The Ego Trick: In Search Of The Self

The main reason I picked the book up was that I wanted to explore what is means to be me. Effectively the central premise of the book is that “I” is a verb masquerading as a noun. “I” is not a “thing” but what my brain and my body `does'. The self,is a function of what a certain collection of stuff does.It's the fact that I can use my memories and experiences to develop a sense of continuity in my life without actually having a central command centre. However,your life is not a pack of cells; your life is what your particular pack of cells collectively do.There isn't a fundamental “thing” that gives continuity to my life making me same person from birth to death. My robust sense of “me” or “I” is real, but not what I assume “me” to be. There is no such thing as a soul. Effectively, I'm a bundle of thoughts which are assembled together in my brain:bundle theories explain why it is we believe ourselves to be individual persons who exist over time, but deny that any such beings really existAs Hume said:What we call a body is only a bundle of sensations; and what we call the mind is only a bundle of thoughts, passions and emotions, without any subject.Mental actions arise from physical ones, just as:a university emerges from all the buildings and individuals.Thoughts and feelings are real,but they are not themselves lumps of matter.The mind is not something which is separate from the body, but it is a function of the body - the mind (the self/consciousness) is what the brain/body does. In other words, your mind is not your brain; it is what your brain does. How does consciousness arise out of physical neural activity? I don't know but I'm sure that it does damage the brain, and you impair consciousness.How has this influenced my thoughts on my mortality?The ideas outlined in the book lend themselves to determinism and not free-will. Baggini suggests that “freedom” is actually “'autonomy”. In other words, I can regulate my behaviour due to “internal machinations” of my brain and not external events.So, I'm going to worry less about what happens in twenty years time as opposed to what happens in, say, twenty minutes time. I'll change over time, so even if I could live forever, I wouldn't be the same person that I am now. This all leads me to consider a real focus on becoming more mindful. As noted in [b: Mindfulness: A practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world 11281104 Mindfulness A practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world Mark Williams https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347862381s/11281104.jpg 45872389]We re-live past events and re-feel their pain, and we pre-live future disasters and so pre-feel their impact.I need to focus on seeing my own thoughts as they occur, so that I live life as it unfolds in the present moment.