3 reasons why you believe you are the body, 3 reasons why you shouldn't
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3 main reasons why you believe you are your body
1. Exclusivity. No one else claims ownership of your body.
2. Groupthink. Everybody around you thinks the same way about you and your body and about himself and his body.
3. Proximity. You think you are always attached to your body, never without it wherever you go, whatever you do (* see note below).
With these supporting reasons, no wonder the conditionings of your belief to be the body have managed so well to survive over the years.
3 main reasons why really there is no basis for you to believe so
1. No Say. You have not designed nor implemented the body.
2. No Idea. You have no idea firsthand about how your body works. It is only through 3rd-parties who tell you (doctors, books, laboratory tests, mirrors etc.)
3. No Control. You have no direct control whatsoever on the fundamental functioning of your body, hair grows on your face, you want it or not; parts get out of order, you want it or not; it naturally gets weaker, grows old, decomposes and you naturally don't want this to happen at all.
How dare you claim to be something of which you have no say, no idea, and no control?! Do you see how paradoxical it is, by definition? Any meaning you give to the term "to be" will not hold validity in view of these facts.
Don't just read this. Meditate on these reasons, try to locate the underlying conditionings that maintain these unreasonable beliefs in you. You will soon feel a change in your attitude regarding you and your body.
* The truth is that actually you are not always attached to the body. You only tend to think you are. While you are asleep, for example, you are not attached to your body - your physical body is usually not in your field of consciousness while you dream. Other people may tell you that when you are asleep, the body is there but they do not know whether your consciousness is also there, and you know that it is not.
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Where do I go when I sleep?
"* The truth is that actually you are not always attached to the body. You only tend to think you are. While you are asleep, for example, you are not attached to your body - your phisical body is usually not in your field of consciousness while you dream. Other people may tell you that when you are asleep, the body is there but they do not know whether your consciousness is also there, and you know that it is not."
I can't really say that I do know that. So, where is my consciousness when I sleep?
Phil
An example
Let's say that you have a wound on the leg of your being-awake body. You know that your body in your dream, the one which is in your field of consciousness when you dream, can appear and usually does appear without that wound and so on. It may sometimes be a body of someone else or sometimes you may be bodiless and you float etc. It may look similar to your physical body, the one that is in your field of consciousness when you are awake but evidently it is a different one from the only perspective you have - the perspective of your awareness.
Therefore, if your dream body is not the body that currently lies on the bed, your consciousness "is not there" attached within its field of awareness to that body.
The dream body doesn't seem
The dream body doesn't seem 'substantially' different from picturing a body in my head right now, and in neither case is there the sense that my consciousness has to go anywhere to perceive it.
If I'm standing talking to you and my attention shifts between my body and your body, there's no sense that my consciousness is going anywhere. Maybe it's just me.
Your perceived relation makes the difference
It is substantially different in the fact that you perceive it in your dream as YOUR body. Your perceived relation to it is what makes it different.
Indeed, picture now when you are awake, picture wholeheartedly and totally, with no doubt left, an imaginary body and this "imaginary" body will turn to be "your" body as long as you perceive it to be so. This is, by the way, what actually happens also with your "physical" "real" body.
Your perceived relation to an object is what matters. It is the same with the I-thought. The I-thought is the representation of yourself as an object in your psyche. It is not different from John-thought and David-thought that are also in your mind and represent your friends John and David within your consciousness so that you can refer to them as mental objects. The only different which makes the I-thought so unique and thus so problematic is that the I-thought is perceived by you to represent YOURSELF (or rather to be yourself, but this is another discussion).
Oops...
I like most of what you said above, except for this:
"The only different which makes the I-thought so unique and thus so problematic is that the I-thought is perceived by you to represent YOURSELF"
More or less what you're saying above is: "The reason the I-thought is unique and problematic is that it's *I* it's referring to"... oops. Let's have that "other discussion" ;-).
From here, the reason the I-dea (can be) problematic is that it's so durned interesting, taken so seriously, taken as 'real', reinforced through numerous repetitions into a belief system represented by a running story-line. Awareness is deeply involved, enmeshed and captivated by the whole thing, wanting to keep this story going at all costs.
In truth, only awareness is real, but it takes itself to be what it 'sees'. The 'me' isn't a subject in actuality, but an object (as you correctly noted) taken to be a subject. Instead of saying "my self" we say "myself", as though running the two words together could rectify this mistake.
http://www.omkaradatta.info
More about "no control"
Even the little control we believe to still have over our body is found to be only an illusion when we inspect it carefully.
Rather than a direct control over body functioning, it is always some external manipulation or external stimulus we generate over external circumstances to influence the body, same manipulation and stimulus we can generate over other bodies.
Examples:
In order to lose weight, we externally limit the quantity or/and type of materials infused into the body.
In order to have our muscles stronger, we externally impose resistance to our muscles by lifting weights.
In order to have the body ejaculate, we externally generate sensational stimulus.
Yes, we indeed can trigger some limited functions of the body mainly by activating muscles, internal and external, but this is done the same way we use any other tool, this computer for example. Nevertheless, we never claim to be the computer.
Okay, I'm convinced I'm not
Okay, I'm convinced I'm not the body, but it still sounds like I have control over it.
control vs. influence
The answer lies in inspecting very carefully the different meanings hiding behind the term "control".
Yep, you have some control over your computer, car, garbage disposal, and other black-box tools you use but this influence we call control is indirect, it is by manipulating external circumstances (pressing a keyword, steering a wheel, turning on a switch etc.) not by being involved in the essence of the thing. I prefer to call it "influence". This influence we can actually have on almost everything we have access to (e.g. your neighbor by spilling your garbage on his lawn)
And indeed this influence does not make you identify with your car (some men actually do to some degree) or with your garbage disposal.
What's next?
So what has occurred is that the body is disidentified with, but not the controller, and so it becomes a controller influencing an object.
The apparent controller is contained within thoughts. If you are in control of your thoughts, then you are a controller. Do you know the next thought that will happen or do you only notice it after it has occurred? Do you know what thought is going to occur in response to noticing that thought? If you don't control your thoughts, you can't be the one controlling something outside of your thoughts.
Out of body experiences
I would add out of body experiences which can be achieved through relatively simple yogic techniques. These can demonstrate to one by experience that he and his body are not one.
Nice body to be out of
But you look suspiciously like Wonder Woman to me.
This is getting serious
Hmmmm, you're right. I believe we have an imposter!
The real "I"
My self is super woman, my "I" is wonder woman.
May i ponder?
1. Exclusivity. No one else claims ownership of your body.
Ownership is constantly claimed with emotions and thoughts if we notice carefully. Sometimes fear owns the system, sometimes strenght, sometimes weakness, sometimes joy and sometimes sadness and so on and on..... When the divine owns it all another ownerships tends to cease.
2. Groupthink. Everybody around you thinks the same way about you and your body and about himself and his body.
not sure about it. Everybody thinks according to the level of their consciousness i feel.
3. Proximity. You think you are always attached to your body, never without it wherever you go, whatever you do (* see note below).
The consciousness on body is seldom all the time. Rather the the thought process is always on gaining or escaping from something. Awareness on body in most cases grows when there is some physical pain, when the pain calls.
May the Divine love guides us all to the freedom
http://alpesh-mynotebook.blogspot.com/
http://saibabashirdivideos.blogspot.com/
http://saisatcharitra-online.blogspot.com/
http://stories-shortstories.blogspot.com/