[rsktaker]

> Now I don't have a story in which I live on.

Lately, I've had this intuition that we change by sort of tricking ourselves. The mechanism for that change is by settling on like this one kind of character, like someone out of a movie that’s playing in your head, and acting like that person. Then, as time passes, we simply forget who we were before we started acting and the only way we know how to act is as this one character.

You say you've lost your 'story' and your 'character', that you don't 'act' anymore.

But, it just feels like you've made another story and another character for you to fit into. You've got a new aesthetic, a new ideal, and your appreciating sunsets and nature is another thing you do because that's what the 'character' you try to fit would do.

And by acting like that person in your head would, you start to feel the same way too.

I think it's a lot more complicated than how I'm thinking. But I really do have a strong intuition that people feel the way they think the person they're acting like should feel, when physical feelings are non-factors.

Really, I don't actually know. Like, what we actually do and what we say we do; what we actually think and what we say we think. What we say we do and think feel like things we're saying to trick ourselves into doing and thinking those things. That's I guess the core of my intuition.

[jcul]

In my humble opinion, the experience is more one of realizing you've been acting and not having to identify so much with the character you are playing.

It's hard to describe, because you're still doing the act, just some part of you realizes the unimportance of it.

And some of that realization shines through in the act itself, in your character.

[hshshshshsh]

Yes. That is well put!

[hshshshshsh]

Did you experience this or are you guessing?

Because I think you are thinking this again through ego.

I don't have a thought that I appreciate sunset when I see one. The sunset looks magical. There is a shift in experience. Before watching sunset was like watching in 420p. Now it's 4k. The consciousness is heightened. You only see the sunset. You don't think of old memories of sunset. Or random events from past or thing you have to do. You just see the sunset.

It's not the commentary that changed from hey yet another sunset to I appreciate sunset.

The commentary is gone or minimised and the resolution is increased. And there are no memories from past to distract you from experiencing the sunset.

And this applies to most things. It's just nature has a lot of stuff that work well with heightened awareness. You don't want to spend your time with a heightened awareness and live next to a highway. That works against you.

[vasco]

The fact that you have this grandiose idea about yourself that you transcended ego and are beyond basic judging of others or of yourself and so on doesn't give you pause to say that maybe that's a bit naive and ego-centered? How can someone declare themselves done with this? It's like someone telling me they achieved a state of never having a bad thought again, I know they are lying.

[speakfreely]

Lol I was just about to say this. It seems unlikely that someone that has transcended their ego would choose to spend their free time telling others what an accomplishment it has been.

Everyone typically has their imagined "edge", the thing that they believe makes them special and unique and superior in some way. Nerds look at jocks and say "they're athletic, but I am the smart one." Blue collar people look at rich people and say "They have a lot of money, but I know hard work and have principles." Everyone has some internal mental defense for why other people that are outperforming them aren't actually "better" than them because, hey, we're the main character!

It seems OP has just replaced one of these with a different version regarding ego shedding.

[psychoslave]

>Lol I was just about to say this. It seems unlikely that someone that has transcended their ego would choose to spend their free time telling others what an accomplishment it has been.

Currently I’m reading "La marche à la lumière – Entretiens du Bouddha"[1]. What is laughed at here precisely describe what the Buddha is making through the whole book. While apparently, just like Socrate, Buddha didn’t let any directly written legacy, it’s clear he has been attached to the notion of an egoless person discussing the topic with whoever would like to ask about it.

Now of course it doesn’t necessarily mean that the person laughed at went through some accomplishment. But whether they did or didn’t is not relevant. What matters here is can it be believed that some human accomplish an egoless experience of life and still continue to discuss with people who didn’t.

[1] https://www.babelio.com/livres/Shantideva-La-marchea-la-lumi...

[vasco]

That's exactly why I called it grandiose. Imagine reading about the Buddha and thinking you're able to just unlock the Dharma as if it were a StackOveflow badge, and then brag to people you got it.

[buttercraft]

FFS, they were asked to elaborate

[rsktaker]

This put into words something I've been thinking abstractly for a while. Thank you for your examples and explanation.

