No Stupid Questions

I'm a mind hosted by a brain piloting a bone mecha covered in flesh armor

I take the Buddhist view that what we call the self is a misconception or misunderstanding. While you do exist, there isn't a soul or some permanent entity that takes residence and jumps around before or after death.

Thus, you can ask questions like these and get a million different answers because the question is not valid. It's what the Buddha would call proliferation, or basically hot air. There isn't an answer, why ask the question?

Don't mistake this for a cynical view, though. A good Buddhist is very happy because even though the idea of a self is false, freeing yourself from all of these self-based concepts and desires leads to great peace. The obsession with self and self-based craving is what leads to any kind of unhappiness.

You are mostly your brain, which extends to the rest of your body.

The thing about OOB cases is that the human brain is really good at faking information, or just generating it out of thin air.

In fact it never stops doing that, unless it is allowed to completely die.

If a person is resurrected, the brain generates "filler" information for the duration you were "out".

For some, that is seeing an "afterlife".

There is no universally specified "afterlife", it's based entirely on culture, and what the person has grown to believe in, even if they don't believe it anymore.

Sitting on the toilet taking a shit. I'd prefer not to.

My brain silently groaned "Ugh, I need more coffee to process something like this so early! Body, take me to the coffee."

I feel this is an answer to the question.

This post illustrates well why some Buddhists, among others, regard the self to be an illusion. When called to locate it or bring it forth, we ultimately can’t do so.

Quite literally you are your brain, trying to account for the entire body and mind as the self simultaneously. But you may catch yourself thinking or saying things like "I can't wrap my brain around this." Isn't that odd? Your brain refers to itself as my brain. Is that a linguistic issue or is your sense of perspective off?

"Don't you have a heart?" Why do we imply that our sense of compassion is only located in an organ that just pumps blood? That clearly can't be the case.

We know cases where someone gets a brain tumor and suddenly becomes violent or unfeeling. When the brain is damaged either during life or during gestation, we know that we can lose all manner of things: cognition, motor skills, memory, emotions, etc. It's all the brain.

What confuses the issue is everything the brain is attached to. What I think all conscious humans do is try to make sense of the mind-body connection. I feel tired, that's not just my brain feeling tired. I can feel tired in every single part of my body independently or all together. "I" am the brain. If I lose an arm, I don't lose my sense of self. But losing important functions can damage the self I've constructed of myself. If I lose my eyesight I will be a very different person when I'm unable to visually enjoy video games, movies, art, nature. But clearly blind people still have a self. If it sits behind their eyes, will it move? Adapt to their ears?

All this to say, your self is self constructed. It's malleable. But make no mistake that the source of where self and consciousness are maintained is the brain.

Hub. Interesting. My sense of self tends to be around my shoulder/back of head/neck area. I don't get the feeling that I'm right behind my eyeballs, my sense of self is A bit lower and further back than that. Like, if I were centered between my ears, I'd have to move a bit lower and a bit more back.

Such a strange thing to have to focus on.

I've never felt particularly connected to my body.

I live in my head. My body is annoying.

I don't even know that, I don't particularly feel like I am either my body, head, or brain. I've never felt that I am a part of this body.

It would be interesting to know whether the location of your 'self' is tied to your dominant sense. So people blind from birth could be 'between their ears'? Which isn't that different, but would still produce slightly different answers. And how about people missing both hearing and vision? Could a person be 'in their hands'? 'Up their nose'? I'd better stop.

These are questions you should ponder after a nice healthy dose of psilocybin. You can be just about anywhere you want to be and pick what works for you.

There's a book called Impro by Keith Johnstone.

It's a book about improvisation, though in there there's a very interesting part on moving your center around when it comes to character work.

So long as the centre remains in the middle of your chest (pretend it's a few inches deep), you will feel that you are still yourself and in full command, only more energetically and harmoniously so, with your body approaching an "ideal type".

As soon as you try to shift the centre to some other place within or outside your body, you will feel that your whole psychological and physical attitude will change, just as it changes when you step into an imaginary body.

You will notice that the centre is able to draw and concentrate your whole being into one spot from which your activity emanates and radiates.

(Johnstone, 1987, p. 179).

I'm probably, mostly, behind my eyes, inside my head.

In moments of adrenaline and action, I'm in my chest or gut. Sometime hands, especially when doing delicate or involved work. Sometimes legs or arms when laboring.

In times of pain, I'm often at the focus of the pain until I work and ignore the physical and go somewhere deep inside that doesn't hurt so much. Usually, a good memory or fantasy.

The bit that thinks is in my head feels to be at the front. But it knows that my heart is equally important. So I feel that I am my head and my body.

People who have lost a limb say they feel like they’ve lost a part of themselves not just physically but in their sense of wholeness.

For me it's probably both, but I feel a lot of shit in my chest, like anger or anxiety. Id like that to fuck off though and just be behind the eyes lol.

I am my whole self most of the time but sometimes specific parts are more attention grabbing than others. Usually during orgasms or when something hurts.

If you are more kinesthetically aware of your body, you will feel every part of it and be able to better understand what is going on in it.

In Japan, people point to their face to indicate themselves

Personally, I can't separate the feeling of self from my vision, so "I" am directly behind my eyeballs and I can't change it.

My experience is very similar, and I tend to explain it as "I (feel I) am my frontal cortex", which it's conveniently positioned there.

Can you move?

If I close my eyes, I don't feel I can move in the sense of "going to a different place", but I feel like I have an "internal orientation" which (almost always) aligns with where I'm looking at. But with the eyes shut I can change that orientation and point it in different directions.

I don't know if this will make sense to anyone... it's very hard to explain these sensations with words.

Just: I am a specific process running on our brain.

I am all of me

Spacetime is a lie.

This is a question the greatest minds haven't been able to answer in millennia. Don't expect an answer in a random lemmy thread. The closest answer to the truth I could give is "we don't know".

You are more than just a point in space. You see others perform actions and you attempt to replicate them.

This is more of a philosophical question (touching multiple aspects) that doesn't seem fitting to no stupid questions.

You already mention the common aspects to it. We put our conscience, our awareness behind our eyes because of how visually focused we are. We put our body center to our torso and heart, because it's both central to the physical body and the heart and lungs are an noticeable and continuously active part of our physical body.

When you ask you first have to ask yourself, what are you asking for? You used the terms "you" and "self". Where do we draw the borders of those? Do people put themselves differently or is it the same for all of us? Is it objectifiable or subjective?

I'd interpret "you" as the entirety of me. Including body and mind/conscience. Placing myself in it does not make sense, because I am all of it.

"Self" on the other hand be interpreted as consciousness rather than your entirety. But not necessarily so.

Under my blanket. No, my dog is sleeping on my legs.

When the wise man wants to feel himself in his toe, he hits it with a hammer.

So, you're talking about perspective, basically "where it seems someone is looking from". You can control this, it's not locked-in to how it normally feels like it functions, even if it normally seems that way.

It just takes significant amounts of practice in directing and controlling your attention instead of letting it control you. There's a lot of ways to practice, but meditation regimens are probably generally one of the quickest.

Like, your internal dialogue for instance. Just because it's always on doesn't mean it has to be. But unless you can turn it off, the constant stream of dialogue through your head is going to make it very difficult to "look from" anywhere else. It'll always pull you immediately back so long as it is present.

So many different answers. I am not going to delve into the self as a concept or why I feel the way I do. I've always felt my awareness inside the head, but my sense of self is in the chest. So yeah, both of your examples ring true with me.