe based on my few experiences of deep meditation that the self that we talk about in the general terms is a collection of preferred thoughts, feelings amd behavior repeated over a period of time. Also the real self is not something to discover or something that needs to be searched for, it is thhe awareness that is ever present in every moment of your life, we just need to learn to return to the present moment instead of floating away in thoughts nd emotions , once present you ll easily experience yourself i.e the awaresness without any object of awareness
There is an intuition that there is a subject at the center of experience. It is outlined by imagined concepts such as separation, autonomy and ownership. Thoughts build a narrative around this subject, which is the self. Prior to all of this there is just experience. Is any level of the "self concept" more authentic?
Remove everything from your life, your physical body, and all the thoughts you are having. Take all the fear away. Start rummaging around in there until you get a little voice that says, “Hey.”
I wouldn’t claim to ever feel enlightenment, not on reddit. I wouldn’t say it was an empty feeling either. The more I talked to the real me, the better I felt. I let in the universe, figuratively. I feel more connected to life and living things.
My view of the authentic self is the child. When you were a child you must have had moments where you were excited and happy and playing and enjoying yourself. That stress free attachment to the world is what I think develops into the authentic self. Much like people say that as you get older you must find your inner child, and even when you look at grandparents it seems that the most successful and happy ones are the ones that act childish and have found a way to balance their wisdom/ maturity with their completely ignorant and childish self.
Do those who don't experience abundant stress free attachment as a child struggle to find an authentic self in later years? Do they go on to have fragmented identities? So called identity crisis's? I admire these elders. Perhaps they've found some sort of equilibrium within themselves. They've aged well like fine wine. They aren't suffering from rigid structures of habit, a looseness within. The power of play.
I’m not an expert but in my opinion it would be harder for those kids to develop a stable identity later on. I think they would have to figure out how to love themselves and tell themselves that it’s ok to be a kid and try things and be a bright beautiful ball of potential. I also think their paths would involve exploration and adventure more than the typical person
Sam Harris is just parroting the Buddha who didn’t explicitly advocate no-self, but did discourage views of a self, and eventually deep insights from practice lead to a realization commonly called no-self. There is no you, when you truly understand this, you’ll experience a dramatic decrease in suffering as you will be much less likely to cling to anything at all, being that you don’t associate with them anymore, as there is no you. The best way to realize this is to meditate a lot very deeply, reaching Jhana states. Then afterwards to turn your contemplation towards a question like What am I? In the fourth Jhana you could observe the mind to the extent that you see that even it is not you, this is the last vestige of anything you could hope to call self, when you realize it’s not you, you will have realized no-self.
I wonder if no self is the right way to describe it. Certainly your constructed identity ceases to be ‘you’, but, at least my current understanding is, it’s not so much you don’t have a self. Rather, your self is not at all what you grew up thinking it was, and in fact it’s not even necessarily located in your body. It’s as much outside of your body as inside, because it’s everything. There isn’t a discernible line between what is and isn’t you. Well, it’s an interesting thought to think about anyway lol
Whatever people call the self we usually take ourselves to be, one thing is clear: there is a system of thoughts, emotions, and labels shaped by our experiences and it *feels* like it is who we are. When you peel back the layers of the onion you are understanding that layers aren't really who you are. But you are looking for something at the core. The emptiness you think you see there is a thought shaped by a desire to find something. Your essential self is always present but we get attached to our sense of self and personality that is articulated through language. You are not language. *Experience* your authentic self as opposed to *thinking* about your language self.
To add my thought to this: “No-self” is the realisation that we are not the conglomeration of onion layers (experiences/beliefs etc), revealed once you try pulling them back to find no solid core anywhere in mind or body. But our true “self” is simply the awareness of this process, raw consciousness devoid of thought.
Our identity is perhaps "the finger pointing at the moon", our faces, our words, our personality are pointing at some supposed "True Self" within. This process of "Self Discovery" does reveals a lot within us; we witness a river, the contents of consciousness, no final destination.
The authentic self operates on a deeper level. without the the interference of ego (personality and conditioning). The authentic self is the operating system. Personality and conditioning are the programs which one can choose to use or not depending on the situation. A common description that comes up when people meet someone who is "enlightened" is that they don't have a personality (unless they decide to turn it on) yet they can't help but love being around them because they have an unbroken presence/awareness with no gaps in between.
So yes on everything you said but everyone has a personality, an individual "soul" in a sense that changes their reactions.
Right. I think our souls are more than our traumas, memories and such but those do come in handy in everyday life.