[ChrisClark]

The problem is that state cannot be expressed in words or cognition, because it isn't part of your mind. I cannot fully explain to you what it is like, I can only experience it myself.

Until you have the same experience, you will continue to doubt it in the exact way you currently are. And that's perfectly fine, and natural and still good.

It's like trying to describe a color in its actual raw experience, or describing red to a blind person. It cannot be put into words, only observed.

[robocat]

I super appreciate the effort to explain even though I'm probably as philosophically cynical as some other commentators!!!

It's certainly a hard topic to express.

[richie_adler]

> that state cannot be expressed in words or cognition, because it isn't part of your mind

What else can it be, if not a part of the mind of a state of it?

[hackable_sand]

This might be a useful metaphor for the future:

It is a canvas of a thousand brush strokes. Each time you look it becomes a new color.

[hshshshshsh]

I was just saying what I experienced. Previously I used to judge everyone. It has significantly reduced now. I used to be heavy introverted with people I don't know or don't interact with. Now I talk with pretty much anyone because there is less judgement. It also frees me up because I also don't care about whether they judge me.

Also never claimed I don't have bad thoughts. I did say I suffer from a lot of existential questions. But yes. Bad thoughts about day to day issues have significantly been reduced.

The inner monologue have been lowered on volume. Previously it was at 100 now it's at 4 or 5.

Old memories from past don't show up to affect the current movement.

All this means a higher allocation of bandwidth in consciousness for current movement. There is nothing grandiose here

I still meditate. I still listen to teachers like Adyashanti. I think there is a lot of work remaining to be done.

[weft]

Did I miss where they claimed absolute perfection in shedding their egotism or something? Because this interpretation of self-reformation after an actually humbling admission of having once lived in devotion to narcissism as being braggartry is what screams insecure egotism to me.

[noworriesnate]

> You just see the sunset.

I see this with some people and other animals. I can't speak. Sometimes I want to shy away because it's like seeing someone naked without them knowing they're being watched. I can see their souls. It's not every animal or even every person. I really strongly disagree that all people are equal. Everyone is different, everyone has a different path, and I feel like people are so vastly different that it's overwhelming at times.

I don't think of it in terms of ego. That's because, I think, there are different kinds of transcendence, and it's easy to think that up is only one direction.

[rsktaker]

I'm guessing but it's not without some experience. I feel like I trick myself all the time - to guide myself towards becoming what I want to be.

There was a time when I felt unintelligent and incapable of great, technical things. So I kind of just did things that it seemed capable people did. I felt like people who are smart, capable, and rich now, hacked things when they were young and were rebellious and broke the rules and did whatever they wanted and put lots of effort into random interesting things because they were interesting.

So, because the end goal was attractive to me in a way, I tried to do those things too - maybe consciously, maybe not. I feel like that process made me different though. I have genuinely changed into someone far more capable technically, way more interested in super 'nerdy' things.

Anyway, I don't know what it means to think this through ego. I don't really get it.

But sunsets are nice - I like seeing them too. Yeah I suppose what I mean was that the commentary changed. Interesting that for you there's no commentary, I think I've felt like that before. Sometimes I feel like I just exist in a nice feeling - no words, nothing. Just experiencing. But that doesn't last very long, or it turns into something negative like boredom or something. Then I get up with a bad feeling lol

[brookst]

> I feel like I trick myself all the time - to guide myself towards becoming what I want to be

This is the central principle of human psychology and interpersonal behavior, IMO.

Kurt Vonnegut nailed it: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be very careful about what we pretend to be”

That racist jerk? He’s probably not really a racist jerk, he’s just pretending to be one to fuck with people. Except! That is no different than “actually” being a racist jerk.

Same thing with compassion or anything else, including intelligence. When a stranger is helping you pick up stuff you dropped, or a coworker is reasoning thought a complicated problem, it doesn’t matter if they’re “just pretending”. That is who they are, to them and to you.

My personal formulation has evolved into a small riff on Vonnegut’s insight: I think that our entire personality is simply the sum of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Change the stories you tell yourself, change yourself.

