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Imagine that you’re playing a board game like Monopoly.
The game is a given — something we are born into — and our existence is framed such that it’s only meaningful in the context of the game’s rules and elements and processes.
That’s how the ego relates to life: “life is a given, and I am an object born into that given environment.”
The model of reality is like the Monopoly game — our “knowledge of what things mean”, including our own existence.
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MORE IDEAS ON THIS
To be the owner is truly being, and to understand and sustain that relationship to your own existence is where the “coherent” bit comes in:
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Let’s just assume that you understand that you’re not defined by your reflection in the physical mirror, or at best that’s a limited definition of “me”.
Well… it turns out that there are other kinds of mirrors:
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The reflective self-definition that is generated automatically by ancient psychological processes, the machine that seems to want to turn everything into “it’s about me” in some way.
That’s the first kind of identity or the first existential mode: reflective, in that there’...
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What if someone becomes aware of their own production of the meaning that gives them their identity?
You’d be on the way to being the owner of the game, because naturally the author is the owner… the one who put the walls up owns the room they live in.
People sense that being the own...
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You really are “a thing in a given context”: your life is bound to your body and you will die and that’s the end of any useful meaning of “you”.
If we understand that the Monopoly game metaphor does not refer to the physical universe, it refers to the “realm of meaning” which gives the self...
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When you only know yourself by reflective self-definition, and don’t appreciate the vast possibilities and natural freedom that comes from being the owner or source of the gameboard, you’re stuck.
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We sleep-walked through the process which built the gameboard that gives meaning to our existence as a cannon or scotty dog or ship.
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The “existential” bit has to do with your own existence — specifically, the meaning of your existence.
Questions like “who am I?” and “why am I here?” and “what are my values?”
There are two modes — two different ways to come at the questions of your own existence and underst...
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CURATED FROM
IDEAS CURATED BY
Found this topic fascinating. All ideas belong to Les Matheson. He is the author that inspired me.
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Other curated ideas on this topic:
You really are “a thing in a given context”: your life is bound to your body and you will die and that’s the end of any useful meaning of “you”.
If we understand that the Monopoly game metaphor does not refer to the physical universe, it refers to the “realm of meaning” which gives the self...
Sometimes when you are losing in a game you have to stop playing by the rules, switch it up, and change the game itself. You have to think outside the box.
The key is to define the box in any given situation and then to seek alternatives, which are often unconventional solutions that wou...
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