The question is “Who am ‘I’? When we ask the question, it is in the confines of the mind, is it not? The confines of ‘the mind’ are confining, not unlike a prison of limitation we bind ourselves in, especially when asserting the significance of concepts.
The mind is a utilitarian device for processing limited information. The ego, being a false contestant, utilizes the mind’s limited capacities to underscore it’s mysterious identity. Mysterious, because we can never really locate it.
Through the tedium of belief and dependence on the ego/mind, we trust it more than anything else, period. At no time do we let it go without both known and unknown deference occurring. This deference, a first choice, is binding us.
The characteristic that surrounds the clamor for this false self is always the seeming necessity ‘to push’. Out of the 86400 seconds in a day, can we say that we have not pushed for how many seconds? Be with the Effortlessness of Being.
”Every moment, don’t grasp I and you are your Self.” Ganga Mira
If we have not practiced serious introspection into a more constant awareness of self, we cannot even begin to answer the question skillfully.
To let go of belief and dependence, as we have institutionalized, we have to step into the fullness of accepting ‘not knowing’ anything, in order for the Universe to be made available to be seen. Without letting go of so called ‘understanding’, we cling to a conceptual framework that limits our true capacities.
“If I appears, the world appears. Without I, is there anything?” Ganga Mira
When we (and are gigantic ego) can stop knowing/controlling, only then are enough obstacles removed, so seeing is even possible. The goal is not to ‘understand’ as understanding is conceptual and mind-limited. It is more meritorious (assuming we are not indirectly glorifying the ego) to give away our need to ‘understand’ (in order to get past the limited mind).
Loading up on the ‘I’, as we do, is not the path to demystifying the ‘I’. When is it, when we do not load up the ‘I’? If we just were to catalog for a day, the enormous amounts of energy we declare belongs to our ‘I’, we would see why stickiness occurs and patterns are birthed and re-birthed continually.
“I is the first expression of who you are. I is an illusion. I is samsara.” Ganga Mira
If we can lose ‘I’ as a concept of mind and create a new starting point without ‘I’, we can arrive to the place where we already are Now, now. Because we tithe energy by pattern of attachment and belief, we get stuck with our false self.
Confronting the unreality of ‘I’ is the beginning of the disassembly process of the false self. This is a moment by moment, every moment process. We need to at least match the amounts of energy we are depositing in the wrong account, in order to upend ‘I’ thinking.
When we glorify the ‘I’ we do so with our imagination. Imagination?! Imagination because, imagination is not real, is it? False self is not real. Imagination is not real. Stop using imagination to ‘be’ somebody and Reality can show up, now, given that a major obstacle has the possibility of removal.
Imagination may be useful, but not for finding Self. Self is not ‘I’. ‘I’ really can stand for “imagination”. Whenever we say ‘I’, we can internally refer to the concept of “imagination”. It is not Whom we really Are. “I” is certainly only a concept.
Only The Permanence remains after we have exposed the imaginary ‘I’. Staying with The Permanence is a ‘no thing’ place that is prior to all this jazz of limitation. The Eternal Unlimited cannot be a ‘thing’ or ‘place’. We cannot attach ourselves to It because there is nowhere to attach except ‘the nothingness of every thing’.
Letting go of the ’I’ is letting go of ‘thingness’. Awareness is not an object that is separate. It is not even an experience. It Is, period.
Even “prior to ‘I’” is a concept. Lose the ‘I’ first and the unreality of the unreal is meaningfully broached. This could be the first and last step necessary for meaningful movement on the path.