Awakening Does Not Discard Self-Concept
Over the past year I have listened to many spiritual teachers describe what awakening is. While their general descriptions have often resonated with me, there are some elements that have not sat right with me. One of them is their dismissal of concepts.
Awakening is beyond concepts in the sense that it is not just a conceptual understanding. However, it would be a mistake to say that it has nothing to do with concepts. “Transcend” or “beyond” does not necessarily mean “discard.” Throwing the baby (concepts) out with the bathwater (mistaken concepts) seems a common error made in spirituality.
Spiritual teachers often talk about “(awakened) direct perception” to mean perception free of concepts. However, is awakened perception really free of concepts? The recursive process of direct perception and conceptual understanding (Mounoud, 1995) has been happening before awakening, and it is implausible that awakening magically transcends this process. Instead, it would be a new recursive cycle: a new way of seeing the world, or more broadly, a new way of being.
Conceptual understanding penetrates direct perception whether or not you are aware of it. For instance, when you learn music theory and apply it to playing an instrument, you stop thinking about the theory while playing after some time. The theory has not been discarded, though it has disappeared from your consciousness. It has been integrated into your perceptual-motor act of playing.
The dismissal of concepts often manifests itself as what Wilber (1982) calls the pre/trans fallacy. (I will talk about this fallacy in more detail in another post.) Many spiritual teachers speak of awakening as if it were a return to a preconceptual mode of being. Infants and awakened people are similar in that neither of them is under the illusion of the ego. However, they are free of the ego illusion for very different reasons. Infants, lacking conceptual ability, have not formed the ego. Awakened people, on the other hand, have formed the ego but seen through and transcended it, which requires (advanced) conceptual ability. Thus, it is a mischaracterization to suggest that awakening is a return to a preconceptual mode of being.
The Expansion of Self-Concept and the End of Egoic Overthinking
The core of awakening is the expansion of identity, which happens not through the abandonment of self-concept but through the refinement and expansion of it. There is a commonly held notion in spirituality that identification (i.e., self-concept) is a problem. However, the problem is not identification but misidentification (i.e., a mistaken self-concept, or the ego). It is through the identification of the Self that your identity expands to embrace all as your Self and your motivation becomes harmonious (see Bergman, 2002, for a related discussion on the relations between understanding, identity, and motivation). Just as when you identify yourself as the ego, you feel and act as the ego, when you identify yourself as the Self, you feel and act as the Self.
The expansion of identity does not end thinking but ends egoic overthinking. When you believe you are the ego, you engage in constant scheming to protect and aggrandize it. But when you realize you are the Self, the need for constant scheming evaporates. Thoughts still happen, but without compulsion and urgency. Above all, the content of your thoughts becomes gentle and peaceful.
References
Bergman, R. (2002). Why be moral? A conceptual model from developmental psychology. Human Development, 45(2), 104–124. https://doi.org/10.1159/000048157
Mounoud, P. (1995). From direct to reflexive (self-) knowledge: A recursive model. In P. Rochat (Ed.), The self in infancy: Theory and research (pp. 141–160). Elsevier Science.
Wilber, K. (1982). The pre/trans fallacy. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 22(2), 5–43. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022167882222002
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There is nothing inherently wrong with any concept..We can use them..just like we Are Right Now. We Are Always Beyond 🤍
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Awakening, if it is to mean anything beyond spiritual ornamentation, must be understood as an event that reorders experience rather than abolishes it. It is not the annihilation of the ability of the consciousness to contain concept, but a transformation in their gravitational center. To say that awakening is “beyond concepts” is true only in the sense that a horizon is beyond the traveler: it is not negated by approach, but revealed as that within which movement already occurs. “Beyond” does not mean discarded, nor does it mean irrelevant. It means seen through, repositioned, relieved of the tyranny they once exercised.