Curious Article In A Psychology

[Abandon]

http://psychology.about.com/od/selfhelp_su...17Gottfried.htm

Who Are You?

by Bob Gottfried, PhD*

When I ask people the question "Who are you?" I'm usually greeted with silence. People are not sure; in fact, some have never even stopped to think about it. Can you imagine living all your life without knowing who you really are?

Once people recover from the initial surprise of the question they respond with all kinds of definitions, most of which are based on their character or abilities. "I am Anna, I am a teacher, I am a mother, I am good-natured, I am artistic, I am a driven individual, I like helping others," and so on.

Would you agree that who you are is a collection of your experiences, memories, thoughts, feelings and beliefs? Most people tend to agree with that.

Let's examine this deeper. Are we our experiences and memories or are these only events that we have encountered no more? Are we our thoughts?

If you answered yes, then let me ask you this: Can we change a thought? Of course we can. So who then is changing the thought? Is there someone "bigger" than the thoughts who can change them if he or she wishes to? The thought cannot change itself, the same way a book cannot turn its own pages, or a car start its own engine. So who inside can do it? You may say: "I do. I can change my thought." So in that case you are not your thoughts, are you?

Are you your feelings? As with thoughts, you can say that you have feelings but not that you are them. And what about beliefs? Are you your belief system? Many assume that they are, but we need to use the same rationale: we can change or update a belief or an attitude. It may be hard to do, but it can be done. You may have beliefs and attitudes but you are not them, wouldn't you agree?

In that case who is this person who is having thoughts, memories, feelings and beliefs? You may say it's the PERSONALITY. Many psychologists would agree with that, but who was there before you developed a personality? Who is the entity who has the personality?

You may answer again, "I do." In that case, who are you? We are back to square one, but at least we know, at this point, who we are not. We are not, at least not totally, our thoughts, feelings, or personalities.

The word "person" comes from the Latin word "persona," which means a mask. Indeed, people wear all kinds of masks that enable them to play all kinds of dramas. But even if you wear a thousand different masks, there is a face behind the mask. I call it CoreSelf.

We present many selves including the self that we would like others to think we are, the self we actually think we are, the self we are afraid we are, and then, of course, the core essence that we really are. When you take off the masks, you find the true face of who you are.

In his famous statement, Descartes declared, "I think, therefore, I am." From a spiritual perspective, the more appropriate statement would be, I think, therefore I THINK I am. Who we think we are is nothing but a bunch of thoughts! Who we really are is beyond thought.

Try this awareness exercise for a moment: Take a few deep breaths in, suspend all thoughts, perceptions and feelings? Who remains after you pushed away everything?

Our CoreSelf is indeed the spiritual essence that we are really made of. Below our egos and excessive mental processing it lays waiting for us to discover it. When we learn to recognize it and deepen our awareness of it, good things happen, automatically. Without the need for goals or use of will power. We are then in sync with who we truly are. Therefore, to be more of who we are, we have to reduce our pre-occupation with thoughts and feelings and become more aware of our surrounding, without criticizing, judging, blaming and complaining.

To live life more fully, a life that is purposeful, we first need to know who we are and make choices based on this inner wisdom. Then, we can begin to experience a strong sense of freedom, joy and inner peace. Take a deep breath in, exhale slowly, suspend all mental processing for a while. Who are you?

"Surely, we are not human beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a human experience." ---Pierre Teilhard De Chardin.

*This is an adapted excerpt from the book: "Shortcut to Spirituality: Mastering the Art of Inner Peace" (DeeperDimension publishing, 2004.) Dr. Bob Gottfried is a psychotherapist and Neuro-cognitive specialist. He is the clinical director of Advanced Wellness Programs and Advanced Cognitive Enhancement clinics.

Edited April 2, 2005 by pandit35

[sabaijai]

So many intersting and curious versions and visions of self and mind, both inside and outside Buddhism.

A number of years ago I read a book called The Problem of Mind in Buddhism, but have since been unable to find it again or even document its existence. Perhaps I even dreamed the encounter with the book.

Reviewing the huge, and often contradictory, variety of Buddhist definitions of mind and consciousness within and across Buddhist sects, it's difficult not to conclude that neither mind nor consciousness is ever satisfactorily defined - at least not from the perspective of modern logic.

