Selfhood, Non-Self, And Who Am I?

Wake the Fuck Up,

The podcast that mingles mindfulness,

Buddhism,

Brain science,

Evolutionary biology,

And real authentic human experience.

Welcome to Wake the Fuck Up.

Hello and welcome to Episode 7 of the Wake the Fuck Up podcast.

My name is Tiffany Andres Myers,

Your host,

And today we are talking about a topic that I find to be incredibly fascinating.

Who knows,

Maybe this will end up being multiple rounds of episodes for the podcast.

Today we are talking about the self.

And I think that one of the biggest and most important and beautiful reasons to talk about this is I think we have a misconception for those of us that have any connection to Buddhism of this idea that Buddhism talks about the concept of non-self,

Of non-dualism.

And I'll be honest with you,

When I first began practicing mindfulness and meditation and learning about Buddhism,

This was one of those really sticky points for me.

Because I think all of us have a really clear idea and a feeling of,

Well,

But I'm here.

There is a me that is sitting here right now recording this episode for you,

Whoever you are,

Whatever version of self is presenting,

Listening to these words.

So how do we play with this idea of non-self,

Of non-dualism?

And I think we can start by differentiating between the idea of a self and the story of me.

And maybe I'll say that again.

So the idea of a self or how could we redefine this perhaps as the existence of a consciousness and awareness,

Something that says I know that I'm here,

Right?

And I think we can all probably agree that that's really inherent to just being awake,

Right?

From the moment we open our eyes,

There's a real living sense inside of us that we're here.

I'm going to come back to that because I think that's what we're really talking about when we talk about self,

The confused version of self,

The selfing,

The verb that we do all day long,

Generally from the moment we wake up until the moment we go to sleep is really this story of me.

It's the linear,

Literally like movie reel that our minds create of our lives.

It's a clip here and a clip here and a clip here and this was meaningful and I didn't like this so all of that put together makes up what I clearly understand is me.

The offering of this episode is the curiosity around who are you really?

We have this really strong powerful attachment to I,

Me and my and if we think about the moments that we suffer as human beings,

We're often suffering because something has made the I,

Me or my uncomfortable.

Greed is like,

Well I wanted that,

That was mine and someone else has it,

Right?

One of my favorite kind of silly examples is getting cut off in traffic.

Y'all,

I used to have the worst fucking road rage in history.

It was painful for any of you out there listening that have road rage,

Whether it's like a little bit of road rage or a lot of road rage.

I'm so sorry.

I still have moments of it and it royally sucks.

It is incredibly uncomfortable.

You're sitting alone in your vehicle and now all of a sudden you're angry and you have no one else to take it out on.

Or if you try to,

That's a little more frightening even.

But think about this truly.

The moment that I finally kind of softened around road rage was one day when somebody cut me off.

I had to slam on my brakes.

They were pulling out of a parking lot.

They were absolutely,

I'm going to air quote here you guys,

In the wrong.

And for the first time,

It actually didn't make me upset.

Not upset at all.

Nothing felt wrong.

I just literally thought to myself,

Man,

I hope you stay safe.

That was really dangerous and I'm glad we're both okay.

And I got really curious,

Like what was it in that moment that made me not super pissed at this guy when it comes totally naturally to me to be upset?

And the image that immediately popped into my mind was thinking about gazelles or buffalo or any kind of herd animal moving through their environment.

And I just laughed at imagining some gazelle having another gazelle hop in front of them in line.

And do we really think that gazelle thinks to itself,

Oh,

Fuck you,

Joe,

How could you get in front of me?

Probably not.

Right?

There's this understanding,

I think,

In the animal world of the reality of interconnectedness and interdependence and the lack of that hardened me,

I,

And mine so that when something in the world happens and affects us,

It's not that we've been wronged by the world,

But that we are simply engaging with and interacting with what's happening in any given moment.

And I think maybe I veered off a little bit here,

But I hope this example kind of sends your heart in the direction of the beauty that is provided when we soften ourselves,

When we're just a little more gentle around how tightly we grip to me,

Mine,

And myself.

Another example that really radically shifted my understanding of this idea of non-self,

Which I might change the wording from the idea of non-self to,

Y'all,

We're just confused about what the self really is.

Right?

So I've come to believe,

And I want to articulate that I imagine,

Not even imagine,

I know lots of my beliefs and understandings,

What I feel is wise and real now is probably going to change over time.

I hope it does,

Or this is as good as I'm going to get.