[rsktaker]

I agree. I've been interested in how the stories we consume, whether presented to us by ourselves or others, affect our personalities. Thank you for pointing me to Vonnegut.

One thing I feel is often overlooked in this conversation are our physical urges, specifically the ones motivating us to action that is different from what the 'character' we want to be would do. That adds noise to our personality, and widens the gap between what we are and what we want to be.

[brookst]

Urges are interesting. I agree they add noise and in dramatic cases completely take over personality (seeing a rattlesnake, for instance).

There’s also an interesting intersection with stories. I know when I’m pretty hungry my chain of thought is basically “I’ve got enough extra pounds I’m not going to starve, I’ll eat eventually, it’s not that important”. A close friend often tells me she has to eat as soon as she’s hungry or else she gets irritable and distracted. I sometimes wonder if that’s prescriptive or descriptive.

[krackers]

Physical urges can be considered some form of "subconscious" narrative (or even raw sensory narrative, e.g. hunger), while the "character we see ourselves as" is the more conscious narrative. The gap between these two reveals how latent, subconscious trauma can affect our emotions and desires, in the "Jungian shadow" sense. The conscious narrative is easier to manipulate, while the unconscious narrative is harder to, requiring "shadow work" as Jung called it.

[tmnvix]

> I don't know what it means to think this through ego.

I think most people are familiar with the feeling of being in a 'flow state'. Contrasting this with times when we indulge in a stream of 'self referential thought' is, in my opinion, a good way to grasp how ego influences our state of mind.

Try to imagine being in a flow state without actually doing anything other than observing. It's something I experience at times when I'm in a beautiful natural environment. I try to bring this feeling into my everyday life.

[svara]

> Try to imagine being in a flow state without actually doing anything other than observing. It's something I experience at times when I'm in a beautiful natural environment. I try to bring this feeling into my everyday life.

I think you explained this very clearly and beautifully. I think I know exactly what you mean.

I used to find a lot of comfort in being able to get myself into this state of mind easily, usually, like you, by just calmly observing natural surroundings in environments that are special to me.

That was in my late teens and early twenties. I'm now about 15 years older and find it so much harder.

I think it has something to do with living a hectic adult life, and I really hope I'll be able to find back to that some time.

Part of me really believes that to experience life in this way is what we're here for and modern life's way of distancing us from this experience is something we need to be very wary of.

[tmnvix]

I've sometimes heard this state of mind described as 'silent awareness'.

I agree that modern life often doesn't seem amenable to it. However, something I've noticed about this state of mind is that it's not dissimilar to an overwhelming sense of contentment or satisfaction.

I think that deep down, contentment - and not necessarily happiness - is something we all strive for. With that in mind, I've formulated an approach to life that I try to remind myself of regularly. It could be summed up as "meaning in life is found through doing the things that are necessary for life". It can be liberating at times. Mundane things like washing dishes or cooking which I might otherwise put off in favour of some hedonistic activity are given more priority because I recognise that they are an important source of contentment.

A lot of modern life is designed to instill a sense of discontent. Advertising and social media are obvious examples. These things are best avoided. Even the things that provide convenience work against contentment because they preclude you from doing the things that are the source of that contentment.

When I feel more content, it is easier to slip into that state you might call 'silent awareness'. Interestingly, this is very much how I feel immediately after meditation.

[1659447091]

> But, it just feels like you've made another story and another character for you to fit into. You've got a new aesthetic, a new ideal, and your appreciating sunsets and nature is another thing you do because that's what the 'character' you try to fit would do.

I think this is a case of words are hard.

OP was asked to elaborate, and tried to put into words a state of being. It wasn't as another story of self, the previous state of having stories of the self was in the original post. This was an attempt to describe something, I am not sure language is nuanced enough to grasp it, or encompass it. I personally experience it as "inner peace" or "acceptance", very close to the core essence of philosophical Daoism or Epictetus' Stocism; I've never been able to put it into words but as another comment says:

>> The problem is that state cannot be expressed in words or cognition, because it isn't part of your mind.

Which I find to be a great way to express it.

