Ego is a good thing

Originally Posted by ketzer

Hmmm......I am not sure I would say everything is from the me/I point of view. The me/I point of view is adopted by consciousness to perceive the world of forms from the first person point of view. Yet consciousness will continue to perceive even when not doing so from that personal point of view. Athletes, musicians, and mystics will talk about having gone through this experience. Of course when they talk about it after the fact they are going back into that first person point of view to do so, even if they were not in that point of view during the event. They may say something like, "a body was running but that I was not that body", or that "music was happening but I was not making it". One can get a similar experience listening to music as well (one feels like they merge into the music and the self is lost). It would seem there was an un-personal awareness of the experience during it, yet in hindsight, one must speak about it from the standpoint of an experience that happed to them. As if consciousness is shifting between first and third person point view, or maybe temporarily dissolving the boundaries between the "I" form and an "other" form, or perhaps at times, all of the "other" forms. It's definitely an experience hard to convey.

I recall reading a story about free climbers. Many think they do it for the daredevil thrill (and maybe some do). But one gave an account of how he (self) disappeared between the top and bottom. The danger was so great that the mind could not focus on the self and focused entirely on the mountain and the next foothold. His mind was obviously intently aware during the climb, but there was no fear since there was no one to be afraid for, and thrill only came about once he had reached the top. For him, free climbing was a temporary freedom from the self.

"Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Not only is there no crying in baseball but certainly there is no "I" when swinging a bat at a fastball!

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy

"Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Not only is there no crying in baseball but certainly there is no "I" when swinging a bat at a fastball!

Huh?

Boy, some of us really do make our own unrealities.
Those prima donnas are always crying about something or another. Usually that they don't make enough money, or want me to build them a new stadium so they can have a private indoor heated parking spot just behind the dugout.

"When is someone going to name a candy bar after me? God Dammit, I deserve a candy bar named after me."

Oh, and there is an "I" in baseball, It's always on the ball ..yuk..yuk...yuk...

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy

Is master of disguise! https://youtu.be/viYcHt06oJ0?t=6

Are you trying to tell us your ego has a Bolshevik accent.... strange?

Originally Posted by ketzer

Are you trying to tell us your ego has a Bolshevik accent.... strange?

Not when I'm driving down the highway belting out vocals of Zeppelin or Rush songs. Then ego's channeling the spirit of Plant or Lee, though I admit the vocal manifestation is, shall we say, somewhat lacking! LOL!

It is a great example of the flow state though. Driving down a winding country road at a speed any LEO would frown at, with a DVD blasting out tunes and the scenery flying by.

The experience, from my perspective, is it's like a movie playing in my consciousness and I'm totally absorbed. It's all me and I'm all it. There is no "I", no separation. I am the truck, the road, the song, the scenery and if unlucky the police cruiser patiently waiting alongside the road for just that type of idiot experiencing flow state.

That flow state is always there, ever present and unchanging, however we mostly don't recognize it and even when we do don't realize it's significance.

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy

Not when I'm driving down the highway belting out vocals of Zeppelin or Rush songs. Then ego's channeling the spirit of Plant or Lee, though I admit the vocal manifestation is, shall we say, somewhat lacking! LOL!

It is a great example of the flow state though. Driving down a winding country road at a speed any LEO would frown at, with a DVD blasting out tunes and the scenery flying by.

The experience, from my perspective, is it's like a movie playing in my consciousness and I'm totally absorbed. It's all me and I'm all it. There is no "I", no separation. I am the truck, the road, the song, the scenery and if unlucky the police cruiser patiently waiting alongside the road for just that type of idiot experiencing flow state.

That flow state is always there, ever present and unchanging, however we mostly don't recognize it and even when we do don't realize it's significance.

Sounds nice, but then you do live in the Adirondacks! Now take some pour soul living in Iowa, Kansas, or Nabraski. There it is more likely to induce a slog state.....hehe....the mid-west slog states....

But yes, the state of flow is always available to us. But like life, it often becomes something that is happening to us in the background, while our minds are busy making future plans.

Originally Posted by ketzer

Sounds nice, but then you do live in the Adirondacks! Now take some pour soul living in Iowa, Kansas, or Nabraski. There it is more likely to induce a slog state.....hehe....the mid-west slog states....