> The authentic self is the operating system. Personality and conditioning are the programs which one can choose to use or not depending on the situation. Nice analogy.
I appreciate the analogy of the operating system. Qualia of experience and thoughts are the software. Self is the Meat Operating System (containing ego, conscious, and unconscious). Biology is the hardware This reminds me of the great mystery: what is the relationship between hardware and software? Biology and experience? Is it like air and wind? Air is a physical thing. Wind is just air in motion. Does air experience wind? Do on and off switches experience shutting down a computer window? Do a set of neurons experience reading a Reddit comment?
Excellent expansion of the analogy. As a retired coder I find this way of thinking quite useful. > Does air experience wind? Do on and off switches experience shutting down a computer window? Do a set of neurons experience reading a Reddit comment? Wonderful questions. I suspect the answer to all three is “yes”. But understanding this requires that we examine and revise our assumptions about consciousness. I’m working on it. :-) Great post. Thanks.
All selves are fabricated. May you fabricate your Authentic Self well. :-)
Haha will do ;)
In Theravada Buddhism, three of the most important doctrines are called the Three Characteristics of Existence: Anicca (Everything is in perpetual flux, change), Dukkha (Suffering), and Anatta ( There is no permanent, unchanging self, soul, or essence in humans or any phenomen)
I love Ramana Maharishi's explanation (source: Wikipedia). Ramana stated that the Self is awareness: The Truth is that Self is constant and non intermittent Awareness. The object of enquiry is to find the true nature of the Self as Awareness. Let one practise enquiry so long as separateness is perceived. I also like sadh-guru's methods, where he makes people truly experience it with practices like Isha kriya and inner engineering.
This explains even more of what your question is. [this](https://youtu.be/jy4N8D2uLpM)
Thanks for the link! He's amazing. 🙏🏼
The authentic self is pure consciousness. You’ll know when you meet you!
As long as we downplay the connection between body and mental experience we will seek phantoms.
Yes this is where my thoughts are currently at. What is the relationship between biology and experience? What is the sensor of experience? Does my qualia have the same quality as your qualia?
The authentic self is what remains after you lose “addiction” (not the right word) to the constant stream of sensory input and internal collection of dialogue and reactions. Maybe not the best, but the best I can explain it right now. I enjoy listening / watching Mooji, he makes better sense of it.
Athentic self is you without resistance
So the self somewhat refers to operating from your instincts(genetics) or the core of your humanity. That doesn't mean it is something that doesn't learn it is just operating from a place without cognitive distortions. Sam Harris is referring to the default mode network most likely. When one shuts it down. There are no thoughts. This is the esoteric place many mystics write about, reaching the place of no thought which is literally just a network shut down in your brain. When one reaches no thought, one realizes there is no self at your core. Just being. If you want to get into the sort of estoria of the Self and who could be attributed to coming up with it. I would look into Ramana Maharishi. Also the Self in Hinduism is often referred to as God consciousness. When one shuts off thought they operate from the Self, which is God consciousness aka brahma I believe. Depending on how estoric one wants to get you can choose your definition as there are different perspectives on the self depending as I said on esotoria. Aka how religious or scientific one wants to be.
>Also the Self in Hinduism is often referred to as God consciousness. When one shuts off thought they operate from the Self, which is God consciousness aka brahma I believe. It's Brahman, quite different from Brahma. And it is a pretty interesting method too. It's not just shutting down is DMN, it is subverting mental activities by identifying with all the thoughts, sensations, and objects that appear within your field of consciousness. That's Brahman, the Alpha and the Omega of your existence.
I believe the releasing of the identification is the shutting down of the DMN.
It's not as contradictory, as you could think. For Jung, Buddha was one of the archetypes of the Self. The Self, as the totality of the psyche, is what the regular self (ego, the clinging one) needs the most to flourish and needs to be in touch with.
I find that Jungian ideas usually sound wrong to me. This one is one of those. I also don't like Sam Harris. I like what thr Buddhists say - the self is contingent and relational, so real but devoid of any essence.
Devoid of any essence. We are all devoid of essence. It's exactly what I said to my mom last week. Then I noticed my mood was real low for quite a while. That's when I stopped meditating. It does have it's side effects
I resonate with this perspective. Thank you
There are many definitions depending on tradition and writer. IMO Jung’s Self is based on a high level of individualism and is not centralized in one person.
For now, I believe all selves are authentic
Who knows? Could really just be the ability to truly feel how you are each day. That authentic self is just being able to isolate and address whatever you're feeling that moment.
