What is a Good Self?

Following on from the last post it is apparent that this puts the knife further into the "self thing".

What is the self I keep asking myself, both unsure what it is and also amazed that I seem to be sure, but can't see why.

After the previous post I see that I have been still believeing in a "ghost" behind the scenes pulling the strings of my world. When I think, speak, have emotions, dream or whatever I have imaged that there is a secret self, unseen by the "outer" world who does all this like a tank commander running operations in his safe tank. Yet I have never seen this "ghost", nor do I have any reason to believe in it, I just feel as though it is there - that is after all what makes me "me".

In the last post I realise that all those things I thought where caused by my secret myself are actually myself. I am nothing more than my thoughts, my emotions, my feelings, my actions.

The very same things which other people judge me by, my thoughts, words, and actions are actually "myself". There is no hidden self in its "inner" world creating impulses which have effect in the "outer" world, because there is no "inner" world. Recaping the last post: the "inner" world is actually the outer-world-as-I-see-it, and if there is an "outer" world it is an imagination about a world free from "interpretation", free from subjective involvement, an objective world - which is a fantasy since we can't know that directly (without personal involvement). There is only 1 world - tat tvam asi (thou that is art).

So the "self" is plain to see for everyone. And this has a big implication on our behaviour and attitudes. I have lived very much hiding from reality, believing that inside there was a self which was misunderstood, which has bad/good things happen to it, which was free from the world around it. Yet now I see that this is an illusion.

You cannot be a good person and hide behind bad things - saying for example that you were forced to do them, or that you were justified in doing them. Bad things - be they thoughts, words or deeds are only bad things, and if you do them then you are bad - there is no escape to your "inner" world. Bad things only result in bad things, so you have no choice but to avoid bad things immediately, there is never reason to do them.

A good self on the other hand is one who has good thoughts, words and deeds. Most importantly it is a self who strives to be positive in its thoughts, words and deeds and to ignore negative thoughts, words and deeds. There is no good self hiding behind the scenes of a person, they are good only in their positive approach, emotions and attitudes.

So the search ends for me for an "inner" self, and the discover, liberation and revelation of such a self is believed to be a myth. There is only one process and that is to chose positive as often as possible, and to learn to ignore negative. The more we learn to avoid negative and replace it with psoitive the weaker negative becomes and the stronger our self becomes.

Thus faced with situations which make us angry, hateful, destructive, bitter, sad, unhappy, lonely, sarcastic, vindictive, revengeful, shy, frightened, greedy, selfish, unkind, cruel, thoughtless etc, i.e. whenever we are negative we have a job to do - to find ways of being positive to shake off the darkness, see things in a good way and see a path through to the light.

Such positive ways always exists because the "negativity" we see, the unpleasantness of such existence, is just our self being bad. And if our self can be "bad" and make our world unpleasant then it can also be "good" and we need to find that way through. Its the job of a knight, or soldier as the Protestant Christians imagine.

This is a powerful way of starting to turn against negative: when things turn bad we take it as a challenge and adventure to find the positive - remember all those movie adventures where heros head off into darkness to bring back light. Of course it is hard and perseverence is the key, not to give up.

There is no hidden self, damaged or bad pulling the strings - we exist only in the moment in what we think, say and do and so we can make instantaneous changes if only we can let go of belief in a solid "self" and identity holding us back.