The Self is a Mountain
In the not too foregone present I came across this meditation / thought exercise, rooted in this story of some mountain climber, scientist-y-type person. To condense it down, he told about this experience he had, at the foot of a great mountain. Laying in the snow, looking at what trials of nature so gracefully awaited his arrogance to conquer, he realizes that he’s just taking it on faith that he has a head, and that he forgot that he had a head for a second.
When people speak with one another, and are past the point of ego awareness, past the point of desperately clamoring for the next thing to say, their entire consciousness is filled up with the other person’s inputs. There really is no ‘self’ there in the sense of a lived experience in the moment. You simply become a space where the other person is being perceived.
So the dude is looking at the mountain and he snaps back to reality, reflecting on the fact that all that he was for this brief moment in time where he lost himself to the mountain was a space for the mountain to be perceived. And he came to this conclusion that the physical/biological sensation of a self behind the eyes, somewhere in the head peeking out--monitoring, is a construct of physical and mental awareness of the body--or at least a meta-awareness that you are indeed in the process of actively experiencing something. Even the body only exists in our consciousness when physical sensations arise to make us notice it or it has to be in use. Otherwise it’s just kind of a thing that’s there. Same with our brains. As a matter of lived experience, I don’t really know what my ankle feels like unless I completely roll it. It’s a thing being used, otherwise.
Whether or not any of this is particularly insightful, true, or apocryphal doesn’t matter so much but it did serve as a great thought experiment as to another way to be conscious of observing yourself and your experience.
When I play music or sing, I really pay attention to where my ‘self’ feels like it is. Sometimes it’s right behind my eyes, like most of the time--piloting. Making sure all is going according to plan. Sometimes I feel like I am my whole body at once. Sometimes I feel myself running up the keys of the piano or coming down from the bend of an electric guitar. Sometimes I’m not there at all.
