A Sense of Doubt blog post #3789 - REPRINT WEEK: SoD Reprint of #2727 - Mom's Ashes in a Mani Mantra Pendant

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3789 - REPRINT WEEK: SoD Reprint of #2727 - Mom's Ashes in a Mani Mantra Pendant

I am actually reprinting this again tomorrow but not by itself.

I wear this around my neck every time I go out.

I also bought a Legion of Superheroes flight ring that would contain my Dad's ashes if it could contain something. It's more symbolic. I won't show that ring here as I want to do a whole post for it and why it's special.

I am very happy with this Mani Mantra pendant, though.

Thanks for tuning in.


The link to the original post I am reprinting below: 

Saturday, August 6, 2022

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1237 (SoD #2727) - - My new Mani Mantra pendant - contains ashes

LOW POWER MODE: I sometimes put the blog in what I call LOW POWER MODE. If you see this note, the blog is operating like a sleeping computer, maintaining static memory, but making no new computations. If I am in low power mode, it's because I do not have time to do much that's inventive, original, or even substantive on the blog. This means I am posting straight shares, limited content posts, reprints, often something qualifying for the THAT ONE THING category and other easy to make posts to keep me daily. That's the deal. Thanks for reading.

REPRINT WEEK: First Week of July 2025 is reprint week.

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1237 (SoD #2727) -  - My new Mani Mantra pendant - contains ashes

Hi Mom, I haven't written to you in a while. My last HEY MOM post dates back to Mother's Day (May 8th) and before that January 27th, when we reached the milestone that you had been dead for 2400 days. I am getting close to the 2600 milestone now, which will happen on Monday the 15th of August, about a week from now.

For years, I have had a file open on my computer called "Pendants for My Mom's Ashes" that I last updated on December 30th 2015.

It took me six and a half years to finally choose and buy a pendant, so that I could wear your ashes around my neck in something that is meaningful to me.

Maybe when Liesel or one of the dogs dies (I expect the dogs to go first), I change to wearing their ashes. Or maybe I mix ashes of all my loved ones. I actually hope Dad outlives the dogs.

Anyway, in recent years, I have been able to let go of coping mechanisms to deal with losing you, Mom.

I stopped the daily alarm at 10:10 a.m. about two years after you died. I stopped kissing your Frantic Woman shirt every day before that. And other things, including stopping the daily HEY MOM posts on July 06th, 2018, three years to the day after you died.

Friday, July 6, 2018

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1096 - The Last Daily, Consecutive Hey Mom Post

DRAT!!

I just spotted a counting error with the HEY MOM posts in which I have two Hey Mom #1146 posts in January of 2019.

Oh well, too late to renumber now.

Oh wait. I may have fixed it. Yes. Okay. That's fixed, but there seems to be a gap between Hey MOM #1150 on February 10, 2019 and #1158 on March 31, 2019. I may have to investigate this, but for now I am going to trust that my numbering is accurate.

Anyway, here's the pendant list:

infinity

http://www.perfectmemorials.com/infinity-cylinder-stainless-steel-cremation-jewelry-engravable-p-8808.html?products_id=8808zmam=40893252&zmas=1&zmac=1&zmap=PM9808&gclid=Cj0KEQiAno60BRDt89rAh7qt-4wBEiQASes2tZ-M3408T8rHto01G3JyIA1VUxR94ba1Yefoh1NqSicaAguS8P8HAQ

panda cat pendant

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Panda-Stainless-Steel-Black-Cute-Cat-Charm-Cremation-Jewelry-Ashes-Pendant-Keepsake-Memorial-Urn-Necklace-With/32525126380.html

SOME NICE ONES

http://www.coopfunerals.co.uk/Memorials/Cremation-Memorials/Urns-and-Keepsakes/

possibly

http://www.coopfunerals.co.uk/Memorials/Cremation-Memorials/Urns-and-Keepsakes/Ashes-Pendant-Chelsea-Design-29/

Buddhist wheel pendant

Dharma chakra

Many good ones here

http://www.stardust-memorials.com/necklaces-for-ashes.html

AND SO I CHOSE THIS:

https://innerwisdomstore.com/products/tibetan-buddhist-mani-mantra-pendant-necklace

I wanted something meaningful independent of your ashes, Mom, something that I would want to wear as its own thing, expressing its own ideas.

