#40 Michael Taft: Deconstructing the Self
Full text: https://deconstructingyourself.com/deconstructing-the-self.html (...) meditation can be described as a kind of deconstruction, and the thing we are deconstructing is sensory experience. But there is one sensory experience that is categorically different than all other sensory experiences: the experience of being “me.” The sense of being a person, an ego. (...)This sensory experience is centered around self-referential thinking and feeling. The narrative voice in your head, the pictures in your mind’s eye, and the emotions you’re having right now constitute almost all of it. (...) Understanding the ego as a sensory experience is extremely useful, because it allows us to get a handle on it. We can deconstruct the sensory experience of being an ego just like we can deconstruct any other sensory experience. (...) Many people understand the goal of meditation to be somehow the destruction, annihilation, or vanquishing of the ego. It is common to hear meditation teachers or