I decided to start a blog about self-improvement. Feedback appreciated!
Nice post! It leads to the existential question, if you're not your mind, who are YOU? If YOU are in the driver's seat and not your mind, who are the YOU that decides and how do YOU decide what to notice and disregard in your mind? I enjoyed this talk by Jon Kabat-Zinn at a Google talk on mindfulness where he touched on the topic towards the end. Warning: if you're looking for the answer here, you won't find it. Adding to your list of acronyms, I've been hearing a lot about DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy) as well. Edit: Your post has an interesting mix of eastern and western philosophies. I'm wondering how they harmonize and if there any points at which they clash.
The more I hear about it, the more I come to the conclusion that there's no coherent, objective "you". What seems most obvious to us a unit of human soul is, in fact, a series of ever-changing patterns. You're not the person you were five years ago; not the person you were even an hour ago. And yet, "you" isn't entirely plastic as such a view would suggest. We can't will a 180 from an introvert to an extrovert, or from conservative to liberal. We can come close to embodying those ideas but will never be comfortable with being them as much as "native-born" such people are. From what I gather, the answer to the nature of "you" lives in the crossing of genetic characteristics (what is entirely innate to us) and the patterns we've absorbed throughout our lives (what is learned into us).
You seem to be answering a different question, although the OP seems to agree with you, so now I'm confused about his concept. The YOU that you're discussing is the sense of self that's in contrast with other people, particularly in society. My question to the OP was about the YOU in context with his concept of YOU noticing one's MIND. The examples you gave wouldn't apply to the YOU that is distinct from your MIND. Your MIND wouldn't be telling you that you're an extrovert while YOU say you're an introvert. Fundamental, outward facing beliefs that are about the self that projects to society are generally consistent between YOU and your MIND because if they weren't, you just wouldn't project that belief. From what I gather, that's the description of MIND in the article. If that's the description of YOU, then I'll turn the question around and ask, what is MIND? Could I ask that you read the article in the OP? I've been down a rabbit trail with you before where you're talking about something that's not in the article. There's no mention of a human soul in the article that I saw. It's not a religious piece unless he's tracing mindfulness back to Buddhism. Even then, not all Buddhists believe in the concept of a human soul. Some background. When people talk about mindfulness, they're generally talking about observing one's thoughts. The thoughts are generally depicted as MIND. But then there must be an observer of these thoughts, generally depicted as YOU. Who is this observer? The reason the question matters is because there's a sense that YOU who are watching these thoughts is the knowing observer, particularly in western culture. To my understanding, in eastern cultures, the idea of a knowing YOU is ego. Ego is comprised of things like labels, status, other outward manifestations of competing with others. Ego is generally considered to be associated with MIND in eastern thought. If YOU is not the outward self that is presented to others but is the observer of MIND, what/who are YOU?From what I gather, the answer to the nature of "you" lives in the crossing of genetic characteristics (what is entirely innate to us) and the patterns we've absorbed throughout our lives (what is learned into us).
I see. That's your question. My best guess, you is a unified complex of different mental and physical functions acting under the same overall goal: survive and procreate. rt's terminology could use retooling, since you is a part of the mind, not the other way around. The reason I believe so is because the mind encompasses far more functions than you: it's responsible for unconscious control of physical movement (which, as is evident from development of robots, is an expensive aspect of our body's existence, processing-power-wise), our reflexes and other autonomous functions (like breathing, heartbeat or pupil dilation). I recognize that rt's said that "mind" in the text is used in place of "internal dialogue". The reason I point that aspect out is because by naming the thing we provide ourselves the context to think within. Reducing mind to such a miniscule aspect of sentience-sapience chain is framing the issue too narrow. With that out of the way... I'm not so well-versed in human psychology as to be able to declare whether there can exist a separate point of view from Ego. Many observers have already noted the so-called "enlightened self" which is able to look past highly- or purely-selfish motivations, such as greed and lust. It also has this amazing ability to abstact itself and look at itself from the least personal and biased perspective. Which makes you both the actor and the observer, and the observer of the observer, and the observer of the observer of the... Next, there's the conscious control of autonomous fuctions. Is it also you if one chooses to hold their breath, or is it you if one uses you as an instrument to affect other parts of the mind? If it is, in fact, you, then is it also you to hold your breath on command, without giving it a second thought? is it you to hold it on a whim, with a chaotic spawn of thought gone the same moment as it was conceived? Is it you to agree that you're too weak to resist temptation? If so, is it also you to agree that you're strong enough for that? I believe those questions to be important for discovering of the nature of you, but all the questions in the world won't bring us closer to understanding the issue if left without answer. How would you answer those questions - and which part of you would you employ to do so?