Who or What am I?
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First it is necessary to understand what are the underlying assumptions implied by asking such a question. Because a question can’t be resolved without disassembling what is assumed by the way it is structured. Disassembling, not analyzing.
The question means: what self-consistent psycho-energetic entity IS identifiably manifest here now?
While the word what’ is the crucial word which makes it a question, we tend at first to ask ‘who’? This is because of the socially conditioned reflex to assume without question that I am a person. Since to say that I am a person is to state a concept. and all concepts are questionable, it is the primary concept which is rarely if ever questioned.
The person we assume we are takes offence at being asked what are you? Yet that is what we are asking: what is a person? So the word who’ implies the assumption of personhood or personality, from persona, per-sona (through sound). Persona meaning mask or appearance as in ancient Greek mystery plays.
Person and the question ‘who’, denote apparent consistency of appearance and behaviour taken to imply a fixed and intrinsic essence or entity called a self.
Identity we take for granted. Do we? Sigmund Freud’s word ‘id’ meaning some amorphous unknown energy possibly to be feared is just ‘it’ in Latin and tells us nothing. Entity means a something, hence identity is an it-thing Nothing more than a meaningless name for art unknown. Idiotic!
So what or where is this invisible self so universally taken for granted? If we don’t know what it is then how can we say there is one? If we don’t know what we are then we are robotic. If I say ‘show me yourself, you will say ‘here I am’. But who are you? Are you merely an appearance?
You may say. . ‘I am all I think and feel’. But who or what is this I that thinks and feels? If it’s inside can you see it or do you just assume it’s there? You can act out all you want but that doesn’t demonstrate a fixed self, but only an actor of fixed beliefs. Which is exactly what IS being questioned here, now. Obviously something is here or there wouldn’t be a here. But a something is a separate part isolated out from the whole. And if you were really separate and isolated you wouldn’t be alive and so not even here at all.
So I am not a fixed thing or an entity and only exist while being consistently inseparable from all else, so mis-called, which of course, is infinite. All is infinite because by definition there is always more beyond an end of anything.
Therefore there is no such thing as a beginning or an end. It works both ways. Always.
So I’m infinite outside but what’s inside? The two of course can’t be separated so they’re not two. Without an outside there would be no you. Imagine it, if you can. A something without an everything else? Impossible.
Since they only ever exist together there is no two anywhere, ever. So let’s enquire within this infinite wholeness.
If you listen intently deep inside, you will be aware of endless silly thoughts, like a mad person mumbling mantras, all day and every clay. You can’t make them shut up because they seem to think they are you. So any mental move you make is them. How can they be you if they are outside your control? They pretend to be indispensable, prompting what to do next and elaborating and defining who you are by contrast with what you are not.
You can’t control them while at the same moment producing them, and then it’s instantly too late!
Objection! If I stopped thinking then I wouldn’t be aware. Not so. Where there is awareness there is no need for thinking. Awareness is silent listening within. Focus on the nothing the thought of something emerges out of. How can I focus on nothing and why do that? Why? Because I am the listening. The listening is the formless context without boundaries.
Remember, form and space are not two because they never exist separately. Inside and outside are not two likewise. Inside, thoughts take on apparent form in the spatial context or nothingness of silence. our natural state of being inseparable from the infinite.
The apparent problem arises with the inner space, inner mind, never being empty, but filled with agitated self-perpetuating neurological energy which is called thinking. Which then defines the nothing in particular within as a ‘something’, within an ‘everything else. That is to Say: two.
This is not to say that thinking is wrong. But that it doesn’t imply a thinker as defined by the thoughts. I am not who I like to think I am. Not who was thought to be or may become. Who am I, becomes what am I, becomes what is ‘I’? And what is I, not?
In quietness it helps to shift focus of attention to the most subtle frequency of internal ringing of silence in the inner ear as a constant backdrop. Then, with practice, the most subtle impulse of the mind to emerge from nothing in particular as a movement into a concept or idea-form, doesn’t escape the presence of awareness.
The cat watching the mouse hole hears and understands, missing nothing. It is possible to Intuit a movement even before it happens. Stalking mind movement into its origin in silence as if you were the Divine Hunter itself in essence. The producer unmasking its productions. The alternative being to play endless roles, thinking that is who we are. We are not a fixed or definable anything. All assumptions are questionable, especially those we hold on to, fearing uncertainty or nothingness.
If you think you are listening, that’s a distracting thought. What is true is what remains when all else is dismantled. Not an enlightenment for a me to achieve, but what is, irreducibly, ever, as I am now already.
Martin Law
Bantry
April 2008
April 2008
light of spirit
by martin rainbowmaker
October 2006
October 2006
