Self

Happy Saturday Morning

Here are a couple snippets that you may enjoy (a break from Ramtha).  

The first is from Seth (channeled by Jane Roberts) during the class sessions she used to give, the second is from a weekly email from a local Zen master (I used to belong to that temple).

Seth on Identity and Personality

Identity is not the same thing as personality. Personality is that part of identity that manifests itself within physical reality and within your time. Identity is far greater than personality. Personality represents only those aspects of identity that you are able to actualize within three-dimensional existence. The inner self knows who it is. The inner self communicates with your present personality. In your dreams you have communication with that larger portion of yourself that is your identity. Personality may be to some extent molded by circumstance. Identity uses the experiences. Identity is not carried willy-nilly, but holds its own.

If you had read more of the material and if you had studied the information more carefully on action and identity, then you would know what I mean. You can consider the whole self as an onion if you wish. There are layers and layers and layers, but these layers all grow from the inside outward as though the inner identity forms layers and layers of personality. These personalities are part of the identity but not the entire identity.

... Although each of you realizes privately the truth, and the truth is not easy to put into words, no one can do more than approximate it. However, each of you exists in other realities and other dimensions, and the selves that you call yourself is but a small portion of your own I. 

Now while you dream, you do have contact with other portions of yourselves. But while you are awake this communication also goes on continually but you are not aware of it, for your ego is so focused upon physical reality and upon survival within it, that you do not allow yourself to listen to the inner voice. 

If you think of yourselves honestly and deeply when you are alone, then you must realize that what you are you can not see in a mirror, and the self that you see in a mirror is but a dim reflection of your true reality. You do not see your ego in the mirror. You do not see your subconscious in the mirror. You do not see your inner self in the mirror. These are but terms. They are symbols to express the inner part of you that you cannot see nor touch. Within you, within the selves that you know, is the prime identity, the whole inner self.

Early Class Sessions, Book 1

Anzan Hoshin on self and other

We have the word “self” and it can be a useful and convenient word. But what is being described cannot be fit into the word. When we say “myself” or “yourself” we are speaking of numberless aspects of experiencing arising within, through, and as this bodymind and that bodymind. This bodymind is facing the room in one direction and that bodymind is facing the room from another. Both are seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling and cognizing but are doing so differently. But this difference does not split one bodymind off from what another actually is. There is no self and other here. The right foot does not feel the left foot’s sensations but both the right and the left feet are feeling, are ways of knowing. Knowing is not isolated as the left foot or the right foot. Seeing is not the same as hearing but they are both ways of knowing, examples of knowing, activities of knowing. Knowing in itself, Awareness in itself, Experiencing in itself presents itself as every possible way of knowing and as whatever is known but it does not become trapped as any of them. And every possible way of knowing and every possible known are themselves not broken off from Knowing in itself. They are each it as them. When I say “Awareness in itself” the word “self” there just means “as it actually is”. If the word “self” means anything at all it means “as it actually is,” this bodymind “as it actually is”: alive all the way up and down and through, an intertwining of organisms and organs, each of them a way of knowing and a system of knowings, gathered together as Knowing in itself as this bodymind. That is myself, that is yourself; and the “I” and “you” are not selves just as “right” and “left” are not separate selves. Apparently “sentient beings” like human bodies and apparently “insentient beings” like bones and stones and wind and snow are each themselves without an isolated self that is broken off from everything else. All of us, as we actually are, are intimately together and we are all dharmata, we are all essentially real. We are all open and luminous as experiences and as Experiencing in itself. 

-Ven. Anzan Hoshin roshi, continuing teisho 6: "Coming Thus As Us" Saturday, December 7, 2005 in the teisho series "Essentially Real: Commentaries on Eihei Dogen zenji’s 'Hossho: Dharmata’."