Who is this I? It's a question that will never lose its power. I hear the voice in my head that says: Are you listening to me? What do I want more than anything in the world? I hate myself. I love myself. When I ask "who is this I?" I follow the root of that voice to wherever it's coming from, to whatever complex of emotions and physical reactions and memories and aspirations that have sparked it.
"What do I want more than anything in the world?" is a question that comes from my gut. It links me with that snakey energy that I'm so afraid of, but that is really just me beneath the skin that I'm shedding. Or the quality of enlightenment that we share with all the gurus going back to the buddha, according to Mingyur Rinpoche.
"Are you listening to me ?"comes from the head. Comes from that I that can separate from the monkey mind, but can also see that the monkey mind is just another aspect of enlightenment, that part of us that refuses to sit still with habit, so that we can keep alive the freshness of perspective, the newness of being awake.
And "I hate myself," which comes from the heart and is the twin of "I love myself." It is tangled up in ego and grasping and all the things that keep me from releasing my fears and bad habits. But it's also telling me where I'm vulnerable. In the same place that everyone is vulnerable.
When I ask this question enough, inevitably I return to this place of pure hard, pole like energy. This is pure awareness, that is both me and not the me that I usually identify with. This is not me in the sense that it is something that we all share. Yet it is me in that if feels like it is a permanent quality of my existence. And it feels like an "I". When I return to this state, I want to be careful not to let this harden into some kind of ego state. But neither do I want to be afraid to claim my place in it. Because now, and always, and in the end, and since the beginning, it is our home.
