Self as a reflection?
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is that which looks back?” Apart from being in pain, we never feel as real as when we look at ourselves in the mirror and witness our physical presence. We look, we see and know that we exist, we are undeniable there, and we imply from that there is a self, that we have an original agency, rather than being a mere actor repeating the lines that we inherited from our family, culture and nature that we were born with.
Which is reinforced by confirmation bias, when we see others operate in ways that we can not fathom and we falsely attribute their actions to the nature of self, we believe that others are having a mirroring experience as they show behaviours that appear original in others to our point of view, but the reality is that their actions could just be the result of their unique life circumstances. Perhaps that is all there is, just reflections of images, and underneath each one is another set of self-reflections all the way to the bottom of time, and if we look far enough backwards, we would trace them back to the beginning of our history as thinking monkeys when the illusion first arose.
Our power of self-reflection is not presence at our birth, we simply have the ability to decide if something is causing us suffering, it is only when we learn that there are others, that the theory of mind emerges, and that there are separate being who appear to have agency and a different point of view, that we discover that we can decrease our suffering by treating them as individuals who act in their best interests and that it is our interest to act as if we were all individuals who have agency, needs and desires. It is when our ability to co-operate emerges and there are huge survival advantages in this skill, not just physically but emotionally, and we do this through the mind's ability to talk to itself, to have a conversation where you play two sides of the drama that you are thinking about. You are able to see yourself from an exterior point of view and judge your behaviour as being poorer or better, we get to rehearse how we act before we do so.
This is a miracle and extraordinary, we know of no other creature that is able to do anything other than mimic this behaviour, it gives us the ability to change our actions before we take them because we can foresee how they are going to be interpreted by others. However, it is also a trap, you have been warned now, but that does not matter as you will keep on walking into it, every thought is a potential mine waiting to be detonated, that is why the sense of self is so strong, we set it off with our own thoughts, and to be clear it only occurs when we trigger it. When we are focus on a task and we are in flow, our sense of self literately disappeared, and it feels amazing to be complete absorbed in a skilful and difficult task that is at the edge of our abilities, we lose ourselves and the part of the mind that generates our self-reflection shuts down and we are free to just do, to act freely.
That is the promise of escaping our reflecting, that we get to be free, to simply experience the world without the filter of self-reflection, and it is deeply ingrained in our nature, it is what Kahneman describes as type II thinking, the default system that emerges when you are relaxed and daydreaming, which almost always involves you in situation that you have to resolve, you get to roleplay how you would deal with any situation that you can imagines. Whether that is winning an argument that you had earlier in the day or escaping a zombie plague, you are practising for real life no matter how real or unrealistic the events are in your daydreams, and this is a useful activity, for learning and even playing, it is what underpins our loves of stories and films, we get to see other roleplay dangerous stituation without any real risk to us, though it does not mean that the actor is real and there is a self.
That is where it becomes a problem when we becomes caught up in those fantasies, worries, regrets that all form part of our defensive strategy of reflecting upon everything that happens to us, we live our lives as if there is really a “Self” at the centre of all this activity, that there is something to protect, that there is a point of agency that is real, whereas just because you think about something all the time that does not mean it actually exists (if you really take notice the majority of the things we think about do not exist in the real world and never will, so why do we think that the self does). If we investigate our thoughts where is the “self”, there is process, there is life, there is hope, love, desire, wants, there is definitely suffering and impermanence, everything is ultimately empty, and yet the whole of existence is interconnected, we are the result of a billion process before us and there will be a billions after we are gone, we are just witnesses to this unfolding miracle of existence, and it is beautiful.
So beautiful that maybe the universe just needed to develop a way of witnessing its own beauty, we could just be the result of a need to know itself, or perhaps our manner of self-reflecting is the nature progression of intelligence, once there is the ability to act, to manipulate the environment around you, the power of self-reflection is just a natural step in the open warfare that is the survival of the fittest. What it does is give us the opportunity to search for something beyond mere self-reflection, that is part of what meditation does, it requires us to sit with our thoughts without judgement, indeed a substantial amount of energy goes into stopping this process of self-reflection.
However if you are looking for a way of finding “self” it is worth listening to your thoughts, and take notice of every thoughts that contains an element of self-reflection about what you have done, what you are feeling, a scratch on your nose, it is almost as if you are write a very boring report on what you are experiencing, you are dictating the story of you, in the most tedious manner possible with everything that occurs to you in it. Is it any wonder that you end up thinking that you there is a “self” that exists, that there is anything apart from the awareness of existing in a particular moment in time, there is nothing special about any particular moment, nothing that really explains why we are here or what we are about, there are no answers, or special reason, we just start being aware and then at a certain point we stop.
