Mae Yo, once again, offered me her favorite homework assignment — “go contemplate self and self belonging.” This time around, she gave made it a little harder —  “go contemplate self and self belonging in the situations of your life and  pay special attention to the relationship between self, self belonging,  the aggregates and  the arising of suffering.” Somehow, I never seem to get those easy assignments….Anyway, here you can take a peek at my answer and see how I did :).

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I’ll give more details below, but as a preview: I’m starting to see that self and self belonging is a lens through which we interpret the world. It’s a judge, and a filter and it seems to be one of the main reasons we are able to imagine permanence.

The Situation:

So my contemplation started when Eric and I went early on a warm morning to sit in a garden/coffee shop down in Bayview. It was so lovely, warm, good coffee, quiet. We found seats in a private area, on a heated bench, there was even a cat there that sat down with me and snuggled-up. I noticed my comfort. I noticed my imagination already running… Here are a few of those imagination thoughts: this was a special spot for Eric and I now, we could repeat it, If anything happened to him would I be too sad to come back here or would it be a spot that brought me comfort? I hoped people wouldn’t come trekking in our little nook. I wondered how long Eric would be patient just sitting…  I realized that in such a short time I made the spot ‘mine’ part of my narrative, a place I sensed I belonged and in some way belonged to me.

The Aggregates:

So I started to look more carefully at how this all arose. First I looked at the rupa (form #1), the fabric of the scene. So many things that I already know I am predisposed to liking. It’s a garden –a green space with nature, but nature that is groomed, trimmed, controlled. It was empty, not many people, so quiet and I felt alone, safe. It was warm –warm coffee, warm sun, warm seat (I don’t know why yet, but warm is a thing I associate with comfort and vitality) There was a cat, cuddling-up, making me feel special and liked.  In essence there were a bunch of forms (#1) (cat, garden, warm stuff) that nudged my memories (#3) into remembering all the positive associations I have with those. My feelings (#2) kicked in and I felt positive about the situation so then came my imagination (#4)–making it mine, making it a place in association with me, that affirmed me.

The Harm:

Just looking at whether the image I painted was even true was enough to highlight some of the harm –here I was, at a coffee shop, in the ghetto, petting a random animal and feeling illusions of safety, comfort and mine-ness –that’s sort of crazy. Is the place safe after dark? Even during the day?Is it mine–really?If I didn’t buy coffee would I be allowed to sit? When folks started poking around the place I was sitting, I started feeling protective, defensive of a space that is very clearly not really mine even in a conventional sense (where it belongs to the shop owner). As the rupa changed, my comfort decreased..it became a little too warm, the cat ran away, I felt hungry and restless and then I felt dissatisfaction that something that had previously been so perfect was already decaying.

Additionally, before I went to this place I had no sense of it in relation to me. It was just a store across town. But once I was there and my aggregates got cranking somehow I became interwoven with the place. I got puffier and bigger than before. A new Alana, garden-coffee-shop-Alana, arose (and subsequently softened again after contemplation).

The Deeper Creepier thing Going On:

Forewarning, we are entering territory that’s still fuzzy along the edges for me… But when I really thought about it, I realized that I was picking and choosing the rupa to pay attention to, the “facts” of the situation. And moreover I was interpreting the stuff I did pay attention to in a way that suited me, that affirmed the story I wanted to tell. So for example, there were planes going overhead making noise but I chose to filter them out. We were in fact in the ghetto, on an industrial street just outside the garden, again, I chose to ignore it so that I could build the illusion of the scene I wanted. That made me comfortable. A long time ago, Mae Yo asked me how we ignore the “background noise” –I am starting to think it goes something like this:

Somehow (still a black box for me) our minds hold together a narrative. We take bits and pieces of data, we take isolated moments of arising, and we string them together into something cogent, unified and whole. Its like our sense of self and self belonging help sell the lie, they smooth the narrative over (ignore the background noise). They help us pick which facts to include and which to ignore.

Several days after the garden, I was contemplating about it while sitting in Union Square over lunch. I had snagged a public table and then some guy came and sat with me. He sat a little close and I had a sense –he is in my space. Then I really thought about it. what does it mean. Is it the air around me?  If I move to another table does my space follow me? Does it shrink when Eric, or a close friend is in it but expand for a stranger? The only thing that unifies the “space”, if its here or there, or in relation to who or what, is me. That made me see so clearly that self is the lens through which I interpret the world.   Its how I make something impermanent and totally unreal (like personal space) seem steady, meaningful, real. Its literally,in the case of space, my perspective.But unless I examine it closely it seems so factual and definite, not just like a perspective.Even weirder still, I had the sense that self is the reference point that I use to see the world as something steady, but even my sense of self changes. It is moving, just like if I moved my body to another table in the square my reference point would change, my sense of space would change. So I have an impermanent self that looks upon an impermanent world and tries to fix it as permanent, as controllable, as singular in its reference to me.

Self is also how I decide and judge –I was filling out my sample ballot for the Nov. election and I watched myself weigh my choices, each one I considered how it either affected me or aligned with what I think is right.

I also noticed that my sense of self likes to build itself. When it’s choosing what to pay attention to or how to judge something, the criteria are usually things that affirm it as real, benefit it and make it feel safe. When I look back on my narrative of me and my Mom, for the longest time, I was the victim. I was the hero who suffered quietly and emerged an OK somewhat functional adult. But when I started contemplating gratitude I was forced to look at all the parts of the story I chose to ignore–that I edited from my book. Only now do I see all the stuff I did that wasn’t so heroic and the stuff my Mom did, which I had ignored, but which are worthy of my appreciation.

All this brings me to my biggest question  that I am stuck on– why do we do this –prop-up a self and continue to fuel it? What purpose does it serve? Sometimes, when I understand why I do something I can analyze whether or not it works and it helps me stop.

Stay tuned for the next Blog in which I get an answer, in the form of more homework…ugh….