Less Self

Free Yourself!

Hello, my friend! I’m so glad you found me! After all, I wrote this specifically for you…

Although I’ll warn you, what I’m about to tell you is going to sound a little dark at first. But if you give me a chance I promise it won’t end that way. Sound good?

(I take it by the fact you’re still reading this you’re agreeing.) Anyway, this all started with a pretty dark thought…

I am trapped in the cage that is myself.

Sounds kinda sinister, right? I’m basically saying the self is a vessel from which I can never escape. You know what makes it even worse?! It’s a vessel no other person can EVER enter!

We cannot escape ourselves and we can never, truly, share ourselves.

Don’t worry though! I know this sounds bleak, but there’s hope. The simple fact you are continuing to read this gives me hope. Because if you have read these first few paragraphs and you’re still reading this now, you are giving me hope!

I wrote this just for you so I hope you will continue reading.

Anyway, although we can never truly share ourselves… with some introspection, self-control, and empathy we can come close. So the first step towards freedom from the cage of the self is understanding the nature of the self.

What is the Self?

Sure, part of the self is the physical body. I don’t want to bore you going off on a tangent about the mind-body connection though. For now, let’s assume that although a lot of is life physical, the self actually resides on the conscious level. You aren’t the hardware, you’re the software. You aren’t the bus, you’re the bus driver. You think therefore you are. Don’t you think so too?

Sure, we could dissect the self a million different ways. We could slice the self into cross-sections by cutting across, cutting up, cutting on a diagonal, or any which way! A psychologist may slice the self one way, a theologian another, and you may even have your own definition of what the self is. It’s all good!

Personally, I look at the self as a combination of five elements; our thoughts, our emotions, our memories, our fantasies, and our beliefs. In my humble opinion, that’s really all that separates me from you. And that’s all that separates the two of us from the rest of humanity.

Well actually that’s not entirely true because there’s a sixth element… mystery. But we don’t need to go into mystery so much because —as the word implies— it’s a total mystery! The sixth element cloaks everything (at least for now). It’s simply an acceptance that no human mind is capable of fully understanding the human mind. There’s an infinite feedback loop when we observe ourselves, no?

So mystery is always a component of the self. All we need to do to resolve that one is agree to accept it. I accept the mystery. Do you?

I guess there’s no way for me to know, so I will have to assume it’s a yes since you’re still reading. Okay! Let’s go on to the other five elements…

Thoughts

Thoughts are interior monologues. It’s super easy to communicate a thought! In fact, I’m doing it right now!! If you want someone to understand your thoughts all you need to do is say them out loud or just write them down (like this). The hardest part is finding the right words to express certain thoughts. Because of the clumsiness of language, it’s not easy to express our most complex thoughts. But that’s really language’s fault! Because those kinds of thoughts usually appear as emotions (or are a mixture of thoughts and emotions) so they’re not just regular thoughts.

Do you have an inner voice or inner script or something like that? If so, you may think your inner voice is your self, but it’s really not. Thoughts are just one part of the self… think of them as the self’s narration. Although sometimes it feels like we’re having multiple streams of thought simultaneously, when we think about two or more things at the same time what we’re actually doing is shifting focus from one thought-stream to another.

Emotions

Emotions are like subtle thoughts. They’re just thoughts that can’t be put into words. Although I can express what an emotion feels like to a certain extent, it’s not as easy to communicate an emotion. Like, I can describe what it feels like to be lonely but if you’ve never experienced loneliness for yourself you won’t truly understand. Also, I have no way of knowing if my loneliness feels the same as yours… and vice versa. So even though I can describe loneliness to you, there’s no way for me to directly share the feeling of loneliness itself to you. Get me?

There’s a strong relationship between thoughts and emotions. Unlike thoughts, we are capable of experiencing multiple emotions simultaneously.

Memories

Memories are the records of our life experiences. All memories are at least a little fuzzy. Even the most vivid memories are blurry when compared to being here in the present. They can be divided into pleasant memories, unpleasant memories, or a mixture of the two. Memories also include our knowledge, our learned skills, and our talents. Basically anything we have memorized.

