What is your bone with anatman being empowering? I've found it to be tremendously empowering.
Words, words, words, and all that, but I'm a bit curious.
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Not really. And agency is entirely local. Your body has more agencies than you can ever keep track of.
My back? Wants a stretch. Cardiovascular system? Wants some exercise. Prefrontal personality structure? Wants problems, context, meaning. Genitals? Some fuk.
It's all nested.
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The idea that a particular you needs to be "empowered" is itself disempowering, a form of learned helplessness.
Empowerment is autonomy and self-determination. The fewer elements of this body are slaved to an imaginary self, the more autonomous they are.
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If i took advice from "most people" on how to frame my sense of self post-awakening, I would still be stuck trying to reify no-self into Jhanas.
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"Wow this feels so real and authentic. Let me just fix everything on this. Jesus, I feel so good. Holy shit it's all so crazy. Whole world is billowing in waves and - hold up this is starting to feel a lot like turbulence wait help I am trapped in my foot!"
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Yeah. I fixed so much concentration on the transitory movement of attention, when attention moved to my foot the whole ego moved with it.
Felt like puking.
Don't let rubes define self/no-self for you. Trust your training. It's all just sensation.
Once I got around to feeling - really feeling - that "I" is just sensation under a certain load of concentration, I figured it could move.
Then I figured it could be let go of. That part still feels like falling, and I'm terrified of heights. But I am better off when it clicks.
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Terminology is nebulous and contradictory.
I have not had every experience or attainment entailed in someone's practice, real or imaginary, obviously.
It's "a" no-self, but what would be "the" no-self?