If your thoughts spiral into endless considerations and tangents, it’s the Snake talking and not you.
If it’s mostly feeling you’re experiencing rather than actual worded, doubtful thoughts, it’s you talking.
The Snake is the phenomenon that generates thoughts you didn’t consciously choose to generate. Like a spontaneous thought of whether you should’ve said something different in a social instance.
“You” are the conscious response you give to those thoughts, when you’re engaging in that conversational dialogue in your head.
So we agree that there is the Snake and then there is you who responds to the thoughts it generates.
But is there more?
Yes, there are your neurons.
I was addicted to pornography for years and due to various reasons, watching it is deeply ingrained in my body as a consistently high-dopamine activity. It is hard for me to refuse urges, although I’m working on it right now, getting in the reps.
I have neurological pathways that contribute to urges to watch porn arising. Each time I give in, the naked people spark dopamine in me because I’m an animal who instinctively values sex and so the behaviour as something “pleasant” is reinforced, making it harder to refuse the urges in future.
If I refuse, the connection between “urge to watch porn” and “big dopamine hit” reduce. My body gives the urge but doesn’t get the reward, meaning the neurological connection may not be needed.
This urge is not the Snake, because it’s feeling-based and not-thought based, but it isn’t my gut feeling. I can still put one hand to my heart, the other to my belly and ask myself, “I want to watch porn. Is that true?” and I’ll feel the answer “no” even if the urge is active.
I feel “the addiction/my body wants it, but I don’t”.
So here’s a diagram:
I am the eye, then there is the Snake and the Neurons. WOO.
You’re the decision maker. That’s what you’re responsible for. The neurons can have their affect and the Snake can say what it pleases, but you make the decision.