Dec 26, 2023·edited Dec 26, 2023Liked by Stephen Bradford Long
"Rather, I mean the very distinct feeling of being a homunculus behind my eyes directing attention, making decisions, and being a meditator. This feeling is usually located behind my face. It is the thinker of thoughts, the director of will, and the subject perceiving objects."
This is a really useful description for me, because I've long struggled to figure out what people are talking about when they discuss the "illusion of self". The reason for this is that I've never experienced myself this way. The self (or what I call "the self") as I experience it is simply the act of being aware.
This makes it really difficult for me to understand what's being talked about when people talk about "the illusion of self", because I don't experience myself in anything like the way they are describing as being illusory, but I still do experience myself. "I" exist in a meaningful sense, yet don't have anything like this sense of "self" that is the focus of these discussions.
"It's the self, Jim, but not as we know it!"
If I had had the experience you describe here: "In the beginner's course in Waking Up, Sam instructed me to look across the room at an object and then to look for what's looking" my response would have been, "I don't understand what you mean by 'look for what's looking'." But at that same time, "I'm looking" would be an accurate answer. It's just that what I mean by "I" is such that "look for what's looking" doesn't make any sense. It's not the kind of thing that the thing I think of as "I" can do.
I've probably just been using "self" language to describe my experience because it's very difficult to talk to people otherwise, and I grew up in an environment that was extremely intolerant of any kind of alternative model of awareness: I recall trying to talk to my father about this when I was maybe ten or twelve and he simply told me that people don't experience things that way. He wasn't a bad guy, but definitely had his limitations.
I don't think this makes me particularly enlightened, and because I'm way off on the autism spectrum the odds are this mode of experience is simply a consequence of how my brain and body work, so I'm very badly suited to teach anyone anything, never having learned anything myself.
I also don't experience any "emptiness", maybe because that's relative to what was there before, and I've never had anything there before.
One aspect of my awareness that I think is important is that I experience consciousness (what I think of as "myself") as inherently embodied, which in my understanding is not how most people experience "the self" in this sense. I had a discussion with a philosopher friend years ago about this and we concluded that what he thought of as being the least self-focused experiences were what I thought were the purest feeling of self: extreme physical challenges, from intense athletic experiences to jumping out of airplanes (the latter is something everyone who doesn't believe in free will should try, as it's an opportunity to experience the power of choice in a way that's hard to get otherwise.)
This experience of the self as embodied grounds my understanding in biology: consciousness is a perfectly ordinary evolved capacity that regulates actions in more complex ways than can be done otherwise. My sense is that "the self" as you're talking about it here is some kind of social leveraging of that underlying biological capacity to allow large groups of humans to self-organize in ways that are not otherwise possible, but that's mostly a guess. It would follow from that, as you describe, that stepping back from that kind of self-hood would leave one increasingly disconnected from those shared projects, including the identities that are among their most important organizational principles.
As always, I appreciate how clearly you express yourself on these questions. I've read a lot of the "spiritual" literature on this, including some of Sam Harris' stuff, and not seen "the nature of the self that's supposed to be an illusion" put anywhere near as clearly as this. At least nothing else has been this clear for me, whose experience of that kind of "self-hood" is limited to a few occasions when I was really drunk and operating my body by what felt like remote control, separated from it and my perceptions, as the "self" in this duality of "self" and "other". Thinking about those experiences in the light of what you've described here I can begin to get a sense of what "dual awareness" might actually be like.
TJ, you are the third person on the autism spectrum to reach out to me in response to this piece with incredibly fascinating experiences of the self. Makes me much more interested in the different ways humans experience consciousness. Thank you so much for sharing.
I truly enjoy reading about your spiritual journey. So much wisdom insight. And, you do so well to communicate practically the practically incommunicable. Thank you for sharing. I am grateful for your articles.
I, too, have been enjoying reading about your journey. I am going to start some kind of meditation practice in 2024 to expand my consciousness to the unseen realms. I am taking some workshops in mediumship to hone my skills, which I already have. I just never developed them. I am almost doing the same work, because I am trying to be a empty vessel , but for outer communication sources other than our own-the spiritual realm, energy, etc. this has rocked me harder than anything before it. And I am excited. I am in the middle of writing out the first in my series of the mediumship journey (anyone who is interested please subscribe/follow!). I need to do a big write up on my hypnosis sessions and the two past lives I experienced. This stuff is endlessly interesting to me. I have chosen to embrace that I am a vessel for this, in whatever way it chooses to go.
