Inquiring into "I"

When you look deeply, honestly into the experience of "I", what do you find? Where and what is this "me" that you consider to be yourself?  What, if anything, is at the core of this felt sense of "I"?  Approach this with open-field, engaged, vital contemplation.  Who Am I?  What Am I?  Really.  Look closely.  Look precisely. Look openly.  Look with ease, with an open-field of being. Look with Silence. It may feel ridiculous. Or if you feel like you've already awakened to your true nature, your mind may want to own the answer.  But this inquiry, this living question is fresh, new and eternal. It is discovered, freshly, infinitely.

In general, we take ourselves to be our thoughts, our actions, our ideas, our habits, our history, our attitudes, our reactions, our relationships etc.  We weave together these comings and goings of phenomenal, ever-changing events in a story that we then label "me".  That's me, that's how and who I am. We count on this story.  We rely on it.  We treasure it.  We feed it.  And yes, these stories, these human comings and goings, are beautiful in their own right.  But are they you?  Essentially?  Look closely, honestly.  With ease and  natural wonder. With a wonder that is free of expectation.  Free of "what's in it for me?"  With an attitude of discovery.

The keen nurturing of this inquiry into "I", generates an unveiling that can be unsettling, uncomfortable.  It is not a casual, "ooh yeah, been there, done that" kind of contemplation.  Its easy to say, "Oh, I'm actually nothing". Or "I'm actually everything".  Or "I seem to be Nothing and Everything".   Words are one thing and living experience is another.  As Adya says, "don't mistake the menu for the meal". If you believe that the story of the individual me, is going to go peacefully and without complaint, you may discover otherwise. 

If you have great sincere acceptance and surrender to the teaching of all the great teachers, those who have been liberated in this inquiry into "I", that  EVERYTHING is born of the NOTHING, ALL IS ALL and ALL IS GOD.  Then you accept that you, yourself as an individual ARE divine and sacred and an expression of Love. It starts as acceptance, as a practice. It starts as an understanding, an idea. A trust, a faith in the great teachings.  And through courage, sincerity, open-field listening, radical honesty, and resolve it dawns into and permeates the layers of consciousness.  

To the ego, the me-story, to the individual, Wholeness heralds certain death.  And it does not want to sign up for death.  Its understandable.  We can have compassion for the "story of me".  In releasing your allegiance to individual identity you enter the freedom to BE anything. No-thing and every-thing. I'm not talking about super-natural powers and magic and siddhis and all that.  You discover that you are totally and completely in LOVE with yourself, this beautiful story. Not a love born of pride or arrogance or superiority.  But born out of reverence and awe. That is why you ARE.  Because LOVE has been loving you into existence from the beginning of time.  And then.......then the individual expression, lived as the ALL, be-comes a natural unfolding of Fullness.