Thanks for your response! - let me try and clarify my angle on all this:
Our problems don’t come from ‘selfishness’ (a religious boilerplate doctrinal stance), they come from the problematic nature of human experiencing itself. If one could perfect oneself into selflessness, there would be a raft of attendant problems with that new state too; just as many as one would have had as an egomaniac. Boredom, stupidity and being taken advantage of by others, for a start. Selfishness/selflessness are neither here nor there, and both extremes are paradoxically contained within one another. A world without them would be a living hell, and completely unintelligible.
Now the question of ‘reality/Reality’ can’t be solved by meditating on one aspect of it, and anyway, who’s to say Reality is a solution to anything? In New Age spiritual circles, ‘Reality’ is used as a shorthand for ‘the ultimate’ but nobody bothers to ask what either term is supposed to signify. It’s all just so much enticing and entertaining doctrinal guff. And I should say in passing that I’ve never met nor heard of anyone ever in a better place for having faced ‘reality', so why do people think they’re getting somewhere by edging towards it? I thought my ‘self’ was real, but neuroscience tells me it’s not. Religious Buddhism tells me I don’t have a self, but everyday life proves to me I do. Which bit of ‘reality thinking’ ought I to subscribe to? And to what end? Am I more real because I force myself to believe I don’t have a self?
What I’m trying to get at is that all these conceptualisations – whether neuroscientific or Buddhistic – aren’t necessary if you simply look – objectively, independently, free of all doctrines - at the way your experiencing presents itself to you. That’s where things start, and, in human terms, that’s where they end. Follow your experiencing to its source. What will you find there ? No doctrinal context required; plain and simple basic English will suffice, should you wish to articulate your discoveries to others.
More to the point, while some mainstream religious doctrines can open up avenues of intellectual exploration, trying to force one’s experiencing to accord with them is counterproductive if you want to go beyond the open-ended vortex of imaginings. Doctrine never took anyone anywhere special other than deeper into doctrinal imaginings.
The only way out is to look, and observe, and reflect, and analyse – independently, objectively and simply. Clarity of mind, followed by ruthless clinical analysis. It gets to be much more rewarding and fun than it might sound.
