I guess I don’t understand why you don’t see value in operating with some self-based narratives.
If narratives are appearing, then narratives are appearing. They are increasingly seen to be just stories though. They don’t mean anything.
It seems like the thoughts you’ve shared would inspire apathy.
This is often how the self sees it. It believes that meaning and purpose are needed for fulfillment, but that’s because it hides the fulfillment that already is.
Me believing that working out can make my physical body healthier leads to me making my physical body healthier.
That’s what the self-illusion thinks. It thinks it’s making stuff happen. In reality, life has functioned perfectly well all of our lives with no self.
Me believing that it will do nothing means I have nothing moving me to do it.
Well, the me believes all kinds of things, but it has no effect on what happens. The me just believes that post-rationalizations are about someone: “My body is not getting up, I must be depressed.”
My belief that working out can make me healthier is determined by my conditioning and in that sense, there’s no real free will going into any of it, but my beliefs will give me a difference experience/”what seems to be happening” than someone who doesn’t believe that. They create different realities, even if different realities are ultimately just part of the same thing.
If a self-illusion seems to be happening then a self-illusion seems to be happening. So what?
I don’t understand the value of saying “there are no parts of a whole” when you and I (part of the same thing but still different in what we experience as Homo sapiens) can’t possess full knowledge of each other’s experience/thoughts/whatever.
There is no value in me describing non-duality to you. There is no “you” and “I”. There may be two different bodies, but they’re not “part” of the same thing; they are the same no-thing. Non-duality can appear as a thought or as an idea of a thought occurring somewhere else.
Do you not see any value in the human ego?
There’s no real value in anything. The self-illusion is completely superfluous though, but there’s nothing wrong with it.
Doesn’t saying “there are no parts of the whole” inspire apathy toward unnecessary man-made suffering?
I don’t see how that could be so. I describe non-duality to you (which is compassion), and I seem to care about people in general (based on thoughts and actions).
Do you not think it’s valuable to put effort into reducing suffering in Homo sapiens (and animals)?
There is nothing that is really more valuable than anything else, but effort can occur and effort to attempt to improve circumstances can occur.
Do you not have preferences in terms of the experiences you’d like to have and not have in life?
Of course there are preferences. All people have preferences, but that doesn’t mean that they have a real self inside.
(Even if you accept whatever happens.)
There is nobody to accept or not accept what seems to be happening. Everything that seems to be happening is completely free to be that way, with no conditions and with no resistance; it’s completely effortless.
What am I missing?
You think you have something that you don’t really have: a separate self. If and when that stops happening, it will be revealed to be a loss of something that never was and all that will be left will be everything, which is absolutely fulfilling but for no one.
