How easy is it to lose yourself?

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marjoram_blues
Posts: 1629
Joined: Sat Mar 28, 2015 12:50 pm

How easy is it to lose yourself?

Post by marjoram_blues »

And that kinda assumes that you know yourself...

Do we go thorough fire and ice to become a mess of warm slush...
The process of reconciling passion and reason could be said to be the art of philosophy; the aim: to be able to live with oneself and others. Perhaps not in perfect harmony but well enough.

How easy is it to lose yourself when 'in love' ; when emotions can overwhelm any logic.
How easy is it to lose yourself in books or research, pursuing any 'truth' - to the detriment of any personal relationships?
How easy is it to detach from any further self-exploration, values and beliefs, when you think you know it all.

How difficult is it to accept that there could be some kind of 'spiritual force' which might be there as a 'guardian' and intervenes in moments of crises. When you think to yourself - wow, that was weird. When you feel yourself as part of a flow. Without control...
Your 'self' as almost a nothing.

How easy would it be to lose yourself in a feeling - not based on evidence - that you are comfortable being 'held' in some kind of a protective bubble?
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Greta
Posts: 4389
Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2015 8:10 am

Re: How easy is it to lose yourself?

Post by Greta »

marjoram_blues wrote: Sun May 21, 2017 12:42 pm And that kinda assumes that you know yourself...

Do we go thorough fire and ice to become a mess of warm slush...
The process of reconciling passion and reason could be said to be the art of philosophy; the aim: to be able to live with oneself and others. Perhaps not in perfect harmony but well enough.

How easy is it to lose yourself when 'in love' ; when emotions can overwhelm any logic.
How easy is it to lose yourself in books or research, pursuing any 'truth' - to the detriment of any personal relationships?
How easy is it to detach from any further self-exploration, values and beliefs, when you think you know it all.

How difficult is it to accept that there could be some kind of 'spiritual force' which might be there as a 'guardian' and intervenes in moments of crises. When you think to yourself - wow, that was weird. When you feel yourself as part of a flow. Without control...
Your 'self' as almost a nothing.

How easy would it be to lose yourself in a feeling - not based on evidence - that you are comfortable being 'held' in some kind of a protective bubble?
Some would say that those sublime moments of unselfconsciousness is the finding of oneself. This thread generally conjures up the idea of surrender - when you feel secure enough to let down your shields. You need to be absorbed in a relaxed way. Master musician and music educator, Kenny Werner, talks about feeling as though he is a vessel being played through rather than the player.

There is also the surrender of (to?) ego in fight-or-flight responses - where we are largely reduced to Darwinian meat puppets, pulled by the strings of our ancestors' successful panic responses. Still, I think the self is a terribly maligned and underestimated. People are always saying the self is an illusion, usually the the kicker question of, "Where is the self physically?". I think the answer to that question is "it varies". Selves can shrink down to your head, or they can include the whole body along with the required sense of space, and in our more sage moments we might identify very broadly, far beyond nationalism or religious tribalism.

The self is indisputably real, not an illusion; we are each a 'self'. Selves are abstract aspects of reality (far from the only ones) - basically complex patterns in the stuff of reality. So the poor old self is often misrepresented and misunderstood when viewed through a physicalist lens. If a self isn't real then neither are relationships between different 'selves'.
Impenitent
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Joined: Wed Feb 10, 2010 2:04 pm

Re: How easy is it to lose yourself?

Post by Impenitent »

how easy? ride the right roller coaster...

-Imp
Walker
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Joined: Thu Nov 05, 2015 12:00 am

Re: How easy is it to lose yourself?

Post by Walker »

Pirsig lost his marbles but found most of them in a pot of gold.
duszek
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Location: Thin Air

Re: How easy is it to lose yourself?

Post by duszek »

You lose yourself if your will power gets weak below a certain level.

This can happen if you become an alcoholic or if you get addicted to something.
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