SheepGoat

To start, I enjoyed the first sentence of "The Sheep Who Became A Goat". It was a fun way to begin a chapter.
In relation to what Blackmore and the author discussed on page 111, in my Intro to Challenge Course class there are roughly 14 students. Out of the 14 of us I share the same month and day birth date with two others. Not that I'm saying that's more than coincidence, but it beats the norm. Maybe I'm a sheep.

What drew my attention and pulled a reaction out of me was the talk of "no self" on page 114. Am I to understand that when the author writes: "This view echoes the suggestion of some cognitive scientists that there is no unified self at the core of each individual;...he's saying that no self means no soul? On second thought I'm beginning to understand that the idea of no self is much larger than I've been imagining. According to this concept there is not only no body and mind but also no soul...nothing at all but everything combined. This is confusing and leaves me with questions like "Then where do concepts like "the soul" and "morality" go to?"

Then farther down the page Blackmore theorizes that life is just a bunch of ideas and beliefs passed from people to people. Clearly ideas and beliefs are what life seems to revolve around for the most part, but even if you strip all cognitive abilities away from humans you still find instincts..no?

About being mindful in the moment, is there a difference from being mindful and obeying impulses? When Blackmore says that she yelled at her kids because they yelled at her all I can imagine is a lack of inhibition and a completely natural reaction to one's environment. Does that make sense? If this obeying of impulses is "true and right" then murdering a neighbor would be completely "justifiable" wouldn't it? (To be completely extreme.) Blackmore walks down that path as well on page 119 when she says that rather than becoming selfish she is more at peace and feeling selfless through the "no self" teaching. "On the surface, she said, this doctrine might seem to be 'a recipe for immorality and disaster,' but the outcome is just the opposite. When you stop living for your self, 'guilt, shame, embarrassment, self-doubt, and fear of failure fade away' and you become, contrary to expectation, a better neighbor.'" But what if-in accepting that you are not unique because you do not exist-you then in turn decided to embrace the illusion full force and completely oppositely chose to live entirely for the illusion of reality that is you? Why not?
I need to think about this a little more, but it doesn't sit right with me. Maybe I'm a goat.

Also, if you read the little asterisk section at the bottom of page 115 you may have noticed that the Dali Lama didn't give the man a very helpful answer (in my eyes) to his question. I get the feeling that people tend to take whatever comes out of the Dali Lama's mouth to be wonderful because he's "enlightened", when really it seems like bull to me. If by being enlightened the D.L. knows that there is and isn't an afterlife at the same time then he could have just said that. Maybe it's just annoying to me. Maybe I'm a Sheepgoat.