It doesn't mean being a transcended guru or anything; for me, the more I work on myself the more I find things that are leftover relics given to me, and I work on figuring out if that idea or values are actually mine or someone else's, and if mine, are they outdated (why did something trigger it) what needs to be reworked, does it need to be reworked. If it is someone else's, do I want to keep it or discard it. Thats one of the more actionable ways I try and explain the years of inner work to get here (by here it sometimes feels like the starting line, not the finish). One day while hiking I stopped in my tracks as it hit me that I could not think of the last time I berated myself (this use to consume a lot of my time, but no one ever knew it), or was triggered into aggressivly defending my ego or tried to be something other than myself for others. I think we are told to build the outer self (protect and hide the vulenable inner), for me that was backwards, build the inner, "know thyself", and you don't need to build an outer protective shell. It's a much more "authentic" self experience, one I don't have to think about.

Of course there are bad days and negative thoughts, but compared to what it was..., its rainbows and butterflies with a couple passing rain clouds now.

[escapedmoose]

This sounds a lot like Existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre’s concept of living/acting “in bad faith.” You might be interested to read more about it: https://philosophybreak.com/articles/sartre-waiter-bad-faith...

[Nition]

Something related to this that I've been thinking about. We all have kind of a story of ourselves and our life through various memories that make a picture of who we are. But if you ever meet up with someone you haven't seen for 20 years, or find some old documents, or whatever, stuff can easily come up that you've completely forgotten, or reframe things in a whole different light.

We know this kind of thing happens with history - certain people become famous while others drift into obscurity, things get remembered incorrectly etc - but it also happens with your own memory of your own life. The only real way around it is keeping a journal.

[uoaei]

I share your theory. I understand it best in the converse, i.e., we can delude ourselves into thinking we will never be able to understand X or do Y. Not that many can personally identify with the experience, but a huge part of why people think they are "bad at math" is because they tell themselves so. They expect it based on stories they hear from others and then they reinforce it by getting nervous in critical situations and getting flustered. It is the same with positive change -- after a certain point you have to come to terms with what you have been telling yourself about your downsides and how arbitrary and mean that is, and then you can find some distance from that characterization of yourself and begin to work on a new one (which should be expected to be ultimately supplanted by the next, etc.).

[BoingBoomTschak]

This guy is right. The OP might be completely truthful and not lying to himself, but the probability that he isn't is quite high. Same as reading someone calling himself a genius, might be true, but it rarely is.

Further posts clearly portray what one might call "McBuddhism", complete with meditation and the new age "don't judge others!". Judgement is an animal mechanism, it's your subconscious quickly putting people in boxes to ascertain their intentions and reliability then your conscious refining that rough estimate. You can't "turn off" judgement, only keep it inside.

Once again, people being misled around by emotions and tone. Judgement is a tool, it's not good or bad by itself, what matters is its accuracy, i.e. truth.

[tailspin2019]

Judgement is an animal instinct as you say, but I think it can also be a cognitive habit.

Our self awareness - in theory - allows us to change our habits, or at least temper them.

So my experience of this is that my default animal instinct is to automatically judge people in a negatively biased way (which I think may come from our evolutionary instinct to try to predict danger - or if not, perhaps something encoded in me specifically at an early age) but I have tried to adopt the conscious habit of overriding this initial instinct with “mediating thoughts” like “what do I really know about this person?” and “how would I behave if I were in their position”.

I also try to simply remember my discovered self-knowledge that my instinctive emotional response - pre-thought - is to be distrustful or overly negative. Just keeping that in mind helps automatically attack the judgemental thoughts as they come up. I guess it helps me recognise the pattern and not trust those thoughts.

I’m quite convinced that I’ve done this for long enough now that my “habit” of automatically judging people has lessened over time.

The instinct is still there, but better cognitive habits have been overlaid on top.

That said, I still feel I’m about 5-10% along in terms of progress compared to where I’d want to be! (And in reality there is no “end” to this work).

My outward behaviour towards others is generally “good” - I think - but I find myself often frustrated at the instinctive negativity in my head which I have to proactively counter - each and every time.

And because I’m human, I sometimes (ok… often) forget to.