Fantasies

Fantasies are the products of our imagination. Fantasies include our predictions of the future, our dreams, our daydreams, our self image, the narratives we tell ourselves, etc. Some fantasies are realistic predictions, some are preposterous pipe dreams. Our predictive fantasies can be divided into hopes, fears, or a combination of the two.

Beliefs

Beliefs are like a mixture of our thoughts and our emotions, reinforced by our memories and our fantasies. While it’s true we get our beliefs from society, community, culture, family, friends, media, experience, etc etc all of these experiences are filtered through our thoughts, feelings, memories, and projections. Yes, there are many ways we acquire and build our beliefs… the important part here is how we hold on to them and how they become a part of our self.

I noticed you’re still here. Good! I’m so happy you kept reading because this is the part where things get really interesting!!!

Just like the thought-emotion connection, beliefs impact every other aspect of our personality. Beliefs create a feedback loop back to all of their sources. In this way our beliefs greatly influence our thoughts, emotions, memories, and fantasies.

Our Common Ground

Thoughts, emotions, memories, fantasies, and beliefs. These five elements of consciousness (plus the mystery element!) are what makes you and me separate beings.

But even here, you and I are not separate because we share some of these elements. I would even go so far as to say MOST OF the elements that constitute our “selfs” are not even our own!

Although our own thoughts appear in our minds, many of our thoughts should be credited to others. We augment, reinterpret, borrow, and steal the thoughts of others. You and I can communicate thoughts directly through words… so we share thoughts!

But even our thought-stream itself is not our own. Right now, I’m telling you my thoughts in English. But neither one of us invented the English language… it’s something we both learned! I assume you think in English (or whatever your native language is). So even the delivery system of your very own consciousness is not your own! Chew on that for a minute!

Even though there’s no way to know if emotions feel the same for everyone, I think it’s safe to assume that all emotions feel roughly the same for all of us (based on observation and personal accounts).

Even though you and I have individual memories, we share moments with others so we share memories with them too. We even share some memories with strangers! No, seriously!! I’m pretty sure you and I share some memories. Like, almost everyone has taken a math test in school, right? If I asked you to remember a memory of taking a math test, I bet it’d be pretty similar to my memory of taking a math test. So we share that memory! Wow!! Look at us! Two total strangers sharing a memory!

Even though we each have our own fantasies of the future, we share hopes and fears with others just like we share memories. Fantasies can be shared directly, like when an expecting couple shares a fantasy of what their unborn child may be like. And just like memories, strangers also share a lot of hopes and fears. Even though you and I have never met, I imagine my end-of-life fears are not unlike your end-of-life fears.

Even though you and I probably disagree about some beliefs, I’m ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE we agree on others! Don’t you think so? Just like with thoughts; we augment, reinterpret, borrow, and steal the beliefs of others. Sure, maybe there’s no single universal human belief, but I would say there are some that are almost-entirely universal. Like, I bet almost everyone agrees with the belief that rape is morally wrong. I assume you and I share that belief? At least I sure hope so!

Anyway, when you take away your environment, your upbringing, your language, your education, your subconscious-learning, your culture, and all of the influences that make you what you are… what are you left with? Very little of what is you is actually you!

Did I lose you? No, I guess you must still be here since you’re reading these words. But even so… maybe I lost you. (Because I can think of at least three ways to interpret that question, get me?)

Now I’m not saying you aren’t an individual or that your individuality isn’t important. No way! Each person is a unique blend of influences so maintaining your individuality is absolutely vital! But it’s important to recognize we are ONLY individuals because we are part of a greater whole.

And this shows us the way out of the cage! The second step out of the cage is the awareness that the shared experience of life as a human being overshadows our false divisions. I’m telling you, THIS is the crucial part!

Because that awareness is not enough in-and-of itself. To escape the cage we must take the third step… we must take control of the self!

