Two Philosophical Ideas: Virtue of Simplicity; Problem of Self Centeredness

By Reza Ganjavi

Related to my short talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpxhGPA8lgo

At the opening of this performance I addressed two topics that have come up in that gathering: 1) simplicity 2) self centeredness.

I observed that some of the workshops and speakers were twisting and turning delicate topics and making it so complicated. And also there was so much promotion of the sense of self, which is the world's problem!

The world is dominated by self-centered activity. Even in ecological and holistic fields, and pop psychology, the self is cherished, crystallized, strengthened: the me, I, mine, ego. Psychological sense of self is an illusion; discrete instantiation of images called "me" connected together by the mind and made into a continuous image "me" as though it's real; and perpetuates it through a variety of tricks.

There's another dimension which is outside the field of time-thought, which can be called love (although words like love and god are polluted by humans and used to describe non-love, non-god... jealousy is not love, for example...).

It seems that the movement of the "me" isolates, separates, divides because the sense of me is put together by thought, and thought is divisive because it's based on limited experience, and limitation is division -- and also because it's a material process in the brain and matter is limited.

And the movement of psychological thought, and sense of "me" is within the boundaries of time -- conditioned by the past, and projection of the past into the future. Rumi says come out of the field of time and join the field of love.

Thought has its right place in life, but not to say things like "I love therefore I am". This "I am" is a disease that's promoted by pop psychology and shallow schools of self-help which thrive on strengthening of the ego, which feels good for a person who is caught in the ego, and ego sells.

Most people are not educated to understand and see the beauty of being nothing, psychologically; being simple, as a child, uncomplicated, light. Many adults turn into psychological monsters, and ever more isolated, and many so-called pop psychology and self-help gurus just make it worse.

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