I get really dissociated sometimes, and I just look in the mirror and go 'woah, I'm a person,' and it somehow surprises me that I have a face and people can distinguish me from of thousands of others they see.
I agree in a sense. I enjoy an actual self realization of what I actually am. You know, things like the construction of your hands. They are some pretty crazy paws. If you're calm, you can lay in bed and feel the blood go from your heart to your toes. You can pay attention to your insides and feel them. You feel them all the time but I feel like focusing thought you can isolate it from all the feelings in your gut.
Yes I have, I smoked so much to the point that I reverted back to the stage of infancy (the stage before your biological parents have given you an identity). It was scary at first because I thought it was identity crisis/confusion but then I let this temporary state of consciousness set in a while and it led the gateway of questioning things for a change of insight. But since the question seems to be synonymous with the ego, I hear a lot of people say that you should kill the ego because it controls you but they forget that -- they are about three structural parts of the ego which are the Id, super-ego and ego. This was created and constructed by neurologist Sigmund Freud which was called the psychoanalytic theory of personality. According to him, <div style="font-family:inherit;font-size:12px;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin-left:0px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);"><div style="font-family:inherit;font-size:12px;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin-left:0px;"><div style="font-family:inherit;font-size:12px;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin-left:0px;"><div style="font-family:inherit;font-size:12px;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin-left:0px;">\n </div></div></div></div> <div style="font-family:inherit;font-size:12px;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin-left:0px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);"><div style="font-family:inherit;font-size:12px;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin-left:0px;"><div style="font-family:inherit;font-size:12px;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin-left:0px;"><div style="font-family:inherit;font-size:12px;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin-left:0px;">\n </div></div></div></div>TLDR: The ID ego is what drives us to fulfill our basic needs for survival (food, water, shelter). Primarily reinforcers. There's more to it, if you guys want me to include.
I notice I sometimes forget who I am and who I aim to be when I put too much attention on what other people are doing, watching tv, magazines, internet. I start to compare our lives and care about crap I know doesn't mean shit to me. I think if life were less complicated and we could live simple and stop caring about what everyone thinks life should be I wouldn't even feel this way.
I think if life was simple though, everyone would be fake. People would like hide behind a facade. Maybe life is too simple now...
In many ways we're supposed to forget. To let go of who you were is essential in order to become who you will be, but to truly experience life in the present now, letting go of who you are too becomes something that needs to happen. After all, to be truly present involves a state that is akin to no-mind. Without this mind present, there is nothing to think about who you are other than to experience the experience you're currently having. Many know such moments, albeit usually only briefly, and sometimes they're referred to as being in the 'zone'. In the zone there is only what is happening, not who it is happening to. In those moments, you have forgotten who you are.
I actually made a thread once about "hitting the reset button" lol What I've realized is that I have moments where I remember who I am. So yeah, I'm mostly forgetting who I am.
Some times I feel that the majority of this "life" is forgetting who we are so we can become who we have always been.
Who we have always been, depends on both who we are and who we are not - when being examined by an outside perspective. Who we are, is limited to the describer. Haha, this vagueness is fun.
Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror And just think Think about how I am really only my brain, and the rest of me is just like my house Im trapped in this thing I see in the mirror
the short answer is yes. and it was terrifying as all fuck. I don't consider myself afraid of much. there's been times where ive been near death without a care in the world. I've experienced terrible pains. Tooth nerve pain, ear drum ruptured pain, multiple broken bones at once pain, having no painkillers for said broken bones for a week pain, All that pain i would have rather endured then forgetting who/where you are. Basically all i did was fall wrong going down a steep incline on a longboard, right arm hit first, breaking my wrist and fracturing my elbow - front of my head hit second. initially i was conscious for about 5 seconds. long enough to feel the pain shoot up my arm and into my head. then i passed out for about a minute and woke up having no idea who or where i was. i was so fucking terrified. at this point i would have rather broke both of my arms then experience that feeling. it was dark out too and i couldn't see shit but the street lights and my vision was hazy. for a good 10 seconds i was completely clueless then the pain kicked back in and i snapped back in an instant. it still makes me uneasy thinking about that feeling.
Went through a period in my life where I believed I was a sociopath and a psychopath. Still haven't ruled either out.
I think I am barely in the part where I am truly starting find out who I really am and my previous 21 years have all been an illusion, a projection of who I thought I should be. Only after leaviing behind every thing I was told I was supposed to have and to do, did I fnd everything I have ever needed.