Starting to think the whole thing certain meditators go on about with the self - it's a "crutch", an "anchor" or whatever - is not too far wrong.
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Having found several ways to momentarily shut down the sense of having a self or being a person, in pure sensate terms, I keep experiencing severe nausea.
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If you've ever stood on the deck of a moving ship when a big wave hit the hull, or sat in a car when the driver lost control, or even just fallen off a chair...
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It's that sudden jolt, that heaving sense of abruptly losing your feet - that's what a sudden shift from self to no-self feels like. To me, anyway.
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Thinking about this as I listen to and discuss how mindfulness can sometimes be an exercise in willful ignorance.
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What I was trying to say is that, yes, it's a useful tool. The pejorative sense in which words like "crutch" etc. are commonly seen is political, IMO.
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Without a sense of self, reality is far more opaque and difficult to navigate. I literally feel like I can barely stand in no-self.
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Yeah yeah, but the body experiences severe vertigo if it loses its orientational point in awareness abruptly. At least, this one does.
Not trying to model self onto non-self, which would be ontologically nonsensical. Just using the personal pronoun for the individual.
Sindre is seen consciously as an entity in whatever representation: balance.
"Sindre" is removed from the conscious world model: vertigo!
Same general stack of body sensations. It's more like a break in immersion, like when you realize you're dreaming.
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There is a displacement of the sense of place, though: one moment "I" perceive things "from" some vantage, next there is just an undifferentiated field of sensations.