By: A.S.

You / the self is a quite small neural loop that generates craving and anxiety to drive the organism towards biologically beneficial behavior.

Yet it appropriates everything, i.e. it constantly says “I am that / I am doing that.” When in reality it’s the organism (the thing you think you’re piloting) that is doing pretty much everything.

Here are some examples of the self appropriating everything:

Example 1: people think flow state is “I am fully in control and at my best.” But flow state is actually the organism performing very well and having a great time because the self / the I steps back for a while.

Hence the self even appropriates how well the organism does when the self isn’t active (i.e. flow state).

Enlightenment is the self not just stepping back for a while but rather being permanently dissolved. So roughly speaking enlightenment is somewhat like a permanent flow state. “Permanent flow state” isn’t exactly enlightenment, but it’s a good metaphor. Taoism also points in this direction.

“Permanent flow state” sounds great, and indeed enlightenment is great.

But then you get to the definition of enlightenment (permanent dissolution of the self) and almost everyone recoils in horror — because the self appropriates “being the humanity of the organism.” When it’s not: Rumi wrote great poetry about love after his enlightenment, for example.

So enlightenment is more or less a permanent flow state, but because the self appropriates everything so hard, “enlightenment is dissolution of the self” sounds like a horror movie to people.

This also explains the seeming contradiction why enlightenment is on one hand described as permanent bliss and as “I’d rather live one day enlightened and then die, than live an entire unenlightened life.” But on the other hand enlightenment is also described as ordinary and as “before enlightenment carry water chop wood, after enlightenment carry water chop wood.”

The explanation is this: permanent flow state IS amazing and blissful. But the enlightened person, being in more or less a permanent flow state, by definition isn’t going to go “wait, I’m in flow state right now! Wait this is amazing! Whee! Let me carefully compare how I’m doing now to how I was doing five years ago.” After all, the self being active and analyzing itself and labeling things is exactly what doesn’t happen during flow state.

Hence enlightenment is described as both permanent bliss and as being ordinary.

Example 2: Every group believes that they’re the good ones and everyone else is evil. And people’s selves know this, yet continue to appropriate the “I’m the good one” role regardless.

Example 3: For 99.999% of your life, the organism breathes fine automatically. But when someone says “you’re now breathing manually”, you sincerely believe that you’re the one breathing, and you now have to consciously breathe manually or you’ll suffocate. But of course two minutes later you’ll forget to breathe consciously and your organism will breathe just fine.

So clearly you’re not actually the one breathing. But the self appropriates everything, including “I have to breathe now or I’ll suffocate.”

Example 4: as I discussed in my previous message “”Fake natties” are misleading 99% of spiritual people”: a lot of old teachings are actually saying “you’re not the pilot, dissolve yourself.” but the self consistently re-interprets those old teachings as “you are this, you must do this” etc to give itself a place.

For example, the self might appropriate the status of “I’m the observer / awareness.” Thinking “I am the observer” is more functional than identifying yourself as every thought that arises. Still, if one then insults a person who claims to be “awareness itself”, note that they immediately start behaving as a normal, defensive, petty person. So they’re not really “the observer”, they’re just a person whose self has appropriated a fancy title.

This “I’m the observer” trap is so common that it’s not just spiritual people falling into it. Here’s rapper Dr Dre falling into the same trap in his song “The Watcher”, where he positions himself as “The Watcher” i.e. the observer. He raps:

“But the strangest things can happen from rappin’
When n***** get wrapped up in image and actin'”

Ah yes, those fools over there are wrapped up in image and actin’. Not Dre himself of course, he’s The Watcher.

Those other people are spiritually unadvanced and engaging in performative spirituality, unlike me, the genuinely spiritually advanced person who is “the observer.”

Later in that same song Dre raps:

“I ain’t no bitch neither”

Ah, good to know that Dre’s The Watcher, but also, he ain’t no bitch neither.

This is similar to how spiritual people will insist they’re the observer / awareness itself. And also, they quietly think they’re a spiritually advanced person who’s uplifting the frequency of the world, contrary to those unevolved normies who are keeping the frequency down. (I’ve been guilty of this myself.)

Have they considered that if energy mechanics work like that, that their spiritual ego and them quietly looking down on “normies” may be keeping the world’s vibration down too? Jesus in Matthew 7:21-23 suggests that lightworkers with a self may not be as good for the world as they think they are.

Spiritual people might defend themselves with “I never call someone a normie” but perhaps you quietly think of normal people as that, or as the equivalent of that. According to how spiritual people think energy works, even that will drag down the world’s vibration. And thought policing yourself even harder isn’t the solution to this – dissolving the self is.

Rapper Dre follows up with:

“It’s either my life or your life, and I ain’t leavin’, I like breathin’
‘Cause, n****, we can go round for round
Clip for clip, shit, pound for pound”

He’s The Watcher, but also, he’s willing to fight you to the death.

Spiritual people won’t be as unsophisticated as this, but they have the same kind of self, just packaged with better PR and working in a more covert way. Because if you tell someone who’s “the observer” or “awareness itself” that you’re more spiritually advanced than them, I guarantee you that they’re going to make a remark that implies that you’re the deluded fool and they’re in fact more spiritually advanced.

Sure it’s a verbal fight for status and not a physical fight to the death, but still, the people saying they’re The Watcher / observer / awareness itself still have a self that competes. Hence “I’m The Watcher / observer / awareness itself” is just PR — it’s just the self appropriating a high status.

