The most ‘spiritual’ of queries is: Who am I? i.e. How do ‘I’ discover the Query maker?
As we can see, this question is a great one! Due to structure of language (which is how we think thoughts), the Question Asker (aka I) is asking about itself. In the physical world, this is analogous to one seeing herself in a mirror. A great amount of insights can be had by focusing on this question itself, however for now I wish to share with all an important practical observation on the Self I have had.
Self is a cooperative joint venture of multiple conscious units.
This is what I feel. Let me explain why I feel this about Self.
We can agree that within us (say our bodies) there are multiple intelligent sub-units operating. Like the systems we call as organs, molecules, etc. These in themselves are intelligent since they perform awesome-most functions on their own – day in and day out. I feel we must thank our sub-systems every day, they help us “live” after all.
If one thinks of it, these sub-systems have million other options to go and place themselves around.
The intelligent cells that are forming my body, brain, etc are all autonomous, they have a right to exist independent of me. Yet they have chosen to stay with me.
The sub-units form a kind of a cooperative joint venture with the Self. I am not not that the Self is a structure put together by these sub-systems. I have not yet had enough thoughts on how the Self is formed. However, in this post I wish to say that the Self definitely has cooperative joint venture with the portions that help form the Self. Definitely, the cells are also not doing it without any reason of their own. They must also be aligning for a reason of their own. Here, I would like to say that I do not believe that the other sub-systems exist only for the Self- in a way we often here that the living beings are just parts of a Big Overlord. I do not believe in this nature of reality or multiverse.
So, being in a cooperative joint venture, all the constituents of this CJV are to play their respective roles and experience their own world view while being in the CJV. I feel this is how the multiverse works. Entities (both human and others) comes together for their own purposes in a joint venture and “live” together to fulfill their own individual needs while being in the joint venture.
This concept of the Self helps achieve peace within oneself. One neither thinks too high of oneself (imbalanced superiority) nor thinks too low of oneself (depressive inferiority)- the concept of “superior” and “inferior” does not arise in a cooperative joint venture. It is flat in terms of coordination hierarchy. It is not pyramidal in nature- not being top down. Entities come together to join hands for their own respective purposes and contribute to the jointly put system since they get what they want from the CJV.
If you consider this concept of Self, you may benefit via feeling of balanced peace within yourself. You shall also feel light in the sense that the serious energy of guilt/responsibility shall disappear. The sense of loneliness shall not daan on oneself since there are friends involved even in everyday living- your body and its components are all you JCV partners- you are never alone!