BryantheNo-Self

“Perhaps one reason we refrain from questioning our own interpretations is that whenever we start to look into how we hold reality, the terrain can start to feel rather slippery. Approaching these matters through our experience rather than just intellectually can greatly simplify our task, but a new challenge arises. The deeper we go in our questioning, the closer we get to confronting the core assumptions that run our lives. Keep in mind that confusion, upset, and other personal resistance are likely to arise as our questioning threatens the very basis of our self image.”
― Peter Ralston, The Book of Not Knowing: Exploring the True Nature of Self, Mind, and Consciousness

“Continually thinking of oneself as a bum, a mean old man, a strapping youth, a mothering person, a hot business exec, a cute young thing, a man on the go, a rebel, smarter than most, a refined sort, a dark soul, a victim of circumstance, special and unique, and on and on, will cause us to become very attached to these images and roles. We tend to think they are simply assessments of what is so, but they’re not. They are fabrications within one’s mind and they exist to serve some end.”
― Peter Ralston, The Book of Not Knowing: Exploring the True Nature of Self, Mind, and Consciousness

“I might think I’m smarter than everyone else, or a great person. These seem positive and yet, as with believing I’m stupid, I’m likely to feel isolated and separate from others, misunderstood, and underappreciated. I may well become protective of my “status,” which could be the only value I feel I have as a person and the only characteristic through which I can relate to people. I would become less and less willing to look the fool, or risk revealing myself as “normal” or fallible, and so cut myself off from any real and honest interactions or self-expressions. We can see how this will feed upon itself and how the condition could easily become more and more intolerable as it grows.”
― Peter Ralston, The Book of Not Knowing: Exploring the True Nature of Self, Mind, and Consciousness

“Once a conceptual identity occupies the place of “self,” this is what we think we are “being.”
― Peter Ralston, The Book of Not Knowing: Exploring the True Nature of Self, Mind, and Consciousness