This overlong explanation all related to the meditation you have doing and how it broke you down. In hypnosis, I was dealing with coming to terms with past trauma, and I met my 9-year-old me coloring. I joined her and (long story short) she told to “just erase it” when I asked how I can heal the old hurts and wounds. So simple. So we erased the page that was my trauma together. But you know what? It worked. Shit in the world doesn’t bother me anymore, unless it needs my attention. If you are curious about that one, I do have the first hypnosis write up of meeting my younger selves on my page. However we get there, that is our own unique journey. I am fascinated by yours, and had planned to start a practice of meditation. You gave me hope that it can be achieved-thank you.
I’ll tag you in the comments of my in-progress write up once I am done, if that’s ok. I think it will be lengthy. I’d like to know more about meditation as well!
I really enjoy how you touch others idea of we are one (eye roll ;)) idea. Mr Palahniuk talks a lot about harnessing this in our writing. If you can write about a shared experience or feeling that all/most of us have then you will have an excellent story. Make them laugh and it will heal anything. As I explored this I realized so many experiences are shared. It's actually exceptional how closely related we really all are. For example "the box of porn found in the forest" "drug addiction" The emotions found in these experiences are almost always universal.
I fucking love this. I always enjoy your pieces, and have been noticing the shift. Thank you for being so articulate about your experience. When one can experience the joy of having a new toy while working to discover more about consciousness and describe it as you have, it almost makes me cry. Keep exploring, psychonaut, and please keep sharing.
Thank you so much for reading! Dzogchen is fairly esoteric and is a rich religious tradition, and I don’t exactly know where to point you first regarding that. For a modern non dual practice, though, I suggest Sam Harris’s app Waking Up. He offers the app for free to anyone who can’t afford it, and I can also send you a 3 month trial if you’d like.
"Rather, I mean the very distinct feeling of being a homunculus behind my eyes directing attention, making decisions, and being a meditator. This feeling is usually located behind my face. It is the thinker of thoughts, the director of will, and the subject perceiving objects."
This is a really useful description for me, because I've long struggled to figure out what people are talking about when they discuss the "illusion of self". The reason for this is that I've never experienced myself this way. The self (or what I call "the self") as I experience it is simply the act of being aware.
This makes it really difficult for me to understand what's being talked about when people talk about "the illusion of self", because I don't experience myself in anything like the way they are describing as being illusory, but I still do experience myself. "I" exist in a meaningful sense, yet don't have anything like this sense of "self" that is the focus of these discussions.
"It's the self, Jim, but not as we know it!"
If I had had the experience you describe here: "In the beginner's course in Waking Up, Sam instructed me to look across the room at an object and then to look for what's looking" my response would have been, "I don't understand what you mean by 'look for what's looking'." But at that same time, "I'm looking" would be an accurate answer. It's just that what I mean by "I" is such that "look for what's looking" doesn't make any sense. It's not the kind of thing that the thing I think of as "I" can do.
I've probably just been using "self" language to describe my experience because it's very difficult to talk to people otherwise, and I grew up in an environment that was extremely intolerant of any kind of alternative model of awareness: I recall trying to talk to my father about this when I was maybe ten or twelve and he simply told me that people don't experience things that way. He wasn't a bad guy, but definitely had his limitations.
I don't think this makes me particularly enlightened, and because I'm way off on the autism spectrum the odds are this mode of experience is simply a consequence of how my brain and body work, so I'm very badly suited to teach anyone anything, never having learned anything myself.
I also don't experience any "emptiness", maybe because that's relative to what was there before, and I've never had anything there before.
One aspect of my awareness that I think is important is that I experience consciousness (what I think of as "myself") as inherently embodied, which in my understanding is not how most people experience "the self" in this sense. I had a discussion with a philosopher friend years ago about this and we concluded that what he thought of as being the least self-focused experiences were what I thought were the purest feeling of self: extreme physical challenges, from intense athletic experiences to jumping out of airplanes (the latter is something everyone who doesn't believe in free will should try, as it's an opportunity to experience the power of choice in a way that's hard to get otherwise.)
This experience of the self as embodied grounds my understanding in biology: consciousness is a perfectly ordinary evolved capacity that regulates actions in more complex ways than can be done otherwise. My sense is that "the self" as you're talking about it here is some kind of social leveraging of that underlying biological capacity to allow large groups of humans to self-organize in ways that are not otherwise possible, but that's mostly a guess. It would follow from that, as you describe, that stepping back from that kind of self-hood would leave one increasingly disconnected from those shared projects, including the identities that are among their most important organizational principles.