The Way Out of the Cage

There’s a limit to what we can control. It’s possible to control our emotions somewhat, but it’s really, really hard. And even if we can do it some of the time, we can never have complete mastery of our emotions. There are days when even the Dalai Lama is sad. Trust me.

We can kinda control our thoughts, but well… you know… we have some pretty ugly thoughts sometimes, don’t we?

We cannot completely control the events that create our memories and similarly, our hopes and fears are often beyond our complete control.

The element of the self that allows us the most control is our beliefs. Your unique perspective is what really makes you an individual so beliefs are the linchpin of existence, my friend! They’re deep-seated and they often seem intractable, but I’m telling you…. they are far from intractable! In my experience —with a little effort— beliefs can be the most malleable component of the self.

The Linchpin of Existence

Some of our beliefs are good. Some of our beliefs are evil. Some of our beliefs that we think are good are really evil. And vice versa. And some are a mixture. But most lean good or evil.

So how do we separate the good beliefs from the evil beliefs? Yeah yeah, obviously it depends on your conception of good and evil. And to complicate it even more, your beliefs affect your conception of good vs evil.

Plus on top of that, there’s the question of whether or not morality is absolute or relative. I believe it’s a little of each; morality exists on a spectrum where good and evil (the concepts themselves) exist at the absolute end points and all of the things in the civilized world exist in the shades of grey in between. It’s up to us to parse the world along the spectrum and our individual perspective affects how we parse.

Of course, there are cultural and situational factors that affect the goodness or evilness of things. We’re products of our environment and upbringing. Our place in history is learned because no one is born into a cultural vacuum. Human society is built on previous societies. We all stand on the shoulders of giants! So a lot of the self is born out of one’s environment, upbringing, and culture.

That said, most people agree that (in general) murder is evil, rape is evil, theft is evil, deception is evil, and so on. I’d love to explore the concepts of good and evil further, but morality is such a complex topic that we can’t delve deeper here. For now, let’s go with the understanding that people mostly agree about what is truly good and what is truly evil.

With all of this in mind we return to the question… how do I escape the cage that is myself? The third step of escaping the cage is to constantly challenge our beliefs.
The only way to know if a belief is good or evil is to challenge it from every angle. It is only by constant refinement that we can find real truth. Ideology is a clever trap in that it takes hold of our perspective in such a way that we are blinded to alternatives. It’s like wearing colored sunglasses for such a long period of time that your eyes adjust to the color so when you remove them the world seems strange.

This is why we must constantly play devil’s advocate with ourselves, we must keep our minds open to all possibilities, and we must use constant vigilance to recognize when our perspective is distorting our beliefs. Of course, It’s easy to become indecisive or even apathetic through this process, trapped by your own belief-challenging. It’s important not to get bogged down in the belief-challenging. Instead, belief-challenging should be used as a tool to at least see (and therefore respect) others’ perspectives, if not actually change our own.

If nothing else, challenging your perspective builds empathy. And I promise you, establishing a practice of open-mindedness and empathy is much more rewarding than the rivalry, tribalism, and conflict we often choose to entrap ourselves with.

You will always feel emotions, you will always have thoughts, you will always accumulate memories, you will always attempt to predict the future. And yet your beliefs are the one place where you can control all of these other factors.

So I simply suggest challenging your most deep-seated beliefs at every opportunity. All of this came to me in a flash which took a long time to articulate with words. To be honest, I’m not even sure I’ve properly expressed it. Like I said, some complex thoughts are hard to express with mere words.

But in that moment is also when I “opened” my beliefs. In doing so, I realized all of life’s happinesses are merely fleeting pleasures. True joy is found in our connections to other people and to the greater universe itself.

If you are reading this… Won’t you try this experiment with me? This is my plea to you… recognize our shared experience, open your mind and heart to the perspectives of others, and let’s see if we can finally achieve the potential that humanity has promised itself since our origin.

Please join me, so we can escape this cage.

Together.

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