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I'm in the midst of a major decision... Just quit my job with a year of runway and I'm either considering putting that towards graduate school abroad or settling down, finding a better job, and buying a home. My emotions tell me to go study, but my rational mind tells me to settle down and buy a home.
>Self-distancing is the act of increasing the distance from your own egocentric perspective when assessing events and emotions that you experience. It's odd that there's no mention of meditation as a way to achieve this effect, since that's arguably its biggest benefit. Put another way, as someone once said: Wisdom is the ability to take your own advice.
Yes, this does seem like it's closely related to a habit you develop through meditation. However, the "self-distancing" seems worse to me than meditation, since it seems to advocate taking a distance from the "true self" of feelings and thoughts. Meditation encourages the [better]route of recognizing that feelings and thoughts are not parts of your true self at all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who doesn't have a "speaking agent", that's not exactly how it works. I still have the thoughts, I just don't narrate them to myself. I can still think fine, the thoughts happen before the narration anyway. Your CPU doesn't stop processing just because you turned off the screen.
You're talking about a separate thing. The "speaking agent", or the analyzing agent, is also the predictive agent, and the goal-biasing agent. These are all one "thing." That "thing" is the subsystem of the brain that gets woken up by activity on dopamine receptors, and attempts to model the world (with a bias toward predicting world-states it would like to see, and can make real by predicting a future that requires…
I'm in the midst of a major decision... Just quit my job with a year of runway and I'm either considering putting that towards graduate school abroad or settling down, finding a better job, and buying a home. My emotions tell me to go study, but my rational mind tells me to settle down and buy a home.
And consider spending a month abroad, investing in meditation and self-understanding. Can be done cheaply and is super rewarding. I recommend hridaya yoga center in mazunte, from my personal experience doing just that, earlier this year.
>Self-distancing is the act of increasing the distance from your own egocentric perspective when assessing events and emotions that you experience. It's odd that there's no mention of meditation as a way to achieve this effect, since that's arguably its biggest benefit. Put another way, as someone once said: Wisdom is the ability to take your own advice.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the goals of mindfulness meditation is the "realization" that your stream of consciousness—the output of the "self who is analyzing the event"—is essentially just a sensory stimulus like any other. There is an agent in your head, thinking—an agent you have raised and constantly train and identify with very much, sure—but then there is you, separately, observing that thinking coming out of that agent. You, the…
> you don't have to identify with the thoughts coming out of the thinking-agent, I really have hard time with this . What is the difference between thinking and perceiving agents. Both entities are doing thinking and perceiving. One seems to be passing some sort of value judgement on the other self. Why would some thoughts be "invalid". They are coming out of you for a reason, why should those reasons be ignored. How…
I'm in the midst of a major decision... Just quit my job with a year of runway and I'm either considering putting that towards graduate school abroad or settling down, finding a better job, and buying a home. My emotions tell me to go study, but my rational mind tells me to settle down and buy a home.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, this does seem like it's closely related to a habit you develop through meditation. However, the "self-distancing" seems worse to me than meditation, since it seems to advocate taking a distance from the "true self" of feelings and thoughts. Meditation encourages the [better]route of recognizing that feelings and thoughts are not parts of your true self at all.
What do think is your true self, if not feelings or thoughts?
> self who is analyzing the event is considered to be distinct from the self who experienced it I have hard time following this, how can there be two selfs in a single mind. Is the observer more nobler entity with higher self restraint than the entity being observed who is more emotional and lower self control?
There can be at least two selfs very easily. There is me, the wise guy who set the alarm so I can wake up early tomorrow and is distinct from the lazy me who won’t wake up the next morning. Then there is me, the nice guy who deserves to sleep in this morning and is distinct from the malicious beast who set the damn alarm last night and is intent on ruining my morning. Completely different people.
> self who is analyzing the event is considered to be distinct from the self who experienced it I have hard time following this, how can there be two selfs in a single mind. Is the observer more nobler entity with higher self restraint than the entity being observed who is more emotional and lower self control?
1) Buddhi - This is is discriminating and reflective part of consciousness. This can be called as the "observer".
2) Ahamkara - This is the individual ego part of the consciousness. This is the "I" which gives you identity.
3) Manas - This is the part of consciousness which takes in the sensory inputs, forms the impressions and feeds it to "Ahamkara".
"Samkhya" is THE oldest of the ancient Hindu philosophies and hence its mental model has influenced Vedanta, Buddhism, Yoga etc. which all came after it.