Then what might the self be? I propose that it is the same kind of thing as a center of gravity, an abstraction that is, in spite of its abstractness, tightly coupled to the physical world. ... It is a mathematical point, not an atom or molecule.
Self-Surrender
Ego-dissolution enables both transcendence and manipulation.
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In other words what was missing was Self 1. What was left was Self 2. Because Self 1 is not in the picture, sometimes we say, I didn’t do it, it just happened.
For years I had lived under the impression that I was the master of my life, the CEO of my own personal brand. But a few hours of meditation were enough to show me that I had hardly any control over myself. I was not the CEO; I was barely the gatekeeper.
A third way of attaining union lies in creative activity, be it that of the artist, or of the artisan. In any kind of creative work the creating person unites himself with his material, which represents the world outside of himself. Whether a carpenter makes a table, or a goldsmith a piece of jewelry, whether the peasant grows his corn, or the painter paints a picture, in all types of creative work the worker and his object become one, man unites himself with the world in the process of creation.
You have to work hard at it, whether that means rigorously analyzing a system or rigorously casting off your own paradigms and throwing yourself into the humility of not-knowing. In the end, it seems that mastery has less to do with pushing leverage points than it does with strategically, profoundly, madly, letting go and dancing with the system.
Steve had a remarkable knack for letting go of things that didn't work. If you were in an argument with him, and you convinced him that you were right, he would instantly change his mind. He didn't hold on to an idea because he had once believed it to be brilliant.
The chief burden of the frustrated is the consciousness of a blemished, ineffectual self, and their chief desire is to slough off the unwanted self and begin a new life. They try to realize this desire either by finding a new identity or by blurring and camouflaging their individual distinctness; and both these ends are reached by imitation. The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others.
The answer is that our thoughts aren’t as private as we imagine. In many ways, conscious thought is a rehearsal of what we’re ready to say to others. As Trivers puts it, “We deceive ourselves the better to deceive others.”
The futility of this situation – in which the addict’s efforts to regain control send him spiralling further out of control – is the basis of the paradoxical-sounding insight for which Alcoholics Anonymous has become famous: that you can’t truly hope to beat alcohol until you give up all hope of beating alcohol. This necessary shift in outlook generally happens as a result of ‘hitting rock bottom’, which is AA-speak for when things get so bad that you’re no longer able to fool yourself. At that point, it becomes impossible for the alcoholic to avoid surrendering to the unpalatable truth of his limitations – to see that he simply doesn’t have the ability to use alcohol as a strategic tool to suppress his most difficult emotions. (‘We admitted,’ reads the first of the Twelve Steps, [that] ‘we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.’)