This Mani Mantra pendant is just the thing, though the other day it came apart while I was out running errands, and I lost a few bits of your ashes!! I am going to have to be scrupulous about keeping it screwed together tightly and check it all the time. I wore it today to Portland and checked it when I got home, and it needed a few turns to tighten.

The pendant came with the mantra and prayer on a tiny scroll, which I removed to fill the vessel with your ashes, Mom.

In the other photos, above, I cheat and display the pendant on the book cover from The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake, which I just happened to be reading at the time but which looks cool.

I really liked the design of this pendant. Though I am not crazy about gold, this had a mix with silver, and so it seemed less garish.

And I liked the symbols on its face and the meaning of the Mani Mantra.

I want to learn how to use the Mani Mantra in practice. I need more spirituality in my life. I also want to start doing Tai Chi regularly.

Following, I have shared the Mani Mantra and the text from the Inner Wisdom site.

I am very happy with this decision, Mom, to carry you forward into the future like this, with this pendant, and this spiritual practice.

I love you, Mom.

I know you approve. I hear you.

Thanks.

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Reflect and connect.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you, Mom.

I miss you so very much, Mom.

Talk to you soon, Mom.

- Days ago = 2591 days ago

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2208.06 - 10:10

NEW (written 1708.27 and 1907.04) NOTE on time: I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of your death, Mom, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of your death, Mom. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom. Dropped "Talk to you tomorrow, Mom" in the sign off on 1907.04. Should have done it sooner as this feature is no longer daily.

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2507.03 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3654 days ago & DAD = 308 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3731 - Dharma Rain Zen Center of Portland

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3731 - Dharma Rain Zen Center of Portland

In early April, I attended two events at the Dharma Rain Zen Center in Portland. It had been on my list of places to visit since I met Sallie Tisdale and hosted her for our Northwest Voices program at Lower Columbia College as she teaches there.

When assigned a cultural immersion project for my Multicultural class, this place was first on my list.

For our cultural immersion project, we had to experience a culture "outside of our comfort zone," and I felt that this place and these events qualified.

Below, you will find the report of the events and the visit that I wrote in the project, and if interested, below that report, there is a link to the entire project via Google docs.

For those who do not know me, I am in graduate school for a Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, and this multicultural class was one of my two classes this quarter that just ended Sunday 5/4.

DISCLAIMERS

I may have made errors in how I referred to things in my description of the spaces at Dharma Rain. If so, and someone more learned than I spots those errors, please leave me a comment, and I will fix them. Out of expedience when writing the project -- which I worked on for two weeks and all day the day it was due and the day before -- I did not fact check that the thing I called a prayer shrine is indeed called 
a prayer shrine.

Also, I did not return for the cohort meeting in May (5/3) because I had to work, but I hope to attend the June meeting. I will than ask what things are called and make the changes myself.

I hope you enjoy what I have written.

Thanks for tuning in.

Description of Dharma Rain Zen Center Experience

 

I was nervous. I am always nervous going new places, especially alone. I am an introvert at heart, though I often have to mask as an extravert.

I am glad I checked the website again ahead of time as the co-hort group for “Zen and the Art of Psychotherapy” was in the library building and not the main temple, which they call the “Sodo.”

I was early, so I had time to sit in my car for a few minutes and respond to texts while I watched people garden on the sprawling grounds of the center.

It had rained the night before, and though cloudy with partial sun, the day was cool, quiet, and tranquil, much like the waking world is just after a heavy rain fall.

I waited until I saw someone go into the library building and followed. I forgot about the removal of shoes but shouldn’t have as it is a practice in my wife’s culture as well. I doffed my shoes and had a look around. Quite a collection of texts in this library, neatly arranged, along with Buddhist decor and what might be called shrines. I chose a seat and settled in as more people gathered.

