Can you be more than yourself?

Can one define one's self without referring to that which is an attribute which can be removed from one's self?

Your name can change. You can lose many body parts, including your mind and ability to reason and/or remember and yet still be what others identify as "you". What is that part of "you" that can not be further reduced?

As the self can not be defined, the question then becomes one of can you be yourself if there is no self to be?

Be well and be wise.

Maybe this belongs more in word games and wordplay! Myself...the my that has a self. who is the my that has a self? I think we are the my that has a self. I experienced this in my NDE I was jumping on the clouds having the time of MY LIFE... ha ha yet I was not "alive" per se. Makes you see things from a whole different perspective for sure.

By getting away from the ego and identification of the ego we can realize that we are much more than a tiny self. We are an indivisible part of All That Is. A part of a whole that is indivisible. Now how can an indivisible whole have parts?

Oh my must be past my bedtime!

I'll give you less than a philosophical answer. Yes. I know what I was and I know that if i am just that, that my life will be an exercise in selfish futility. Because I have been lucky in life, I have had the opportunity for growth beyond what I was. This allows me to be a better person than I would have been. I do things that I would not have been interested in doing before. The person i now am, would like to matter. I have been able to matter to various entities at various times. So, does it matter that i feel that I now matter in some small way..No, in a very real larger sense, It doesn't matter and I don't matter at all, but for a brief moment I thought I did and that was enough..

If self is a person's essential being that distinguishes them from others, then yes I'd say that you can be more than yourself (and so can I). Self can be defined in many ways, most of them being connected to the idea of ego. Can you remember a time in your life when you have been without ego - made a decision that was self-less or an act that now looking back you are not even sure why you did it? Can that not be perceieved then, as something other than ones self? If you believe in collective consciousness the we certainly can me more than ourselves individually when essentially ourself, in connection with another or many others, becomes greater than the parts that make the whole (regardless of ego).

EDIT/ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS: What about being more than yourself in terms of potential? If one is behaving and acting a certain way and they know or feel within themselves that they can do or be 'better' or simply different than what they are being or doing now, then can it not be said that you can be more than you are now; as in that your future self; your potential self; can be more than the self that you currently portray?

Can you? Your being constantly changes and therefore your are never always yourself. Compare yourself to when you were a child and who you are now. Needless to say you are different. What are you going to be like in a few years? Certainly not the exact same person. It is up to you to decide whether you change in a good way- so you are ''more than yourself'', or in the opposite. A human being constantly changes. To look at it from another way is to look at all the great actors who CHANGE for their roles. They don't just act, actors like Daniel Day Lewis, basically become a different person. After such an experience, there are bound to be quirks, habits and emotions left in yourself that are unnatural to your being. Therefore, you can incorporate things into yourself that are different to your normal being, 'yourself'.

Normally I'm just a retired civilian, but with MY Brain, I believe I and My Global Teams deleted Global Warming and i have figured out all of Nature's Disaster solutions and all but 2 are coming out so people can actually use them to protect themselves, like Hurricanes, Tornado's, Floods, Fire containment, fires without useing water or chemicals, etc. Under one of my Titles The Major Disaster Solutionist Master in the new Covington Who's Who Magazine when it comes out later this year. Mike

Hi,

There are many answers to this depending on what "you" are. Since this is fairly abstract I will try to use examples:

I can be more than myself If I pretend I am Hugh Jackman at a cocktail party.

I can be more than myself if I suddenly have a better/worse opinion about myself.

Considering my existence as one experience in humanity then I can be everyone.

If my thoughts disappear, then "myself" would be the cumulative opinions of others about me.

If I reproduce then "myself" would be embedded in the genes and experiences of my descendants.

There can be more of myself if I gain weight or if I eat a spoonful of neutron star.

I can be more of myself if I realize I am the Universe's expression of thought.

Through multiple personality disorder I can have different sides (of course more) of myself.

If string theory is accurate I could provide more coordinates that define me thus enriching the definition of me.

This is what I could think of. It mostly comes down to what reality is for each of us.

Have a nice day !

No

One can only Discover Other Aspects or Facets of Self

while searching along the Road to Discovering Who They Are...

what are the limits of self? "self" is all! any limitation we put on self is egoism. you rose out of the universe, you are not "in" the universe, you "are" the universe. the universe is your Being! that which you interact with, makes you, you! that which gave birth to you, is ultimately your origin, and is not outside of you, but within you. if you are consciousness produced by nature, you are the universe inside out so that it might know itself. the body is vast with feeling, but most avoid expansion, they are threatened by it. they think of "I" as something very small and isolated, and they intend to keep it that way. they have their idea of themselves, and they are happy with it for the most part. but the nature in them that they repress always finds its way out somehow or another. sometimes it erupts like a volcano. others are just constantly leaking everywhere, despite trying to keep themselves contained, and others, have no barriers. they become an empty passage for existence to flow through

In your own bosom you bear your heaven and earth, and all you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow - William Blake

One of the major attributes of being human, is the fact that we can rise above our self.... well, if we go into that a bit deeper, what transpires in rising above the self is just an expansion of the self which means that we can acquire a broader and more inclusive self for ourselves..... is that being more than oneself?...... well, considered from a narrow selfish point of view, it is indeed..... in that sense, i would say that one just has to be humane in order to be more than oneself.