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"I"
We use the above words many times a day every day. Most of us take for granted that we know what we are referring to with these words, never inquiring into our identity deeply. By default, we live lives of mistaken identity. We abdicate the authorship of who and what we are to what we have inherited in the way of beliefs. thoughts, opinions, rules, behaviors, attitudes, and points of view from family, friends, school, culture, religion, the media, and the circumstances we find ourselves in. In this world of mistaken identity, the main never-ending games we are given to play in life are games based on automatic, inherited programs for survival and security: win/lose, success/failure, right/wrong, approval/rejection, dominate/be dominated, and pleasure/pain. For many, the possibility that there could be another game in town not based on survival is considered na�ve, unrealistic, and nothing more than dreaming, hoping, and "magical thinking." Unaware that they are asleep in the dream of mistaken identity, they accuse those who hint at the awakened state as being dreamers. They are like the people chained to the floor in Plato's Allegory of the Cave, who believe that the illusion that they are stuck in is reality, and that all else is but a dream.
The Most Practical and Fundamental Question to Ask and Answer
What is required to awaken from a survival-driven, fear-based life of enduring, striving, stress and suffering, and recover the freedom, joy, and intentionally created life available to us when we recognize our true nature, is to rigorously and honestly question all that we fundamentally assume we know about who or what "I" is.
In some spiritual disciplines, one is asked to inquire into the question, "Who am I?" as a way releasing the illusions of the false way of Being, and illuminating one's true nature. However, there is a subtle, hidden problem in the wording of this question. Even if one is awake enough and interested enough to ask the question, "Who am I?", the very structure of the question has within it a linguistic trap that can keep one asleep in the dream of being an individual persona. The question, "Who?", linguistically reinforces and leads us back into the cultural conditioning of the sense of a separate, individual entity, since the very language we ask with is that of a personal, separate Subject-Object. A better question might be, "What am I?" or "What is I?" Yet, even these questions are colored by a linguistic structure of subject-object, noun-verb, and past-future linearity that reinforces our belief and perception that we are some separate thing or entity doing something.
As an experiment, keep "I" and "me" out of the inquiry for the moment, and inquire into the truth of your identity in this form: "What is aware?"
Observe what arises.
This cannot be done as some quick question and answer trick. It cannot be done by trying to get the "right answer", or to validate a belief you already hold. It can be realized only by being willing to drop all prior beliefs, thoughts, opinions, and ideas in the matter for a moment, and engage in the question wholeheartedly with an open mind. Do it as an investigation, as an experiment.
Sit quietly. Silently ask the question, "What is aware?" Observe whatever arises as you would observe clouds going by in the sky. Allow what arises to be what it is without adding any interpretation to it. Notice how thoughts, feelings, images, and body sensations arise, take form, and go back to the formless. This inquiry is not an intellectual exercise in thinking, it is an experiential exercise in observation, of witnessing what is, without adding anything to it or taking anything away. What is aware of all the forms arising and dissolving? Any image or thought that arises in response to the question, let it go. Keep present to the question. Observe what is unchanging and is aware of all the many changing thoughts, feelings and images arising. The answer is not in the past or future. It can never be known conceptually. It can only be known NOW, and can only be known directly.
It is not the words of the question that allow for an awakening to occur. It is the intention that the truth be revealed. Engaged in with commitment and the intention to recognize and dissolve all conditioned, unexamined beliefs, such questions are a way to begin to awaken from the dream of separate identity to the direct awareness of the true nature of "I". Allow the Grace of awakening to arise. When the awakening happens, it is not in words, concepts, or in the intellectual domain at all, but through the path of direct wisdom. It will arise as a palpable knowing beyond words, and will alter and restructure reality instantaneously.
The case of mistaken identity is not some esoteric, spiritual problem with no practical relationship to one's real life. The most practical and fundamental inquiry you can engage in is to question and discover what the true nature of "I" really is.