And I'm sure you've experienced the same things,

Things you believed in once in your life absolutely make no sense anymore.

And as I said in episode two,

The invitation in this podcast is take the things that strike you and are meaningful to you,

Use them,

Grow yourself,

Grow your life in the directions that you desire,

And fuck everything else.

If something doesn't land for you,

Let it fly out the window.

For me,

What changed the idea for the first time,

What softened me to understanding my confusion about who I am and what I am is the recognition and the realization that who I think I am exists to no one else but me.

No one sees you the way you see yourself.

We see ourselves from the inside out.

We know every single moment of our own history.

Yet every other person who looks at you,

Who knows you,

Who feels you,

Who experiences you,

Sees you in a completely different way than you see yourself.

And they see you in a completely different way than anyone else sees you.

You are unique.

And it's dependent on who is viewing you as to who you are.

It is dependent on the circumstances that you are sitting in as to who you are.

It's dependent on the age that you're at,

The philosophies you've been enmeshed in.

So even the you that you see is not continuous over time.

And I imagine we can all agree with this,

Right?

It doesn't really matter what age you are now,

But think about yourself 10 years ago.

Are you the same person today that you were 10 years ago?

I'm 33,

So I'll also ask,

Like,

If you're not still in high school,

Are you the same person now that you were in high school?

Are you the same person now that you were when you got your first job?

If you're a parent,

Are you the same person now that you were before you had your children?

The answer's fucking obvious.

No.

We all grow over time.

And that's clear to us.

That we feel so attached to this idea that this is who I am.

And again,

So many moments of our suffering are this,

Like,

Sense of defiance about saying,

This is me and this is what I want and if I don't get what I want,

I'm going to be upset about it.

And I want to be gentle and careful here because this is human nature.

Of course we do this.

So if you find yourself thinking,

Man,

I'm an asshole,

I do that all the time.

No,

No,

No.

Please.

I do this.

I do this.

Right?

The purpose of talking about it is that we can't change what we don't see.

So if we don't see the power of saying,

Well,

How would I feel about this if I could just interact with this moment like it's not some external force pressuring or pushing down on me or impacting me in a way that I want.

But instead,

This is just life at this moment.

What would that look like if there wasn't a self saying,

This is not good for me?

And that curiosity can be really powerful.

I think in that example I gave earlier of driving down the road and getting cut off,

That was the thing that made all the difference.

I felt like a gazelle and the gazelle in front of me just so happened to mean that I had to slow down.

No big deal.

This is just life.

We're constantly changing our directionality and our speed.

I mean,

Literally every moment based on what's happening.

And sometimes we don't have that concept of selfhood driving our irritation.

And we're free in those moments.

And sometimes the self is behind the proverbial wheel and saying,

You impact me and that bad.

All right.

So I want to give a few more examples of how to play with this idea of softening around the self.

Maybe you're still sitting there on the other side thinking that this whole conversation is a bit of BS.

So I want to give an example and I want to give a shout out to Noah Rachetta.

He has a podcast called Secular Buddhism that really makes the basic tenets,

The philosophies of Buddhism so palpable.

Noah is an amazing,

Kind and compassionate man and I highly encourage anybody who's listening take a listen to his podcast as well.

And I want to give a shout out to him because Noah's example of interdependence,

Right,

Has always stuck with me.

And what I mean by interdependence is let's use a pen for example.

And I'm going to use two examples that Noah used.

We can grab a pen and very clearly everybody would identify it as a pen,

Right?

But what if you took the ink out of the pen?

Is it still a pen?

It can no longer perform its function.

Might we say it's a broken pen or an incomplete pen?

I'm not sure but at this point I think we can all clearly understand it's no longer a pen,

Right?

So the fact that we define that thing as a pen is dependent on each of its constituent pieces.

Let's make that concept bigger.

Let's think about a car.

Whether you have a car or don't have a car,

Think about a car sitting in a driveway and you can clearly walk up to that car and we can identify this thing as a car,

Right?

But what if we took every single piece of that car and we laid it out individually over the driveway?

Now they're sitting there.

The entirety of the car is still in your driveway but it's not contained within one single place.

Is it still a car?

I imagine we can all agree the answer is no,

Right?

Now it's just the pieces of a car.

But what make the pieces of a car sitting separately on a driveway any different than the pieces of a car sitting amalgamated or a mesh together that we now conceptualize as a car?

Everything is dependent on everything else.

We are dependent and made up of our constituent pieces.

So let's tie this to our experience of selfing and selfhood.

