'I Exist' - Is That TRUE?
Q: Sometimes I realize I exist (not the conceptual I) and in those moments things are sweet and
nice and what is is! It’s like waking up to a beautiful dawn (of course there is no one to wake up). However, suddenly
there is suffering and I am back to the little I being ME. I am back to seeking, etc.
C: But where IS this I”?
In deep sleep “you” are not there, yet the life of that organism lives without your being there at all. The exact
same is happening in the waking and dreaming states, with the trivial exception of a thought coming and going, which out of
insecurity or fear we attach to and identify with. That “I” thought DOES represent something. What does that “I”
point to? Undeniably, YOU ARE and prior to any thought, that existingness IS. It's the most obvious clarity. Overlooking that
in favor of a thought story of an I is the cause of all suffering.
Q: I have been baffled as to how you do self inquiry. I know you can ask, 'who am I' but I still
am unsure if it’s an intellectual question or if it’s something to drop into presence during still moments. After
reading the chapter on, 'how do I do self inquiry' in your book 'Paradise Lost'. I asked myself, 'who’s
asking' and then tried going deeper but I come down to being just IT or the BRAIN. This is where I get stuck. There is the
sense that I am the brain and operating consciously from that and observing its thinking. Any ideas?
C: Read your own message again. Watch your own mind go I-I-I-I-I-I! Listen to your “little
self-identity” and look right now: Is it real? Or is it a THOUGHT? Can a thought do anything? That “I” cannot
really do self inquiry! How could a thought find it is not real? It’s tail chasing. Where is an "it" or a "brain" without
words, concepts? All of which just come and go in Infinite Awareness, which you cannot "know" because you ARE That...
Settle in with the pointers rather than try to “do” your way out. There is ultimately
NO way out for a "you" that is unreal to start with! That said, if some inquiry or whatever comes up by itself, fine. This
is not about rejecting practice, nor about the “I” understanding its true nature. The “I” doesn’t
HAVE a “true nature”!
Again WHERE is this separate entity with the label “I” that “gets stuck”?
There is no one in there so who would “do” some “practice"? Look at this: When
you assume that what you are is a limited finite person, that you represent in language as "I", "me", you reinforce that assumed
identity by taking up this or that practice to perfect this finite persona. But if that practice assumes you are a separate
identity how could that practice allow you to transcend that false persona? That is like turning the dirty cop in the precinct
out to catch the dirty cop in the precinct. And yet it appears to happen. That’s the paradox of this, which the mind
cannot ever grasp because the “mind" is only a thought! Can a thought
grasp thought?
Q: Also, I have been thinking of meeting you. I know you live far away (I am in MD) and was wondering
if it is possible to meet you in person some day?
C: You are welcome to come any time. However there is no particular advantage in a face to face
... I found on meeting John Wheeler that his writings were actually more potent in a way owing to the
absence of perceptive distractions!
Keep this real simple. You say "I exist" but in actual FACT, can you find, in REAL and actual
nonconceptual experience, any such existing entity?
This is a deeper look into this. Where is any I that exists - ACTUALLY? In simply terms,
"you" do NOT exist. Yet existence appears as all of this - space and apparent content of space - in the timeless Dream Of
Oneness.
The final question sometimes appears as "who is asking 'who am I'?" But that question has NO
answer. That blankness you describe IS the actuality of infinite being, infinite space, infinite love.
Who or what is claiming a flip flop, me-and-BE? These are but energy
arising as thoughts in Silence and these are never apart from The Silence, are they? This Silence is the
Heart, the Substrate, of Consciousness, arising as that life force that makes the body live. Your
problem is that you persist in identifying Consciousness as that body-brain-mind
machine with it's, thoughts, feelings, experiences, senses, and perceptions. Of course again we come to a paradox: You don't
do that! If you were doing it you would assuredly STOP doing it as it brings suffering! So WHO or WHAT IS doing all this?
That is the unanswerable question. Ask YOUR SELF, "What is That which I don't know that I don't know"?
Ponder this from Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj: "What makes you consider yourself
a person [with its flip flops etc.]? Your identification with the body. Will this individual personality last? It will remain
only so long as long as the identification with the body remains. But once there is a firm conviction that you are not the
body, then that individuality is lost. It is the simplest thing, as soon as you have this conviction that you are not the
body, then automatically, instantaneously, you become the manifest totality."
Yet that manifest Totality IS your Original nature, already complete and Presencing
as the space-like Awareness IN which all that is manifest appears. The point being that Space and
Its Content are of Single Essence - Aliveness arising from Nowhere and translated by language as I
am, I exist.
Ponder this: You do not exist, and yet, YOU ARE. Nothing/Everything, Wisdom/Love.
And your Original Nature is that which is Prior to language. The closest language can come to
That is, Being - What I don't know that I don't know.
_____________________________________________________________________________