Once we were all assembled, there were nine people (including me) and four of us were new, first-timers. They opened the meeting with an invocation about unconditional love, and then we did introductions. There was another grad student as well, so I was hardly unique. We were asked to share our backgrounds, and several practiced DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) as it draws heavily on Zen Buddhism as I was told does REBT (Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy). The topic for the day was suffering, and there had been an article distributed ahead of time but no copies had been made for new-comers. I added my name and email to a mailing list, and given how much encouragement I received, I may return for the next session in two weeks. One of the members shared about surgery he was facing in two days, which related to the article very directly as I gathered he was the one who had chosen it.

Everyone shared reactions and experiences. I learned that suffering is a core concept to Buddhist beliefs as an element in three of the four Noble Truths: Dukkha (the truth of suffering), Samudaya (the truth of the origin of suffering), Nirodha (the truth of the cessation of suffering), Magga (the truth of the path) (Oakes, 2018). Another new attendee discussed his work with incarcerated men in relation to suffering. One of the other newbies discussed the suffering she sees daily in her work as a CNA at a nursing home that specializes in dementia, Alzheimer’s, etc. Everyone shared something. I have a tendency to talk too much, so often in these kinds of places and events, I hold back for a long time and listen, allowing others to chime in who may not have done so if I jumped in to talk as soon as someone else finished. Since women outnumbered the men in the room 6-3, I felt it was even more important to be calm and to listen because of the common silencing of women or the reticence of women to speak when men are dominating the conversation. After people spoke, we bowed with our hands together in front of us, which is a way to honor others in this culture. There was also a closing chant of some kind, after which I had conversations with several people who strongly encouraged me to come back next month.

I had a two hour break before the next event, so I went to a nearby Hawaiian restaurant (Ohana) that I like and read/wrote poetry, contemplating what I had experienced. Like many other experiences I have had in Portland, OR, there was this sense of commonality, of like-minded people, who all belong to the same club, even when there’s no obvious name for the club. The sense of belonging I have felt in Portland is nothing like the fellowship and solidarity I felt in Kalamazoo, MI during all of my years there. It’s very special here.

I returned and arrived early for the “Introduction to Zen Buddhism” session. The meditation hall is a large rectangular room with a vaulted, peaked ceiling and skylights. A gorgeous wooden floor, polished and cleaned, was covered with an assortment of mats, cushions, and chairs. High windows lined the long walls of the rectangle providing shaded light due to the overhangs outside. We gathered in the front of the room nearest the entry which branched into other meeting areas and facilities to the right of the entrance. Opposite our meeting area a circle of mats and a zoom-connected large monitor were two doors in between different prayer shrines at the other end of the room.

 

My greatest takeaway from this session is that even with a fairly high cushion, I cannot sit cross-legged on the floor (no way in lotus position) for two hours. I was happy when a guy in his twenties had to move to a chair thirty minutes before I did. Two people attended via Zoom, and there were seven in-person attendees, including myself but not Randall (who makes eight).

Mostly we talked about Zen and learned from Randall, who led the session. He described the workings of the Dharma Rain center and its various workshops and programs as well as the weekly Sunday services, which he encouraged us to attend. He fought against being the only one who spoke for two hours and kept drawing us out to share and ask questions.

Though he spent a great deal of time describing zazen, which is a seated form of meditation, he spent more time on what he finds most valuable about his experience, which is sangha, the community of Buddhist practitioners. Sangha is one of the Three Jewels of Buddhism: the Buddha (the teacher), the dharma (teachings), and sangha (community)(Three Jewels, 2024). In developing our own sangha for this session, everyone shared reasons for attending, experiences in their own practice so far, and anything else they wanted to share in relation to the ongoing discussion.

 

We only meditated for about five minutes of the two hours. We were encouraged to meditate with our eyes open, but Randall did not instruct us on what to stare at. I tried to fix on a point on the wall across the room, but as we discussed our experiences after, he told me to focus on a spot on the floor. He had encouraged us to be like a pipe held vertically with water running through it. The water represents our thoughts, which will come, but that we should let them pass through. I feel I did all right with this practice as I meditate from time to time on my own and in my own way. It helped to be given permission to have the thoughts and how to let them pass through rather than fighting against them.

