When considering this it became clear that self as object, noun or thing, is clearly a construct as are all nouns. Then what is self as subject? What is the experience of self? Knowledge reveals self to be a way of knowing. This way of knowing is dualistic and is a way that knowledge reveals the realm we call home. Self as a way of knowing increases freedom even in the duelist realm as it offers options and flexibility of perception without the attachment that occurs with self as thing. Recognizing all perception, judgment and opinion as a way of knowing decreases the tendency to call any of it real and the knower of it me.
Hayward
Hi Hayward,
Your post is making me think. Something I prefer not to do.
I guess when I characterize myself as someone who prefers not to think, I am treating myself as an object. However the one who is making this diagnosis, is he a subject? I’m wondering in what ways the self can be an object. My self-image? Thoughts about my behavior, prospects, reputation–are they all the self as an object?
I like your way of representing the self as a vehicle of knowing and thereby intrinsically free–just as knowledge is free. At the same time I am wondering what happens to that freedom when out thoughts are a simple reinactment of the influences that have conditioned us from the past. It seems that the self as subject can also be mechanical and more an artifact of past knowledge than an expression of fresh knowing. —Michael