But yes, the state of flow is always available to us. But like life, it often becomes something that is happening to us in the background, while our minds are busy making future plans.

I lived in Omaha for a year while contracting for Mutual of Omaha. A buddy and I drove across the state for some deer hunting, past Chadron and right on the border with South Dakota between Pine Ridge and Oglala National Grasslands. The drive across the sate was boring but once near Chadron it's pretty country.

The drive there (New York to Nebraska) and back again (no, I'm not a Hobbit!) was interesting too. I never saw land as flat as Indiana but the low rolling hills of Iowa were kind of cool in a soothing way.

The several times I backpacked in Wyoming/Montana I'd fly into Billings and drive across the state to the Continental Divide. Montana is also incredibly flat until one gets near the Rockies.

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy

I lived in Omaha for a year while contracting for Mutual of Omaha. A buddy and I drove across the state for some deer hunting, past Chadron and right on the border with South Dakota between Pine Ridge and Oglala National Grasslands. The drive across the sate was boring but once near Chadron it's really pretty country.

The drive there (New York to Nebraska) and back again (no, I'm not a Hobbit!) was interesting too. I never saw land as flat as Indiana but the low rolling hills of Iowa were kind of cool in a soothing way.

The several times I backpacked in Wyoming/Montana I'd fly into Billings and drive across the state to the Continental Divide. Montana is also incredibly flat until one gets near the Rockies.

Yeah, the west is like that. Most fly in and out and think wow was that gorgeous. It was, but unless you love miles of endless relatively flat sage brush country (pretty for a bit) , flying is the way to go. Most God awful road trip I ever took was from Denver to Jackson Hole. It almost shocks the system once you start coming into the Tetons after 12 hours of looking at what I am pretty sure is the exact same sage brush, it's like the one electron universe or something. And let me tell you about that painted desert, it is only painted at dawn and dusk. Made the mistake of driving through in the middle of the day. I recall seeing this one house out in the middle of the desert, all by itself, even a sage brush would have qualified as a beautiful garden if it were near this place. It brought to mind images of the prison scene in THX-1388. Nobody wants to be there, but they are afraid to head out in any one direction, as they can't see anything to walk toward and fear they won't survive.

Hmmm..... occurs to me that life can be like the west sometimes too, I suppose.

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy

Then ego's channeling the spirit of ...., though I admit the ... manifestation is, shall we say, somewhat lacking! LOL!

It is a great example of the flow state though. ...

The experience, from my perspective, is it's like a movie playing in my consciousness and I'm totally absorbed. It's all me and I'm all it. There is no "I", no separation. I am the truck, the road, the song, the scenery and if unlucky the police cruiser patiently waiting alongside the road for just that type of idiot experiencing flow state.

That flow state is always there, ever present and unchanging, however we mostly don't recognize it and even when we do don't realize it's significance.

Kinda reminds me of a song.

"Begin the day with a friendly voice
A companion unobtrusive
Plays that song that's so elusive
And the magic music makes your morning mood
Off on your way, hit the open road
There is magic at your fingers
For the Spirit ever lingers
Undemanding contact in your happy solitude
Invisible airwaves crackle with life
Bright antenna bristle with the energy
Emotional feedback on timeless wavelength
Bearing a gift beyond price, almost free
All this machinery making modern music
Can still be open-hearted
Not so coldly charted, it's really just a question
Of your honesty, yeah, your honesty
One likes to believe in the freedom of music
But glittering prizes and endless compromises
Shatter the illusion of integrity, yeah
Invisible airwaves crackle with life
Bright antenna bristle with the energy
Emotional feedback on timeless wavelength
Bearing a gift beyond price, almost free
For the words of the profits were written on the studio wall
Concert hall
And echoes with the sound of salesmen.
Of salesmen
Of salesmen"

Whether we are watching it, listening to it, or riding on it, the river is always flowing.