This method of meditation is specifically the Soto Zen form of zazen, primarily practiced as Shikantaza, which does not employ a specific object or anchor. Randall explained that the goal is simply to sit, observe thoughts and feelings without judgement, and to be present in the moment. He explained that there is no goal to this form of meditation other than the sitting and being present, allowing thoughts and feelings to rise and pass through without clinging to them. In preparing us, Randall described posture in the very stable form of the lotus position, also known as Padmasana, with folded hands, open eyes (gaze down, as I learned), and just normal breathing. For those who were accustomed to focus on deep breathing at the start of a meditation session, Randall explained that the natural breathing is part of the practice so as not to force an atypical mode of breathing that would distract from the goalless practice of Soto Zen zazen. Though anything goes, really, he explained and if deep breathing helps, he encouraged people to do that.

Randall recommended two books, which I purchased shortly after the Saturday session: Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice by Shunryu Suzuki from 1970, though 50^th anniversary edition was published in 2020, and No Mud, No Lotus: the Art of Transforming Suffering by Thich Nhat Hanh from 2014. I already owned An Introduction to Zen Buddhism  by D.T. Suzuki because of its introduction by C.G. Jung and my identification as a Jungian. Though owning Suzuki’s 1964 introduction for decades, I had only read small parts of it over the years, never the whole thing. Now that there is an unabridged audio book, I am listening, and I am almost done with it. I will listen to audio versions of the other two in the near future, though I could not get through them before this paper was due given when I bought them. I showed Randall the Suzuki introduction, and he said it would go well with the other two and that he had read it, too.

Overall, the experience on Saturday April Fifth at the Dharma Rain Zen Center of Portland, OR was edifying, exciting, and fulfilling. Despite fears and fighting against judgment, I was inspired and calmed. The Dharma Rain Zen Center is a very calming and serene environment.

 

LINK to the entire research project

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2505.06 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3596 days ago & DAD = 251 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3651 - Reprint from 2018 Hey Mom #967 - The Self is an Illusion - Do Not Fear Death

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3651 - Reprint from 2018 Hey Mom #967 - The Self is an Illusion - Do Not Fear Death

Still in low power mode with reprints but an extra share here along with the reprint, which I often do when reprinting.

I am always looking for ways to come to terms with people dying and that we all die; I will die, too.

I worry when a friend does not reply to a message that they are dead.

I very much want to not fear death, but I do fear it.

I see it ahead, coming closer, and I have so much I want to do before it arrives.

I find the added article, the second below, to be limited in adhering to science for a definition of self or attempting to abdicate the self as a concept through convoluted logic rather than admitting to larger spiritual issues that are more difficult to define and for many difficult to accept.

I used to believe that our self in this life was a temporary thing and that our consciousness would be absorbed into the collective when we die. When we return, our "memories of past lives" are simply tapped in connections to the collective.

However, despite many new age psychics, mediums, and zealots being sure of what lies beyond our current lives, I believe that we don't know, and we cannot know.

Possibly the similarity of Near Death experiences is simply our brains way of processing something the mortal mind cannot conceive of.

And do we know of anyone with a Near Death experience like other such experiences from someone with ZERO cultural knowledge of what those experiences have been? Possibly. I don't know.

I like the idea of the Collective Unconscious, and I like the idea that the self has meaning and value and is not an illusion.

But then in the spirit of this blog being my study and not my teaching, I present ideas that I might not agree with.

Thanks for tuning in.




LOW POWER MODE: I sometimes put the blog in what I call LOW POWER MODE. If you see this note, the blog is operating like a sleeping computer, maintaining static memory, but making no new computations. If I am in low power mode, it's because I do not have time to do much that's inventive, original, or even substantive on the blog. This means I am posting straight shares, limited content posts, reprints, often something qualifying for the THAT ONE THING category and other easy to make posts to keep me daily. That's the deal. Thanks for reading.

The link to the original post I am reprinting below:

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #967 - Do not fear death - the self is an illusion

Tibetan Buddhist monks in-exile pray during a Long Life prayer offerings ceremony to his Holiness the Dalai Lama at the main temple Tsuglag Khang on March 9, 2009 in Dharamsala, India. (Photo by Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images)

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #967 - Do not fear death - the self is an illusion

Hi Mom,

This article caught my eye, Mom.

Though it might be interesting.

