Self and Ego pt.3

Hey team,

I recently reread some of my old posts on self and ego, and I wanted to write a follow-up to reflect my current, more evolved understanding. My knowledge and realizations have grown since I wrote those original posts last summer.

My most recent book, Determined: The Science of Life Without Free Will by Dr. Robert Sapolsky, discusses at length how free will is nothing but a post-hoc (after the fact) illusion of our underlying biology doing what it would do under specific circumstances. To put it another way: our behaviors, encompassing every action we take, are merely our body's reactions (outputs) to specific stimuli (inputs). These reactions are established by innate sensitivities and further conditioned and rewired over time by everything external to us (parents, diet, lifestyle, traumas, education, etc.). This challenges the illusion of the self as a person in the driver's seat, solely in control of our actions and separate from the all-encompassing factors that shape our development and decisions.

I mention all this in response to a previous post about the self, where I stated that, among other things, we are decision-makers. I no longer believe that. From a subjective lens, it really does appear that we consciously and deliberately make decisions about what we want and what’s best to do. However, this sense of agency over our actions is literally just the brain giving us the illusion that we did something outside of all the influences that set the stage for the action to take place. Before you consciously arrive at a decision, you have already, unconsciously, decided, and your brain has been primed for follow-through. This may sound depressing and bleak to some, but I don’t believe it is or has to be. After all, it just is what it is, and we are the ones who assign the label of a sad reality.

I would say now that the ego is the structure of the psyche in charge of our actions, which, again, is built by factors beyond our control, along with being the voice behind the story we tell ourselves about the world and who we are. To me, this is a product of evolution and has developed to serve a clear purpose in our survival. It doesn’t matter that the ego is an illusion or repeatedly creates delusions to attach to—it serves a purpose in assisting us in social interactions and has a net positive effect on our survival as a whole.

That said, our ego is also destructive and will always limit us from reaching our maximum fulfillment and connection with the universe. Our ego will get us far, but no ego will get us further. Deconstructing and disillusioning the narrative that beings are discrete entities existing outside all external factors is a major step in realizing one’s true nature. In this, we also see that the facets of ourselves that we call “our-selves” are merely means to establish separateness and not see unity/oneness. Of course, in order to get to this place of "no self" and the realization that "all differences are just similarities manifesting differently," we have to reach a place of believing that we aren’t just someone, but someone special. Growing up and growing into who you are is a universally challenging journey, made worse by oppression and traumas. Our egos are here, in this case, to tell us (often incorrectly) why we are treated the way we are and why we act the way we do. This serves to lessen the internal pain of feeling like we don’t have value or that our value is less than that of others. Our ego is a facilitator of continuity, helping us understand self from non-self, even while the self is made of cells that are being replaced atom by atom, rewired by external influences, and pre-programmed cellular processes.

Who we are is a slice of the universe, experiencing the universe through the seat of a human body and brain. In meditation, we learn to rest first on external objects such as a chair, bed, or cushion, and from there, we experience and become aware that we are here, resting in our bodies. I don’t believe our bodies are who we are, at least not in our entirety. Our bodies are most definitely a means to experience the world, as they are the receivers of inputs in uniquely human ways, different from that of a bug, lizard, or cat, but they are not us as a whole. My skin is my body, and if I had my skin burned off or removed completely (disgusting), I would still be me, albeit without an external layer. If I had a bone replaced, or even a few, I would still be me. Now, this reasoning can be further applied, but it hits some roadblocks at the level of the brain, where if we remove or damage the brain, we start to experience the world in dramatically different ways. But perhaps we could argue the same thing in terms of drastic changes to subjective experience due to brain changes, as we see in human development.

Who we are is as much metaphysical as it is physical, and the self is just the continuity of the experience. This is an impersonal phenomenon that we feel is objective and deeply personal. Seeing that this is not the case can allow you to love all phenomena unconditionally, as that is the unity which always exists. Nothing is separate; non-duality—and for me, I call this love.