In metaphorical terms, that is, where exactly do you perceive yourself as residing within your own body?
For me, it’s my head - I see out of it, I subvocalise my thoughts in it, I hear through it, when I have a headache or a toothache, I perceive the pain as ‘in my head with me’.
In fact I can’t really understand how anyone could ever have thought of the heart or spleen or whatever as the seat of the soul. I’m in my head. Where are you?
I’m glad to see this topic come up again after the Great Debates thread from last year, How biased are we in thinking the mind is in the brain?, suffered from three (or more) initial setbacks:
I recognize that there is no “scientific evidence” that we even possess souls as such. On the other hand, since the earliest writings we have been led to suspect there is some animating force that turns us alive and then (when it leaves us) dead. I equate the various terms of spirit, consciousness, soul, mind, life, and others to the same mysterious attribute or force or whatever.
As for where I sense mine to be located: 90% head, 10% “elsewhere.”
Yes, for the purposes of this thread, we’re not talking about metaphysical souls - that’s just a metaphor. We’re also not asking “where do scientists think the mind resides?” We’re asking “whereabouts in your body do you perceive yourself as living?”
When meditating, I visualize a bright, white light originating from my forehead, dead center, about an inch above my eyebrows. I guess that would be it.
Right at the base of my sternum. Sort of diaphragm, solar plexus region.
I’m in my head too. When I bang my toe, my toe hurts. When I cut my lip, “I” hurt.
But I suppose that could very well be a ‘bias’ from current common knowledge. I can’t remember “me” ever being located anywhere else.
Damn, now you’ve made me wish I lived in ancient times so I could try to work out where “I” am with that mindset!
That’s what I would say, too. I’m in my head all the time but it’s like it’s attached to the midbody part - think of a balloon on a string 
If I try to visualize it, ‘me’ looks like that Star Trek transporter sparkly thing but not person-shaped.
Behind my eyes.
Pain is just in that part of my body no matter where it is (I don’t feel headache as being “me” hurting), but I definitely feel like I live behind my eyes. The rest is a vehicle.
In my head, specifically in the front of my head, unless I’m meditating, in which case it becomes more diffuse.
It’s an interesting question, because I can’t imagine it being any other way. I can’t imagine the heart being the seat of anything, much less intelligence, which is apparently what the Egyptians and other ancient people thought. IIRC, people really had no idea what the brain was up to for the longest time. I seem to recall reading that some thought it was for cooling the blood.
So, do I perceive the seat of consciousness as being where my brain is because I know that’s where it is? Or is it because four of the five senses are centered in the head, so that’s my main window? I have no way of knowing.
That’s a good question. How much does knowing where the brain is influence us? I’m in my head and I feel as if the rest of me is simply a tool for my brain.
Interesting thread. Upon sitting still and closing my eyes, I find that I really feel like I exist from my lower jawbone, down my neck muscles and into the lungs. I wonder why my jaw plays a part in it.
Center of my chest. Thoughts are in my head, but the huggy-feely crap is around the heart.
It doesn’t take much effort to feel like you’re thoughts aren’t in the head, so I suspect it’s our upbringing that so firmly anchors it in the brain. Chest is easy, gotta work at it a bit to feel like the seat of the soul is in the right kneecap, but it can be done.
Well, that’s interesting because no matter how hard I try, all I get is the feeling that my head is imagining what it would be like to be somewhere else.
Right next to the table of my soul. Okay, that was bad, I’m sorry.
I would place my soul in the middle of my chest, behind my heart.
You’re trying too hard. And probably doing it sitting up in the middle of an office (or similar) and in front of a computer whilst thinking thou wilt fail.
Or, as a wise one once said -
Do or do not. There is no “try”
In my head, with a portion in the mid-chest region.
I guess behind my eyes.
I pervade my whole body, every nook and cranny, from toe to fingertip. It’s something I’ve developed consciously, and attained through meditative focus. A reaction to my time as a Buddhist, I think.
Except for those times it seems my whole essence pools in my gonads, of course.
In my head, but very strongly in the back of my head, like where the occipital bone is.
In the homunculus who lives in my head. He comes out at night and hides my socks.