More original content on the way this week, but today, a straight-up share from one of the new sites I follow: THE BIG THINK.

http://bigthink.com/bps-research-digest/is-death-still-frightening-if-you-believe-the-self-is-an-illusion-an-astonishing-study-of-tibetan-buddhists

Is death still frightening if you believe the self is an illusion? An astonishing study of Tibetan Buddhists

·         February 27, 2018

 by CHRISTIAN JARRETT

Imagining ourselves as no longer existing is, for most of us, terrifying. Buddhism may offer some reassurance. A central tenet of the religion is that all is impermanent and the self is actually an illusion. If there is no self, then why fear the end of the self?

To find out if the logic of the Buddhist perspective eliminates existential fear, Shaun Nichols at the University of Arizona and his colleagues surveyed hundreds of monastic Tibetan Buddhists (monks-in-training) in exile in India, as well as lay Tibetans, Tibetan Buddhists from Bhutan, Indian Hindus and American Christians and atheists.

To their astonishment, the researchers report in Cognitive Science that fear of the annihilation of the self was most intense among the monastic Buddhists, and that the monastic Buddhists were less willing than any of the other groups to sacrifice years of their own life for a stranger.

The US participants were recruited online, whereas the monastic Tibetan Buddhists and other groups were given paper surveys to complete, translated by fluent bilinguals into the appropriate language. The hundreds of monastic Tibetan Buddhists who took part were from monasteries in Byalkuppe and Mundhod in India. The researchers also surveyed 30 Buddhist scholars about how devoted Buddhists ought to answer the different survey questions.

Two of the surveys addressed the permanence of the self. As expected, the monastic Buddhists showed the least belief in the continuity of the self – they thought they would be different in personality, beliefs, ambitions and other characteristics in the future. In contrast, the Americans, whether religious or not, showed the strongest belief in the continuity of the self (the other groups, including everyday, non-devout Tibetans, scored mid-way between these two extremes). Similar patterns emerged for beliefs about the existence of a “core self” that persists over time, with the monastic Buddhists again showing the least belief in the self.

Would the monastic Buddhists’ scepticism about the self have a bearing on their fear of death? More than the other groups, they said that they used the no-self doctrine to cope with the prospect of death, as the Buddhists scholars said they ought to do.

Yet, when the researchers surveyed their participants about their fear of death and especially their fear of self-annihilation (gauged by agreement or not with items like “Dying one year from now frightens me because of the loss and destruction of the self / destruction of my personality”), to the researchers’ surprise they found that this fear was most intense among the monastic Buddhists. This was opposite to how they ought to have responded according to the Buddhist scholars. Note, the Buddhists believed just as strongly in an after-life (though not, of course, for their current “self”), so this could not explain their more intense fear compared with the other groups.

Next, the researchers surveyed more participants from the same groups about how much they would be willing to sacrifice years of their own life to extend the life of another person (for instance, in the most extreme version of the thought experiment, they were asked to imagine they could take a pill to extend their own life by six months or give the pill to a stranger, similar to them, for whom the pill would add an additional five years to their life). The monastic Buddhists were the least willing to make this kind of sacrifice – in fact, over 72 per cent preferred to keep the pill for themselves in the above scenario, compared with 31.2 per cent of non-religious Americans.

Writing on Twitter, co-author Nina Strohminger at the University of Pennsylvania said that these findings were “probably the most bizarre and unexpected of her career“.

The researchers believe the paradox they have uncovered, between the Buddhists’ explicit beliefs and their fears, may be explicable by the fact that, despite their training and explicit claims, the monastic Buddhists still have a powerful sense of a continuous identity that stretches from the past and into the future. It is not easy to defy the illusion of the self even if you are taught to do so. This would seem to be borne out by notable Buddhist autobiographies that betray a keen experience of a continuous self. At the same time, Buddhists may succeed well in truly believing that the self ends at death (unlike other religious groups that preach that the soul is eternal), and this could account for the Buddhists’ exaggerated fear of self-annihilation at death.

One caveat to the findings highlighted by the researchers is that, although their monastic Buddhist participants meditated every day,  none of them were highly experienced, long-term meditators with many years of practice. Meditation is seen as one way to eliminate belief in a permanent self, so it will be interesting to repeat the research, not only with other Buddhist denominations, but specifically with highly experienced, expert Buddhist meditators, to see if they too would fear self-annihilation.

