Only when you observe and speak with people do you notice they take themselves to be something they are not: a separate self.
What does that look like? When I think of the interactions I have with people, face-to-face even, I don’t know what the signs would be that “they take themselves to be … a separate self” or its opposite. I can appreciate people’s intelligence, their creativity, their initiative, their practical wisdom, their practical skills, and so on, or the lack of these qualities, but I draw a blank on “they take themselves to be a separate self”. I don’t know what the opposite of that would be.
I mean, here I am sitting at home typing this, and until I click SUBMIT, no-one knows I’m doing any such thing. There’s separation, distinction from others, right there. I am aware of thinking these thoughts and hitting the keys, and aware of being aware of all that, and so on. What else is that but “self”? I have met people who seemed to have no or a very limited introspective capability: that is what the words “not being a separate self” suggest to me, and it looks to me like a deficiency, not a state to seek out.
Distinctions appear like ripples on one lake. The extra move is the claim, “this ripple is me and those ripples are not.” That added ownership is what “separate self” points to, not a facial sign but a subtle tightening around experience.
How does it show up? As the reflex to defend an image, to compare, to grasp at praise and recoil from blame. Intelligence, creativity, and skill still shine; what changes is the felt need to protect a center that supposedly owns them. When that claim relaxes, the same capacities move with less friction.
Privacy, typing alone, unseen by others, does not prove separateness; it is just a pattern inside one field. Yesterday I found out about Korzybski; funny to find you wrote an article about him. “The map is not the territory” fits exactly here: the label “me” is a map laid over the territory of experience. Boundaries remain as useful conventions for coordination, not as absolute edges in what is.
This contraction is felt first as suffering: unease, fear, shame, anger. Scaled up, many such contractions synchronize into collective stories of scarcity and threat; they harden into identities, borders, and eventually wars. The one body mistakes its own limbs for enemies, and pain multiplies.
The “opposite” of a separate self is not blankness or poor introspection; it is clearer seeing. Before the thought “I am doing this” arrives, sensations, thoughts, and keystrokes are already present, unauthored. Then a thought lands and says “mine.” Noticing the gap between raw appearing and the late-arriving claim is the whole point.
This recognition does not remove persons from practical life; it removes the confusion of taking the mask as the substance. Reactivity softens, care becomes simpler, and action continues: typing happens, choices happen, without the extra weight of a fictional owner, with responsibility felt as love moving through the whole.
What does that look like? When I think of the interactions I have with people, face-to-face even, I don’t know what the signs would be that “they take themselves to be … a separate self” or its opposite. I can appreciate people’s intelligence, their creativity, their initiative, their practical wisdom, their practical skills, and so on, or the lack of these qualities, but I draw a blank on “they take themselves to be a separate self”. I don’t know what the opposite of that would be.
I mean, here I am sitting at home typing this, and until I click SUBMIT, no-one knows I’m doing any such thing. There’s separation, distinction from others, right there. I am aware of thinking these thoughts and hitting the keys, and aware of being aware of all that, and so on. What else is that but “self”? I have met people who seemed to have no or a very limited introspective capability: that is what the words “not being a separate self” suggest to me, and it looks to me like a deficiency, not a state to seek out.
Distinctions appear like ripples on one lake. The extra move is the claim, “this ripple is me and those ripples are not.” That added ownership is what “separate self” points to, not a facial sign but a subtle tightening around experience.
How does it show up? As the reflex to defend an image, to compare, to grasp at praise and recoil from blame. Intelligence, creativity, and skill still shine; what changes is the felt need to protect a center that supposedly owns them. When that claim relaxes, the same capacities move with less friction.
Privacy, typing alone, unseen by others, does not prove separateness; it is just a pattern inside one field. Yesterday I found out about Korzybski; funny to find you wrote an article about him. “The map is not the territory” fits exactly here: the label “me” is a map laid over the territory of experience. Boundaries remain as useful conventions for coordination, not as absolute edges in what is.
This contraction is felt first as suffering: unease, fear, shame, anger. Scaled up, many such contractions synchronize into collective stories of scarcity and threat; they harden into identities, borders, and eventually wars. The one body mistakes its own limbs for enemies, and pain multiplies.
The “opposite” of a separate self is not blankness or poor introspection; it is clearer seeing. Before the thought “I am doing this” arrives, sensations, thoughts, and keystrokes are already present, unauthored. Then a thought lands and says “mine.” Noticing the gap between raw appearing and the late-arriving claim is the whole point.
This recognition does not remove persons from practical life; it removes the confusion of taking the mask as the substance. Reactivity softens, care becomes simpler, and action continues: typing happens, choices happen, without the extra weight of a fictional owner, with responsibility felt as love moving through the whole.