A Thought Experiment
Don't take my word for it that the most practical and fundamental question you can ask and answer in your life is some version of "What Am I?" or "What is aware?" Do the following thought experiment right now, and the profound practicality and joy of awakening and living from your true nature will be clear:
Recall a time that you were "in the zone;" a time in your life that you experienced everything was flowing and unfolding effortlessly. Whether it lasted for a minute, an hour, a day, or longer, recall such a moment if you can. Whether you are an artist, a writer, a choreographer, photographer, athlete, consultant, inventor, manufacturer, salesperson, gardener, parent, lover, etc., it matters not what your expression is. Simply recall a time that the creative flow was happening, as if on its own. What was that like? What do you see, sense, or feel when you recall that experience?
I invite you to pause for a moment now in your reading, and see what your own experience is before continuing.
You may notice that in that moment outside of time, there was no sense of doubt, concern, self-consciousness, judgment, or evaluation. There was no sense of a "doer" present. If you look carefully and honestly at that experience, in that space there was no sense of being a separate "me", a thing striving and efforting to do something.
Writers often talk about it as the moment when the characters in a story take over and begin to write the novel themselves. Athletes speak of it as being guided to move and act in a way that seems inevitable, with everything moving in slow motion, with silence replacing mind-chatter, and the experience of oneself as awareness, as the witness/observer, while the body or voice or hand or image spontaneously manifests the intention that called it into being.
Many long-distance runners have shared about shifting into another gear on a long run, when all effort disappears, and there is no sense of "doing" running. Instead, the "doer" disappears, and there is a sense of being a point of awareness observing the flow of running unfolding.
The great jazz pianist, Oscar Peterson, when asked what he thought about when he played, paused for a moment and replied, "When I play, there is no piano there. There is no keyboard there. There is no "me" there. The hands go to the address where the music is."
Renowned Italian mezzo-soprano, Cecilia Bartoli, has shared in interviews her transcendent experiences of singing before audiences in large concert halls, feeling transported and guided by the music she was singing, and spontaneously shifting from experiencing being her finite identity to being a channel for the music to flow through. In those moments, she observes that there is a sudden perceptual shift where there is no separate "I" existing, and she experiences being a boundless omni-positional awareness located simultaneously nowhere/everywhere that is observing not only the audience but is observing the body of Cecilia Bartoli standing on the stage singing.
If you have had even a small taste of this "in the zone" state of Being in your life, it is a moment when you spontaneously fell into being guided by your true nature. Everything that isn't that, everything that is about effort, struggle, doubt, worry, and fear is a function of identifying with the false finite self. For most people, it is the latter condition that dominates and suppresses their lives. What could be more practical and glorious than to identify with your true nature and have that state of Being not be the exception, but be that which guides your whole life?
The Choice & Mastery
In each moment, you have the choice of what "I" you identify yourself to be, and that choice shapes and organizes perception, thoughts, feelings, and your whole life at every dimension.
A life of struggle and effort with brief moments of relief and joy thrown in is a content-driven reality with an underlying "fight or flight" tension always present in the background. It manifests itself as mental and emotional stress, as negative emotions such as shame, guilt, apathy, grief, fear, resentment, and anger, and eventually expresses itself as physical dis-ease. In this world view, there is always a new situation or circumstances coming at you from around the bend waiting to surprise, offend, or upset you.
In contrast, a life given by the Field of Being that is your true nature is a life shaped by a loving, compassionate infinite context that organizes, embraces, and transcends the ever-changing content of life. Directly and experientially you know your true nature to be silent, still awareness within which all life arises and flows.
Mastery arises naturally when we have fully awakened from the dream of mistaken identity to the reality of our true nature. This arising spontaneously occurs when we dis-identify for all time from the illusion of being a separate. finite "me, and its various forms of mechanical conditioning. The moment one realizes, identifies, and lives from their infinite, unchanging nature, the light of the Truth shines forth, and all of the patterns of survival conditioning and the fear of dying are seen as nothing but smoke and mirrors with no substance or real existence.
Just as the Sun is seen in its full light when the clouds that have obscured it have dissolved, what is left when we renounce identifying with the mistaken identity of the finite "me" is what has always been there; the "I" that is no-thing, and is the unchanging source of all that arises.
Joy, gratitude, reverence, grace, peace, love, flow, and oneness are words that attempt to capture that direct knowing that is beyond all words. To recognize and live from your true nature, is to realize that you are and always have been home in the peace that passes all understanding.
-- Hal Isen
A Core Wisdom Quote | |||||||||||
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