Dre continues with his “don’t mess me with me” warning by rapping:

“Just remember that you fuckin’ with a family man
I got a lot more to lose than you
Remember that when you wanna come and fill these shoes”

The self always appropriates reasons why it’s special. Dre’s a family man, so that is now presented as a reason why Dre’s special. If Dre weren’t a family man, he’d be using the exact opposite reason to claim a special status: “just remember that you fuckin’ with someone who has nothing to lose.”

Whatever the person happens to be, some reason will be rationalized so that the self can appropriate a special status.

Dre finishes with:

“N****, we started this gangsta shit
And this the motherfuckin’ thanks I get?”

Well that spiritual ego persona didn’t last long — apparently “The Watcher” is actually just a normal person who wants credit. So, too, it is with spiritual people labeling themselves as the observer or awareness itself. They’re just normal people whose selves have appropriated a fancy title.

Example 5: picture a Jenga tower where every one of your concepts is a Jenga block in the tower.

Then picture yourself.

Note that you immediately create a new concept (a figure, a cloud, a point of awareness) outside the tower. And the self immediately appropriates that concept: “I am that figure / cloud / point.” However we just said that all the concepts are jenga blocks in the tower… yet the self just created a new concept outside the tower and appropriated that.

And if you point this out, then the self might appropriate being “the space in which the Jenga tower stands.” But then the question becomes: “who is the one who is claiming to be the space in which the Jenga tower stands?”

All the self does is fabricate or point to something and then appropriate it, saying “I am that” or “I am doing that.” That’s all, it’s just a cognitive trick. There’s no grand mystical meaning behind “I am awareness / I am the space in which things happen.”

“I am awareness” is just a sentence that the self likes because it can use that to appropriate a status, and that’s why that sentence feels vaguely resonant.

In fact, modern spirituality enables the self to turbo-appropriate. It no longer has to say “I am that”, instead it can now declare “I AM” and that’s considered the pinnacle of wisdom nowadays.

Using “I am” as a pointer to return to wordless presence is a great practice, but using “I AM” as an identity is the self appropriating.

So modern spirituality went from “I am that” to “I AM.” Why not take that one step further and chop off one more word and go all the way to “I”? Let’s just declare “I”, “I”, “I”, surely that’s wisdom. Oh, now the trick’s become too obvious and it’s no longer comfortable?

Example 6: some spiritual people think that publishing “keep your vibration high” articles is a huge cosmic service that will single-handedly cause them or the world to move to basically paradise.

Now under a charitable interpretation, those articles genuinely help, but the way some people think they’re almost single-handedly “ushering in New Earth despite all those normies dragging down the frequency” is still clearly spiritual ego (and yes, I’ve been guilty of that myself). Even if those articles help, they don’t help to that degree.

Hence people’s selves are appropriating the savior role.

This can be explained as Fisherian Runaway Selection. In nature, animals kept selecting for bigger and bigger antlers on an elk, or for bigger and bigger tails on a peacock. Initially this was biologically beneficial because the antlers / tail signalled that the elk / peacock was healthy.

But as animals kept selecting for antlers / tails, eventually the antlers / tail became so big that it made the animal less functional and less capable. A peacock with a huge tail can barely move around, yet is seen as very attractive regardless by peahens (female peacocks).

Similarly, humans keep selecting for confidence, which in moderate amounts is a positive trait. Yet after many generations of that, way too many people are now so overconfident that they’re thinking that their spiritual articles or their twitter posts will fix the world.

Markets select for overconfidence too — it’s in everyone’s interest to be just a bit more confident and promise just a bit more than everyone else to capture an audience. Which is how we went from the old masters saying “you’re not the pilot, dissolve yourself to end suffering” to modern teachers basically promising that you’ll become a reality-bending demigod if you follow them.

Of course, the self would rather appropriate the savior role than thinking “I’m the result of Fisherian Runaway Selection. The reason I’m so confident about how I’m saving the world isn’t because that’s reality, but because overconfidence in humans has been evolutionarily selected for.”

(Not every biologist would agree that overconfidence is Fisherian runaway selection in humans, but personally, I think it clearly is; people just don’t like thinking of overconfidence as being analogous to oversized elk antlers. And of course you can always tweak your models and definitions so that they say what you want, and exclude what you want to exclude.)

Example 7: In The Odyssey, a cyclops asks Odysseus his name. He says “no one” and blinds the cyclops. Then the cyclops screams “no one hurt me!” and the other giants think he’s fine and leave.

Odysseus and his men safely start rowing away, but then Odysseus’s self wants to appropriate a high status. So he yells to the cyclops that it was Odysseus who blinded him. Now knowing his attacker’s name, the cyclops then asks a god to punish Odysseus, and the god does so. Hence what would be a short trip home for Odysseus turns into a decade-long nightmare.

Which is a great enlightenment metaphor: you can be no one and life’s easy, or you can just let your self appropriate everything, and you’ll be lost at sea for a nightmarish decade.

———–

The self appropriating everything is also why people take things personally (“you did this to hurt me!”), when often the other person is just doing what benefits them rather than being personally spiteful. Hence the advise to not take things personally.

And if earlier you recoiled from horror at the statement “enlightenment is self-dissolution”: well think of self-dissolution as roughly a permanent flow state. It’s the self appropriating everything that makes self-dissolution sound horrifying.

I hope you have a good week.

With all my love,

A.S.

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