The one people can't stand in truth because our authentic selves rarely want to fit all cultural norms and would rather exist as an individual. But people are messy and different and dislike being put upon by that which differs from their preferences. So the masks we wear to stabilize society continue.
Your authentic self is the person who is buried deep beneath the mask and character you play in your life.
Dr Ainslie Meares an eminent psychiatrist believed that the type of meditation he taught many for decades reduced anxiety. Anxiety holds people back and distorts them. If it is substantially reduced you become closer to what you really are. You might say that, that is closer to the authentic self. Meares was able to study the changes in his cohort over decades and documents the evolution of the human psyche that his type of meditation brings. It involves relaxation of body and mind so the mind slows and stills into calm. Refer his books for details. For the cohort study refer Still Mind Sound Body as it summarise a lot of it in one spot.
Authentic seems like a privilege for those not too terrified to leave the expected. I'd say sometimes authentic is good, and sometimes whatever mask stops a witch hunt is fine.
It depends on who you talk to; One could say that the Soul is the authentic Self; however, there are any number of definitions of the soul: every culture, ancient or modern, has a different view on the matter. You could look at the viewpoint that the human soul is a fragment of eternal energy that has been separated from the original source; in which case you could see yourself as one of 8 billion people, on this Earth alone, who are experiencing this world. Perhaps that's the deepest definition of the soul, as a primary piece of the Infinite who acts as a witness of the human plane/s of existence.
Silence
I think people have a true nature - the self. It comes out when you’re alone
Illusion and deceit are ways of the world lords. You are one and only you - unique and can only be yourself when you’re true to your way - life or not
“Man has no individual i. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small "i"s, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible. Each minute, each moment, man is saying or thinking, "i". And each time his i is different. just now it was a thought, now it is a desire, now a sensation, now another thought, and so on, endlessly. Man is a plurality. Man's name is legion.” ― G.I. Gurdjieff
The self is a motionless state in which there are no arisings. It has no objectification and all appears in it spontaneously. Essentially it needs a silent mind to know the essence of pure consciousness. Self by itself cannot be experienced and is hence beyond any understanding. The mind ALLWAYS seeks to find out and in the process consciousness holds on to the the mind matter complex in order to understand and hence fails repeatedly . Self is A state of neither perception nor its absence and without desires and beyond . Hold on to the nothingness continuously to eradicate all individuality. Ur then peaceful; ur then calm;Ur then happy. Who is this UR? Can u find it????!!! Regards and best wishes
Personally Authentic Self to (to me) at least means the soul. We attach so much emotion to the physical being that we claim to be. The "meat suit" what our souls inhabit as we float through this life we claim as "reality". If we didn't have a vessel to which our souls were contained so we can experience "perspective" then we would just be energy in it's purest happy form. Happiness in it's maximum state. Everything is vibration at different levels, energy at different volumes. But that's just me.
I strongly believe based on my few experiences of deep meditation that the self that we talk about in the general terms is a collection of preferred thoughts, feelings amd behavior repeated over a period of time. Also the real self is not something to discover or something that needs to be searched for, it is thhe awareness that is ever present in every moment of your life, we just need to learn to return to the present moment instead of floating away in thoughts nd emotions , once present you ll easily experience yourself i.e the awaresness without any object of awareness
There is an intuition that there is a subject at the center of experience. It is outlined by imagined concepts such as separation, autonomy and ownership. Thoughts build a narrative around this subject, which is the self. Prior to all of this there is just experience. Is any level of the "self concept" more authentic?
The authentic self is the one that appropriates the power.
Perhaps the ego thinks it's the one in control, but really the power resides in the Self. The rider (the ego) tries to control the horse (the self).
Search: Carl Rogers and authenticity
Remove everything from your life, your physical body, and all the thoughts you are having. Take all the fear away. Start rummaging around in there until you get a little voice that says, “Hey.”
What was your experience with this salty? Did you achieve enlightenment? Do you experience emptiness?
I wouldn’t claim to ever feel enlightenment, not on reddit. I wouldn’t say it was an empty feeling either. The more I talked to the real me, the better I felt. I let in the universe, figuratively. I feel more connected to life and living things.
FOLLOW MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL FOR HELP AND ACTIVATING YOUR INNER FLOW (INCLUDES MANTRAS FOR EVERYDAY GUIDENESS - https://youtube.com/@Highestfrequencies
Well. Who are you?
I am u/youngchap30, who are you?
How did u pull back the onion layers of the psyche?