Christian Jarrett (@Psych_Writer) is Editor of BPS Research Digest

This article was originally published on BPS Research Digest. Read the original article.

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Reflect and connect.
Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you, Mom.
I miss you so very much, Mom.
Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.
- Days ago = 969 days ago
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1802.27 - 10:10
NEW (written 1708.27) NOTE on time: I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of your death, Mom, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of your death, Mom. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom.

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Who do you think you are? Why your sense of self is an illusion

Most of us are convinced that we're coherent individuals who are continuous in time. There's just one problem with this sense of self – it can’t exist

By Catherine de Lange

11 December 2019

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24432601-000-who-do-you-think-you-are-why-your-sense-of-self-is-an-illusion/

LET’S be honest, it is what we think about the most: ourselves. What we want to eat or do, how we feel and whom we love. It is the essence of being.

This selfhood generally feels like a continuous “me” sitting somewhere in our heads: a me that is the same today as yesterday. “Most people feel that they are a coherent, integrated individual. They have free will, they are making their choices and they’re looking out through their eyes at the world around them,” says Bruce Hood at the University of Bristol, UK, author of The Self Illusion.

And that is just what selfhood seems to be – an illusion. “You are actually a collection of conflicting messages and signals and thought processes,” says Hood. “And these are somehow brought together to experience as unified self.” Fine, so your self is just the “you” experiencing that, right? That becomes a Russian doll problem, says Hood. “There’s someone inside the head who’s having these experiences taking place inside their head and so on,” he says.

Neuroscience tells us that our subjective sense of self must be a distributed experience, involving various bits of the brain. Although experiments have taught us much about the brain areas involved in creating it, how exactly it is conjured up still eludes us.

We do know that a sophisticated sense of self and others only comes on us gradually. “Understanding that your thoughts are different from someone else’s and being able to reflect on your own thinking, that’s a higher order skill and it doesn’t emerge until you are 3 or 4,” says Megan McClelland at Oregon State University. Even then, the brain areas involved in our experience of the self don’t fully mature until we become adults.

The continuity of our sense of self seems to have something to do with autobiographical memory. Very young children have little sense of self and also very limited autobiographical memory, while the experience of people with amnesia lays bare the role of memory in selfhood. “If we suffer amnesia, the self becomes frozen in time because it can’t form new memories,” says Martin Conway at City University in London.

“Ironically, the self’s main advantage might not be for ourselves”

The unreliability of memory might help explain why even our illusory self isn’t very, well, self-aware. “Most of us have distorted self-images,” says Hood. “Most people think that people are more interested in us than they really are. Most people think they have an above average sense of humour, above average intelligence. We can’t all be above average.”

So why have a self at all? Because it is the interface between a complex outer world and a complex inner world, says Hood. Without it, we would be bombarded with conflicting information.

Ironically, the self’s main advantage might not be directly for ourselves. “Having your ‘self’ means you can behave as an individual and be part of a group,” says Conway. “But not just a mindless part of a group like an ant is, rather an individual who is in a group and can make their own individual contributions or walk away.” That ultimately allows us to form our complex human societies – making the self, if it is an illusion, an extremely useful one indeed.

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Cutting-edge science throws up all sorts of controversial, nebulous and mind-bending concepts. Here’s your guide to how to think about some of the fiddliest of them:

• In the quantum world, uncertainty reigns – or is it all in the mind?
• Think you understand how evolution works? You’re probably wrong
• Why information could be our route to the universe’s deepest secrets
• Homo sapiens? Genetic insights suggest we may not really be a species
• Big bang retold: The weird twists in the story of the universe’s birth
• Firms and governments use the internet to spy on us. Should we care?
• D’oh! Why human beings aren’t as intelligent as we think
• Extinction is a fact of life. Could we stop it – or even reverse it?
• No more goody two shoes: Why true altruism can’t exist
• Alien life could be weirder than our Earthling brains can ever imagine
• Why it’s time to call time on the ‘nature vs nurture’ debate
• Dark energy: Understanding the mystery force that rules the universe

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2502.15 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3516 days ago & DAD = 171 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.