In the end I've decided it doesn't bother me, as I've ceased expecting Buddhism to be logical or scientific. Not that that is any great achievement (perhaps it's a step backwards even). But I've noticed that many people do have that expectation.

Another interesting work that comes to mind is U.G. Krishnamurti's Mind Is A Myth. Excerpts:

"You are not separate from your beliefs. When your precious beliefs and illusions come to an end, you come to an end. My talking is nothing more than the response to your pain, which you are expressing through questions, logical arguments, and other mentations.

"The "me", "psyche", "mind", "I", or whatever you want to call it is nothing else than the totality of the inherited knowledge passed on to us from generation to generation, mostly through education. You teach the child to distinguish between colors, to read, to imitate manners. It is relative to each culture: Americans learn American manners, Indians learn Indian manners, etc. Gestures of the body, of hands or of face constituted the first language. Later words were added on. We still use gestures to supplement our spoken words because we feel that words alone are inadequate to fully express what we want to convey.

"All this is not to say that we can really know anything about thought. We can't. You become conscious of thought only when you make it an object of thought, otherwise you don't even know you are thinking. We use thought only to understand something out there, to remember something, or to achieve something. Otherwise we don't even know if thought is there or not. Thought is not separate from the movement of thought. Thought is action, and without it you cannot act. There is no such thing as pure, spontaneous, thought-free action at all. To act is to think.

"You have a self-starting, self-perpetuating mechanism, which I call the self. This does not mean that there is actually an entity there. Where is this ego, or self, that you talk of? Your non-existent self has heard of spirituality and bliss from someone. To experience this thing called bliss you feel you must control your thoughts. It is impossible, you will burn yourself and die if you attempt it."

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

"The existence of things is not in dispute.

It is the manner in which they exist that must be clarified."

Dalai Lama XIV

[drummer]

"You are not separate from your beliefs. When your precious beliefs and illusions come to an end, you come to an end

...

"You have a self-starting, self-perpetuating mechanism, which I call the self. This does not mean that there is actually an entity there.

From my undertanding of how the mind works, this seems to be quite accurate for me.

There seemed to be a major presupposition in the article that I took excpetion to from my study of the mind, which is that it asked "what changes thoughts"

I would say that thoughts change thoughts. Neurophysiologically speaking, you have a great many 'thoughts' banging around your head at any one time, all speaking at different volumes. Only the very loudest ever make it to conciousness. To change thoughts, either the thought itself thinks it has become more important(outside event) , or anyther thought modifies it to make it more important (an act of concentration).

(personality, then, would be the general tnedencies of your brain - tnedencies toward jumping to conlusions (making swift decisions), depression, agorophibia, lovingkindness, whathaveyou.

To change the subject to astrophysics for a moment, the seems to be a human foible to anthropomorphize. We project what we know and expect everything to work similarly. In astrophysics, everyone is looking for the 'origin of the universe' ... For me, whats to say that it wasn't always just there?

Similarly, what to say there there is someone 'driving' the mind, changing thoughts at will? I remember from Psych 101 that there is a lot of evidence that physically speaking, this does not exist.

[sabaijai]

The 'CoreSelf' (a spelling awaiting trademark?) argument reminds me of Aristotle's 'proof' of the existence of God, ie, the 'unmoved mover'. I think the stickiness of mind and self is here to stay, unsolved from a logical perspective.

[drummer]

well, thats just it ... I think it can be solvedfrom a logical perspective. I don't think logic dictates that matter must have ben created somewhere. Logic is perfectly OK with accepting "it was just always there" ... It is our minds which force the conclusion because of how they are set up to think.

Likewise, everything we see that acts purposefully has something driving it. Cars have drivers that tell them where to move. A chess oard has a player who controls the piece. We *seem* to have one singular consiousness that makes our decisions, but, really, we don't. Logic is OK with that, IMHO.

[sabaijai]

I see your point. I'm not saying that the idea of no origin/beginning isn't logical. Rather that if you look for perfect logic in Buddhism, you won't find it.

[drummer]

I was trying to miply that the 'stickiness' isn't necessarily need to be ilogical. Complex, sure, but not illogical. The origin comment was just an example about how something can seem stick but not be illogical.

I'm not going to advocate that any theory is perfectly logical, though.

Ravisher ... I've always liked the experssion "perception is more true than reality"...