Then what is "me?"

Well, since the last time that I have written here, I have undergone a major philosophical change.  I am rather "under the weather" at the moment, but I thought that at least putting something down would inspire me to return to it... to organize what I've been thinking over the past five months or so.

Not too long ago, it suddenly occurred to me that I am not my thoughts and feelings.  In fact, it isn't really so hard to control them.  Truly, I have a choice of how I want to think and feel, and I certainly do not have to react to stimuli.  So this was a great discovery.  I can choose and control my perspective and my attitude.  Fantastic.  This went just swimmingly until I was suddenly faced with this question:

If I can control my thoughts and feelings, what is this I that controls?

Oh boy, now I've become quite existential.  It is a little bit scary.  I've recently heard the term "positive groundlessness" to describe the discomfort of ceasing to identify one's self with one's thoughts and feelings.  If I can't ground me in what I think and feel and do, what am I?

So I started reading.  And this is what I read:

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali with commentary by Sri Swami Satchidananda
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
The Elements of Moral Philosophy by James Rachels
Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire by Rafe Esquith
Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior by Chogyam Trungpa
The Enchiridion by Epictetus
Buddhism by Donald Mitchell
Constructivism: Theory, Perspectives and Practice, Edited by Catherine Twomey Fosnot

I've read more than that since the summer, but that seems like a decent overview.  I left out fiction, which can be just as inspiring.  I realize that these books seems sort of disparate, but they've influenced my thoughts and philosophy, which is moving toward consistency.  Here is what I'm thinking:


When I first began to talk and think about all of this, a friend of mine described the technique of choosing one's perspective.  He said to catch each moment, each happening, as if it were an egg.  Don't rush to meet it, don't aggressively catch it or it will break.  If one feels the motion of the egg, leans back and allows it to be caught gently, then it can be kept in tact.  Once I have gently caught whatever the  present moment is throwing, I have the ability to inspect it and decide what I want to do with it.

Morality is ridiculous.  Personal responsibility, being honest with one's self, is the only possible way to do what is "right."  Somewhere in my reading, I came across Kohlberg' s Stages of Moral Development.  It is different motivations that people may have for doing the "right" thing.  They are:
1.  Avoiding punshment
2.  Earning a reward
3.  Seeking approval
4.  Following the rules
5.  Empathizing
6.  Acting (making individual decisions based on a personal [global?] set of ethics)

It is some form of stage six that has my mind moving.  When I come to the above mentioned decisive moment... I have delicately caught and examined the present moment... how do I know what to do with it?  Certainly, no set of rules is going to tell me the answer.  I want to do the "right" thing.  I think that the way to do that is to simply ask myself what it is.  "What is the right thing to do?"  Generally, I can figure it out on a day to day basis.  There are big huge scary moral/ethical dilemmas that it would take some more time to figure, but on a regular basis, I know what is right.

This is sounding like I have some kind of intuitive alignment with the cosmos... I don't mean that only I know what is right, I think that most people know what is right.  It might be different than what I know... But I cannot judge another person's ethical system using mine.  As long as a person can say, "I feel that what I am doing is right.  I have no guilt, I have no second thoughts.  I am acting deliberately, and I have decided that this is the best course of action," I cannot judge their actions.

I will have to elucidate this later, as I am presently feeling quite sick.