For a moment I want to invite you to be playful and curious.

What is it about you that makes you you?

Is it your personality?

Well maybe we think yeah my personality is what makes me me but could we argue truly and agree that your personality has changed over time?

Again,

Think about 10 years ago or 15 years ago depending on your age,

You know 20 years ago.

Can you agree that your personality has changed over time?

So were you a different me or I in each of those moments where your personality was different?

And if so which one is really you?

It's okay I want to offer as we move through this to not know the fucking answer.

Were so attached as human beings to knowing the answer and it's fucking scary not to.

If this strikes you in any way and breaks open some concept or shell of feeling really solid and now you're not solid,

Good!

That is a beautiful place to start.

You don't have to have the answer today.

So I hope as you hear this is your personality you?

No your personality is not you right?

Because if your personality changes over time you can't point to one version of you and say that one's the real one.

Every single one of them was real but it's not solid.

Who you are is constantly changing right?

What about is my body me?

Is your body you?

No even that is changing over time and hopefully at this point in your journey we can recognize that there are times when our bodies are doing things or saying things.

There's an emotion built up in our body that something in us doesn't really like or appreciate or doesn't feel like it's ours necessarily.

For me this is what tends to happen when anger arises.

When I feel anger arising in my body there's an immediate sense and a practice for me of saying anger is here but I am not that anger.

If I have the ability to observe that anger and to work with that anger I cannot be that anger.

We cannot be defined singularly by anything we are capable of perceiving.

It's smaller than us right?

So the same is true of this body.

This body changes over time.

Yes it's our connection point to our inner and outer world and it's fucking fabulous that we have one but my dear is it is not you right?

What about my mind?

Is my mind me is your mind you?

This one's a little playful a little curious.

Until we have the experience of observing what's happening in our mind it's hard to tease apart the difference between me and I or selfhood and the mind because we're so attached to and driven by the mind all the time.

So I want to invite us to play with this piece for a second because I'm going to invite us to the reality that the answer is no your mind is not you.

Again if we have the ability to hold something in awareness to observe it to be curious about it to investigate it we clearly cannot be it right?

And the same is true of the mind.

So let's play with this for just a moment.

If it's safe wherever you are close your eyes.

Feel your body.

Feel your butt on whatever you're sitting on or your feet on the floor.

Rub the palms of your hands together.

Feel the contact between your hands.

Feel yourself breathing.

And ask who am I?

Who am I?

And as you ask that question your mind is likely to start generating answers.

Who is it that's looking for the answer?

Who is it that is evaluating the answers your mind is giving you as true or false?

Can you point to the part of you that knows the truth?

Point to the part of you that sees what's happening right now.

Can you can you point to you not your body but to you that knows the truth the you that's looking for the answer the you that probably has no idea who that is.

Who are you?

As it feels safe open your eyes.

I hope there's a playfulness around not knowing the answers to those questions.

It is a beautiful thing to rest in not knowing.

When we know the cup is already full and there's no room for growth there's no room to fill that cup with newness with richness with wisdom with aliveness.

The moment we don't know we're an empty cup waiting to be filled.

This idea of no self is the invitation to be authentic in every moment.

It is the dropping of our idea of separateness from everything around us and recognizing that the real quote unquote self that we are in every moment is defined by everything around us and inside us in that moment.

We are unique in every single moment because we are not separate from everything around us.

Who we are and how we present what we believe depends not only on our history but with everything that's alive in us in this moment.

That is the reality of interdependence and the truth of no self because the real self is constantly reborn moment by moment breath by breath and we confine ourselves by who we think we should be.

We confine ourselves to being in a moment based on the way we think we should respond what I should do what's appropriate for me instead of being authentic because we're created in this moment as it's happening.

We are interdependent and interconnected to everything that we're taking in that makes us who we are and my loves this is freedom.

The freedom to be and in just being moment by moment we are here.

We are real.

We are alive.

But we don't need a history or a story to tell us who we are.

We let ourselves live in this moment in the most authenticity of openness of tenderness of realness.

We're constantly in the flow with life as it is rather than feeling like life is happening to us.

We become life.

It's expressing itself.

So I think I want to end here for today.

I don't know maybe this episode invites more confusion or places of not knowing than it does give answers to this curious question of self but I think that's a really incredible and beautiful place to be in.

I would love to hear from you.

I'd love to hear your thoughts your curiosities your heart openings your I don't fucking get it.

Thank you all so much for being here.

This self loves yourself in each and every moment.