[MikeS80]

Originally Posted by ketzer

Hmmm......I am not sure I would say everything is from the me/I point of view. The me/I point of view is adopted by consciousness to perceive the world of forms from the first person point of view. Yet consciousness will continue to perceive even when not doing so from that personal point of view. Athletes, musicians, and mystics will talk about having gone through this experience. Of course when they talk about it after the fact they are going back into that first person point of view to do so, even if they were not in that point of view during the event. They may say something like, "a body was running but that I was not that body", or that "music was happening but I was not making it". One can get a similar experience listening to music as well (one feels like they merge into the music and the self is lost). It would seem there was an un-personal awareness of the experience during it, yet in hindsight, one must speak about it from the standpoint of an experience that happed to them. As if consciousness is shifting between first and third person point view, or maybe temporarily dissolving the boundaries between the "I" form and an "other" form, or perhaps at times, all of the "other" forms. It's definitely an experience hard to convey.

I recall reading a story about free climbers. Many think they do it for the daredevil thrill (and maybe some do). But one gave an account of how he (self) disappeared between the top and bottom. The danger was so great that the mind could not focus on the self and focused entirely on the mountain and the next foothold. His mind was obviously intently aware during the climb, but there was no fear since there was no one to be afraid for, and thrill only came about once he had reached the top. For him, free climbing was a temporary freedom from the self.

Is there any difference between an individual consciousness and an individual Self? I don't think there is a difference. Both individual consciousness and Self is soul, spirit or atman.

I think the people in the examples you gave above are or where fully conscious/aware while they had a clear mind, but there Self was still there, the Self was what was fully conscious/aware. They being fully conscious or aware made it seem to thier normal or regular day to day state of consciousness like they where watching themselves from a third person point of view. How would they be able to recall the memory of the experience afterwards? Thier memory alone of the experience should tell you the Self, mind and body was there. I mean, if spirit, soul or atman did remember anything while out of body, spirit, soul or atman will remember all it's past lives.

Originally Posted by MikeS80

Is there any difference between an individual consciousness and an individual Self? I don't think there is a difference. Both individual consciousness and Self is soul, spirit or atman.

I think the people in the examples you gave above are or where fully conscious/aware while they had a clear mind, but there Self was still there, the Self was what was fully conscious/aware. They being fully conscious or aware made it seem to thier normal or regular day to day state of consciousness like they where watching themselves from a third person point of view. How would they be able to recall the memory of the experience afterwards? Thier memory alone of the experience should tell you the Self, mind and body was there. I mean, if spirit, soul or atman did remember anything while out of body, spirit, soul or atman will remember all it's past lives.

Maybe, but I think you are making some assumptions that though reasonable, are still assumptions. I don't particularly see why all past lives would need to be remembered. The loss of self does not necessarily imply the knowledge of the all. Perhaps a necessary ingredient, but not sufficient.

The fact is whoever conveys the experience to another is going to be doing so from the individual first person point of view at the time they convey it, as well as looking back upon it as something that happened to them (a self), which is again a first person point of view. Now they will say it was not like that, that they felt they were the entire scene, or one with everything and there was no self that was not part of the all, but unless one experienced what it was they experienced, one cannot say what it was, or know whether to believe them. There is an ineffability/unthinkability quality to the no-self experience when reflecting back upon it from the first person/ self POV.

Their memory of the experience may indeed indicate there was a self there, but not necessarily so. One can even have memories of things that never took place, it is the nature of memory. All we know is there is an impression after the experience that it happened to me, yet paradoxically they felt they were not a differentiated me at the time. But the memory is what is now be experienced, not the actual event, and the memory is generated in a state of mind when a "me" or "self" is definitely present. Memories are not records of events, but stories generated by the mind in the present moment, a mind that in this case is once again focused on ego and back in a "self" state as it generates the memory.

I think a limitation comes into play whenever two individuals, attached to egos, try to communicate about an event that when it comes right down to it, is said not to really involve either....or anyone for that matter. One who hears about the event may try to imagine what such an experience would be like, but from an ego based / self (I) view point, it would of course not be truly possible either. Maybe it is real, maybe they are just imagining it, or maybe they are nuts. I can't know for sure about them, nor even how much I can trust my own impressions of such events. The "I" POV is a necessarily limited one.

Anyway, I suppose this is several paragraphs that don't really get either of us closer to understanding the phenomenon. I expect this is why many will eventually stop trying and leave it in the mystical realm to be experienced (or not) but not explained nor even accounted. One tends to ramble on then just get frustrated and give up..... like I am going to do now. It really is a wonderful state of mind...state of being... whatever it is.