As always, I appreciate how clearly you express yourself on these questions. I've read a lot of the "spiritual" literature on this, including some of Sam Harris' stuff, and not seen "the nature of the self that's supposed to be an illusion" put anywhere near as clearly as this. At least nothing else has been this clear for me, whose experience of that kind of "self-hood" is limited to a few occasions when I was really drunk and operating my body by what felt like remote control, separated from it and my perceptions, as the "self" in this duality of "self" and "other". Thinking about those experiences in the light of what you've described here I can begin to get a sense of what "dual awareness" might actually be like.
TJ, you are the third person on the autism spectrum to reach out to me in response to this piece with incredibly fascinating experiences of the self. Makes me much more interested in the different ways humans experience consciousness. Thank you so much for sharing.
I truly enjoy reading about your spiritual journey. So much wisdom insight. And, you do so well to communicate practically the practically incommunicable. Thank you for sharing. I am grateful for your articles.
Thank you brother <3
I, too, have been enjoying reading about your journey. I am going to start some kind of meditation practice in 2024 to expand my consciousness to the unseen realms. I am taking some workshops in mediumship to hone my skills, which I already have. I just never developed them. I am almost doing the same work, because I am trying to be a empty vessel , but for outer communication sources other than our own-the spiritual realm, energy, etc. this has rocked me harder than anything before it. And I am excited. I am in the middle of writing out the first in my series of the mediumship journey (anyone who is interested please subscribe/follow!). I need to do a big write up on my hypnosis sessions and the two past lives I experienced. This stuff is endlessly interesting to me. I have chosen to embrace that I am a vessel for this, in whatever way it chooses to go.
This overlong explanation all related to the meditation you have doing and how it broke you down. In hypnosis, I was dealing with coming to terms with past trauma, and I met my 9-year-old me coloring. I joined her and (long story short) she told to “just erase it” when I asked how I can heal the old hurts and wounds. So simple. So we erased the page that was my trauma together. But you know what? It worked. Shit in the world doesn’t bother me anymore, unless it needs my attention. If you are curious about that one, I do have the first hypnosis write up of meeting my younger selves on my page. However we get there, that is our own unique journey. I am fascinated by yours, and had planned to start a practice of meditation. You gave me hope that it can be achieved-thank you.
Thanks so much for sharing! Nodal meditation has truly changed my life. Best of luck on your meditation journey and let us all know how it goes!
I’ll tag you in the comments of my in-progress write up once I am done, if that’s ok. I think it will be lengthy. I’d like to know more about meditation as well!
Please do! If you’d like three months of Waking Up free, let me know. (I’m not sponsored by them or anything, I just think it’s the best.)
👍🏻
I found your email in my subscriber list. I’ll send an email there :)
Perfect
That would be great!
Sweet, reply to one of my substack emails and I will send you an invite!
I really enjoy how you touch others idea of we are one (eye roll ;)) idea. Mr Palahniuk talks a lot about harnessing this in our writing. If you can write about a shared experience or feeling that all/most of us have then you will have an excellent story. Make them laugh and it will heal anything. As I explored this I realized so many experiences are shared. It's actually exceptional how closely related we really all are. For example "the box of porn found in the forest" "drug addiction" The emotions found in these experiences are almost always universal.
Absolutely. It's such a profound shift and helps me overcome the narcissism of small differences.
I fucking love this. I always enjoy your pieces, and have been noticing the shift. Thank you for being so articulate about your experience. When one can experience the joy of having a new toy while working to discover more about consciousness and describe it as you have, it almost makes me cry. Keep exploring, psychonaut, and please keep sharing.
Thank you so much Michael. It’s a delight to have you along for the ride.
How important do you think your experience of duality was in your experience of non-duality?
In other words, do you think you could have ever found your way out if you hadn’t first found yourself trapped within?
Mmm good question. I honestly don’t know
Fascinating read. I’m also on the meditation path, and I’m interested in anything Buddhist.
How does one start developing a Dzogchen practice?
Thank you so much for reading! Dzogchen is fairly esoteric and is a rich religious tradition, and I don’t exactly know where to point you first regarding that. For a modern non dual practice, though, I suggest Sam Harris’s app Waking Up. He offers the app for free to anyone who can’t afford it, and I can also send you a 3 month trial if you’d like.
Thank you so much for your swift reply. I’ll definitely be looking into the Waking Up app. Thanks again!