Who Are You? - The Boundary of Self/Not Self
Dear friend,
Today I would like to propose a question for you to toy around with and play with.
Who are you?
When you answer that, what you are actually doing is drawing a boundary line between what is you and what is not you. You may draw it around you and the chair and declare that you are the human and not the chair.
When you answer who you are, you're identifying with what's inside of the line you've drawn.
Perhaps you say it stops at your skin. Your skin and everything inside of it is you.
But then we see that people draw another boundary within the skin and mostly identify the self with the brain.
Do you feel you are a body, or do you feel you have a body? Most people feel they have a body and that the body sort of dangles down from the brain, where they live. So here we see that the body actually lies outside of your boundary line of self.
Then we can go a step farther. Perhaps you feel you are not your brain, but you identify your self with your personality, your ego.
Beyond that people will draw yet another boundary around aspects of the personality that they do not want to identify with, splitting the self even further into even smaller bits.
So where is the self? Where does it exist?
Where do you draw your line?
This post is inspired by drawing from the Osho Zen Tarot deck
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Who am I ? Is one of the hardest questions to answer. We identify ourselves by a lot of different things - our job, family and what not.
I believe I am what I do and think in a certian moment. Thank you making me think and smile every day.
I used to like reading Ken Wilber, he's a smart guy. We both got quite a bit from Adi da samraj. Do you follow any of ken wilber or genpo roshi's material?
I'm only becoming acquainted with Ken Wilber's work. He's my mentor's teacher. I'm ripping through No Boundary and saving every divinely inspired word. I have not heard of Adi Sa Samraj, but I will look them up. I've heard of Genpo Roshi, but I am not familiar with their work.
Adi da samraj was one of the most influential yogis in my life. Ken Wilber and his friend Saniel bonder were students of him and included a lot of his teachings in their writings. Genpo roshi is one of the members of the integral institute with ken wilber and created the "big mind" concept.
Thanks. I'm looking at the Big Mind youtube videos now.
One last note, since I mentioned the integral naked group. The theme of Wilber, bonder, and genpo roshi are essentially shortcuts through sadhana. This is pretty common in that a lot of teachers make similar claims. On the other end of the spectrum from a more classical standpoint you might like "the yoga of light" (not the one by Iyengar, the one by Hans Reicker) this is a translation of the hatha yoga pradipika. It's basically the process from the beginning of hatha yoga through raja yoga and what practice is involved. The other thing you might like is the "life of Milarepa; Tibet's greatest yogi". There is a movie of this on youtube but there's also a book that you can download in pdf off the internet. He details his practice from his early days in magic to profound sadhana. Before there was the Dali lama there was the karmapa and he was the beginning of this tradition.
I suppose I am that which remains when all of my layers are cast off.