Yes, a lot of people leap straight from the HP (which is very real) to all sort of conclusions which do not follow, and many of which make no more sense than the physicalist position being rejected. The “there is no self” crowd tend to be wannabe spiritual teachers who are regurgitating Eastern / New Age ideas without any real authority or depth.
In my experience/estimation, nearly everybody who claims to have this sort of spiritual insight and development is a fraud. All they’ve done is allow their ego to get bloated on how deeply spiritual they are (i.e. how spiritually and intellectually superior they are to everybody else). I can’t stand it, personally. Talking the talk is easy, walking the walk is much harder, and those who actually manage to do so do not generally go around blowing their own trumpet about how spiritually developed they are.
If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.
You aren’t barking up the wrong tree, no. But I believe the answer is complicated by having two answers. The self is very real, and it is as brain-dependent as the physicalists think it is. What they get wrong is the claim that brains are also sufficient. This is where the HP matters – it tells us that even if we have a brain-based self, this is not enough to account for subjectivity. And this missing thing is not a “soul”, in the sense of something individualised that can be re-incarnated. Rather there is only one Soul, and every conscious being (animals and humans) shares it.
So who are you? You are the Void (Brahman, the One) being your brain. Meditation is an attempt to shut down the brain enough to directly experience the deeper identity. But at the end of your meditation you are still yourself (i.e. a dynamically updating self-model encoded in your brain). In other words, instead of trying to rid yourself of your self, just try to make yourself the best version of yourself you can be. Acceptance, not self-destruction.
My point seems to have been lost, or missed.
The word “myself”, to me, is an oxymoron or self-contradiction.
Who and/or what is the ‘self’ that owns “my” ‘self’.
Again, the word ‘my’ implies ownership. So, if there is a ‘self’ and a ‘my’, then it is implied that there is an owner of ‘that self’.
Just like, for example, ‘my house’ or ‘my car’ implies that there is an owner of ‘that house’ and ‘that car’. So, ‘we’ could say that a ‘human being’ is the owner of ‘a house’ and ‘a car’, but who and/or what is or could be the owner of ‘a self’, exactly? That is, if the word ‘self’ itself is referring to a ‘human being’ anyway.
Here also are the words ‘my body’. So, who and/or what could be ‘the owner’ of ‘my body’, exactly? The word ‘body’ is usually associated with ‘human being’, already. So, who and/or what owns a ‘human body’, exactly?
(By the way, ‘I’ already know the answers. ‘I’ am just putting these questions out here for people to think about and consider.)
In the days when
this is being written, I would like to add ‘the lessons’ still have not yet been learned and understood.
I agree, wholeheartedly, that within the body, like within ‘dna’ there is information, which I also call the ‘unconscious knowing’ within ‘us’ all. That is, until it is ‘tapped’, and becomes ‘consciously known’ or aware of, holds some of the so-called “mysteries of Life”, by the way.
Okay, but ‘we’ seem to be drifting away from who and what the words ‘my’, ‘self’, ‘Self’, and ‘I’ refers to, exactly, which supposedly has “their” own bodies, houses, cars, ‘conscious mind’s awareness’, etcetera.
Do ‘you’ mean ‘your’ and not ‘our’, human heart and mind?
By the way, the human heart longs for nothing, or has no longing for anything, and there is NO human mind anyway.
What challenge?
What do you mean by ‘God’s psychic niche’?
‘I’ think ‘you’ have drifted so far away now ‘I’ am not sure how to get ‘you’ back on track.
What was the actual ‘foundation’, exactly, that ALL that ‘you’ have experienced was built upon?
Was ‘it’ what “your mom” told ‘you’ about “God being a spec of dust that wanted to be more”?
How often do ‘you’ say ‘this’, and, have ‘you’ said ‘this’ in this forum before?
So, is the answer to the question, “Who am ‘I’?” “I am a filament in earth’s pageant of evolution”?
And, is ‘this answer’ the final answer for once and for all, because ‘that answer’ is backed up by what you just said and wrote here?
Okay.
What ‘empire’ is that, exactly, that you are referring to here?
What are that one person’s “life’s lessons”, exactly?
And, what your own life’s challenges, exactly?
Who and/or what is this ‘my’ word referring to, which ‘now’ has ‘a being’? And, what is ‘a being’, exactly?
Okay, but what was this ‘other epiphany’, exactly?
And, what were the prior ones before ‘this one’?
you have known about ‘what’, exactly, for decades?
I am not sure if I missed ‘it’, but what are you talking about here, exactly? And, where did you “arrive” at, exactly?