FINDING MYSELF: Another of Life’s Conundrums?
“Who am I” Or rather: “What is ‘I’?”
What is this thing I call “I”? What is this thing I call self? You mean you understood everything else in the world and you didn’t understand this? You mean you understood astronomy and black holes and quasars and you picked up computer science, and you don’t know who you are? . You mean you understood what Jesus Christ is and you don’t know who you are? How do you know that you have understood Jesus Christ? Who is the person doing the understanding? Find that out first. That’s the foundation of everything, isn’t it?
What is this thing I call “I”? What is this thing I call self? You mean you understood everything else in the world and you didn’t understand this? You mean you understood astronomy and black holes and quasars and you picked up computer science, and you don’t know who you are? . You mean you understood what Jesus Christ is and you don’t know who you are? How do you know that you have understood Jesus Christ? Who is the person doing the understanding? Find that out first. That’s the foundation of everything, isn’t it?
But what I’d like to stress on now is self-observaton. Or else you are going to be influenced by forces within you of which you have no awareness at all. . Again and again we come across people who aren’t there at all. Their, husband, wife, daddy is there, their mommy is there, but they’re not there. They never were there. “I live now, not I, but my daddy lives in me.” Well, that’s absolutely, literally true. I could ask, “Now, this sentence, does it come from Daddy, Mommy, Grandma, Grandpa, whom”
Who’s living in you? It’s pretty horrifying when you come to know that. You thiink you are free, but there probably isn’t a gesture, thought, emotion, attitude or a belief in you that is’nt coming from someone else. Isn’t that horrible? You feel pretty strongly about certain things, and you think it is you who are feeling strongly about them, but are you really? This thing you call “I” is simply a conglomeration of your past experiences, of our conditioning and programming.
That’s painful. In fact, when we’re beginning to awaken, we experience a great deal of pain. It’s painful to see our illusions being shattered. Everything that we thought we had built up crumbles, and that’s painful. That’s what repentance is all about; that’s what waking up is all about. How about being aware, if your eyes are open, of the color of the walls and the material they’re made of ? How about being aware of faces around you and the reaction you have ? Because you have a reaction whether you’re aware of it or not. And it probably isn’t your reaction. but one you were conditioned to have.
Say to yourself, “I’m in this room.” It’s as if you were outside yourself looking at yourself. Notice a slightly different feeling than if you were looking at things in the room. “Who is this person who is doing the looking?” I am looking at me. What’s “I”? What’s “me”? If you find yourself condemning yourself or approving yourself, don’t stop the condemnation and don’t stop the judgment or approval, just watch it. Don’t say, “Oh, we were told not to do this.” Just observe what’s going on. As I said to you before, self-observation means watching—observing whatever is going on in you and around you as if it were happening to someone else. Would you write down on a piece of paper a brief way you’d describe yourself, businessman, human being, teacher, anything. Impatient, competent, centered, lover, overly structured. This is the fruit of ‘I’ observing ‘me’ This is very interesting.
First we begin with an awareness of things, then an awareness of thoughts, and finally the awareness of the thinker. Can the thinker know him/nerself? Can the knife cut itself or the tooth bite itself? Can the eye see itself, can the ‘I’ know itself? Yes it can, ‘I’ can because ‘I Am’- Blasphemy? Think about it. ‘I’ am none of the labels, labels apply to ‘me’. When ‘I’ does not identify with, money, name, fame, success, failure, or any quality ‘I’ is never threatened. It can be very active, but never threatned. Think of anything that caused, causes you pain,anxiety,or worry. First you’ll pick up a desire, second will be an identification. You have somehow said to yourself “the well being of ‘I’ is tied up with this desire”. All sufferig, is caused by my identifying myself with something whether it is inside or outside of me!.
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