Whilst it is hard to prove the negative that there is “no self”, as “self” only has to turn up once like a black swan, it is hard to argue with experience, especially your own, it is only by listening to your thoughts clearly, hopefully one at a time that you can even start investigating your own experience and as that is literately the only thing that you really possess, it seems simply practical to increase your powers of attention. There does not seem to be a downside to have more concentration, and it is a completely learnable skill, there is no such thing a poor concentration there is only untrained concentration, and the most useful thing I have found to do with it, is to pay attention to my own experience as it is happening. There is incredible depth in each moment as well as more choices, which as I am stoic means that I get to have more control.
Maybe not over the big stuff, a lot of those things we do not have control over, and instead seems to determine by the luck of birth, environment, culture, the time period that you are born into, however your quality of life is not really determined by the big stuff, what matters is the small stuff, how you act in the little moments. That is why stoicism is so powerful it asks you to control everything that you can, and you start with the small stuff, what meditation does is that it doubles down on that strategy and go as small as you can. Our thoughts consist of small moments, and there are even smaller ones than a full thought, each thought can be broken down into noticing, voicing and intentions, that is how discriminating you can become, and it is amazing how much we are at the mercy of these small moments. A poor intention can snowball into a poor thought, then these trigger a series of thoughts, and before you know it you are acting poorly (probably with donut crumbles around your mouth).
These series of thoughts always start with an intention, which is one of the smallest units of consciousness, it does not need to be voiced even in thought, it is more like putting the needle on a record player, you can hear it, but it is not the music and yet always precedes it. Intentions are the starting conditions for thoughts to grow from, and with practise it is noticeable. It is like the scaffolding upon which our mind is dependant, they nudge us into actions and thoughts, they are our subconscious minds emerging to gently guide us towards their needs and wants, they are nothing as concrete as a thought and yet they dominate our lives. What happens in the thought is that those needs are made personal, they turn from a wish to what we want, the “self” is inserted into the need, hunger might become” I need a donut”, discomfort to, “I need warmth.. a coat.. a new coat.. money.. more money.. a new job... I need respect,” you can see how a mere intention becomes an attack, all because the “self” inserted itself into your thinking.
When you start to reflect upon your thinking, you can quickly find that it is all self-reflection, all the way down, it is all about you, every thought leads back to yourself, that is pretty much all that there is, just reflection about what you want, need, desire, your fears, loves, regret, worries, how everything affects you, and how you impact on everyone else. It is the grandest of drama, an opera that never endings, it is relentless and all consuming, it will draw your attention for the whole of your life if you let it, it will shallow your awareness and never let you have that moment of peace that you have always wanted. Never forget that it does this out of love, it is there to protect you, prepare you for this dangerous world, even in the luckiest parts of the most fortunate countries, there is the risk of social death by saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, there is a strong survival argument for never turning this protective equipment off.
However, that is not what I am arguing, I am searching for control, especially over such an important safety measure, I want to be able to use my power of self-reflection as a powerful tool for empowering my experience of life, it's quality, depth and even length. It is there so that we can prepare and maximise our returns on our efforts, it helps the quality of our relationships and improves our life chances of getting the best outcomes. Once you drop the personal, you get to take a more objective view of your self-reflection, you get to see what you want and the most direct way of getting what you want, you stop have to do all the feeling, the re-running of insecurity, you get to close the loops on poor or misguided thinking, you get to let thoughts come, be and go, as you stop defending this sense of “self”, it is no longer happening to you, there is just events that happen nothing more, and actions are taken because of them, because they are the best thing for the happening that is you.
It impossible to escape the language of the “self” the whole purpose of language is for individuals to act together. Language both forms and effect our thoughts, it shapes them into concepts that builds up from the simplest words to complex models through which we view the worlds, and our first words start the divide between individual experience, we witness what is happening to us and we see another, our mother, father and from there the world cracks into ten thousand different things, each separate. It is that separateness that becomes solid in our illusion of “self”, we must be a thing because there are so many other things, and even if we accept that there are things without consciousness, toasters might have a sense of humour, but they do not burn your toast out of spite. The idea that “self” itself is empty appears at first overwhelmingly depressing.
Which if that was the end of it, it would be, but that would be to fall foul of the same illusion, just because “self” is empty, that does not mean that there is not consciousness, that beauty can not be known, that there is not a witnessing of truth. We know this to be false, it is just not possessed, it is not to be jealously guarded, you do not own it, you can not take advantage of it, profiteer, exclude other from, there is no saving it, you just get to experience that moment of recognition, to be presence, you are witnessing the full beauty of the world. You get to laugh until you cry, run to the point of exhaustion, fall asleep satisfied, wake up excited for a new day, you get to experience the highs and lows of a live well lived, you just to not get to keep it. These experiences happen, you only get to control how present you are with every moment of your life, and believe it or not, the self just gets in the way, it helps if you use it as a tool, but the illusion that there is a you it is happening to, is unhelpful, far better to play the game with everything you have got, rather than worrying about the rules, and whether it is fair, and everything else that distracts you from the moment, the only one that matters the present, after all the “self” is just a reflection, so do not get distracted into an endless mirror that does not lead anywhere, except back to yourself.
