Who am I?

Who am I?

I lay sleepless in bed, starring into darkness punctuated not with stars, but rather the dull red fire of the smoke alarm and left-over light leaking from my laptop. A hint of illumination creeps past my curtains. I find myself contemplating personality and I ask myself the question: “Since personality is created by social interactions in early childhood, who am I if my personality is peeled off?” My mind touches the infinite and I shy away. There is no personality in the infinite.

I find myself thinking about death.

What if my personality doesn't survive dying? Since it arises from life, denied life wouldn't personality, like the body, simply dissolve back into that from which it arose? For if all things born of life die, then why should personality be privileged?  My mind returns to the original question: “Who am I underneath personality?” I had no answer and felt afraid. Not of dying, but of losing my Self. The night died and in time my fear died with it – for I answered my own question. I found that which remains when all else is stripped away.

Me.

You may recall the philosopher, Rene Descartes. In his Discourse on Method, he related the story of sitting by his fire, wondering what can actually be absolutely known with perfect certainty. The more he pondered, the more he concluded that to answer the question, he must question all belief and opinion; he must strip away all assumption, down to the most absolute and undeniable: That he himself exists. Nothing else could withstand the cutting edge of his logic, except his existence itself. For if he didn't exist – there could be no logic to cut with and no one left to ask the question. To think, he concluded, is unmistakable proof of existence. Sadly, he stopped one step short. It is true that to think is self-evident proof of being, for there is undeniably that which thinks.

However, through mindfulness meditation, we discover that thinking is not fundamental. In learning to quietly watch the mind, but not attach to its content or processes, over time you begin to develop an awareness that notices both the birth of a thought and the serene silence in which that thought is born. Likewise, no thinking takes place in deep, dreamless sleep. Yet come morning, we still exist. So there must be something deeper than Descartes’ thinking.

It is not Descartes' “I think, therefore I am” – but rather Christ’s “I am that I am.”

So what is this, which lies beneath even thinking? Awareness. How is it that we know we think? It is awareness that we touch in meditation and that awareness is our true being. Within pure awareness lives our eternal sense of self, the unquestionable knowing that we exist and that we are. Meditation aims to quiet the mind, to still the unending river of babble that rages across our frantically thinking brain, bursting out and flooding our field of perception. Yet, in that golden silence, when no thought violates the utter harmony of stillness, there is still a Me to notice the difference between monkey mind madness and the peace and contentment that permeates mental silence.  

Me.

Now, as I lie in bed and the smoke alarm smiles its little light into the room, dancing with the luminescence of lingering light from the laptop and mingling with moonlight shining through the curtains, I find no fear. Personalities are useful, but they are not necessary for existence, so to lose them is no loss. Nor does death’s chill breath freeze my heart, for even that great, last passage cannot change the unchangeable; cannot take away that which is absolute.

Me.

Underneath all the things I think that I am, there lies a Me with no need to think, a Me that simply observes all that is, a Me that endures. Strip away the ego, peel back the personality and what remains is Me. Me transcends both life and death. Me is eternal. Me has no boundaries, no qualities, no end and no beginning. Me has no self. Me simply is. “I” is all that gets piled on top of Me, all that distorts, that hurts, that fears. “I” clings. Me has nothing it clings to. Me exists in an unending state of peace, contentment, and joy. “I” suffers. Me does not. “I” thinks; Me experiences. “I” makes stories out of experience, distorting events with biased projections, unfounded and untested conclusions, and slanted emotional overrides. Me does not; Me simply is.

Why does the distinction matter?

That, my dear reader, will be the subject of our next exploration together. But meanwhile, who are you?

Me.

With love and aloha,

Holman