We have thoughts. Lots and lots of thoughts. About all sorts of great things. And about all sorts of bad things. Lots of beliefs, opinions, stories, etc. about this and that.
And we believe them. They're real to us. We identify with them. We could say that we worship them, we attach to them, we pick them up—all ways of saying the same thing. We get involved with these thoughts of ours. We think that they mean something.
The most persistent thought we have is about something we've constructed called "I."
Constructed? Out of what? We've constructed the sense of "I" out of our thoughts about it.
We learn through the gradual formation of concepts—thinking—to separate out objects. It usually starts with "Mommy" and "Daddy" or similar, depending on circumstances—and then one day comes the big "Ahaa!" when we put together the concept that there's an "I," a separate self.
Through thinking, we come to believe that there's a personal doer, a somebody who we think of as "I" or "myself" or "me." Through the feedback we get from others, we make up an image about an apparent someone.
Then we feed and worship this self-image. We spend much time defending it, enhancing it, making it more beautiful and satisfactory, making "me" more beautiful and satisfying.
But deep down inside, we know the truth. We're inadequate. Deep down inside we know that we're not quite doing it right.
How do we know this? Because we keep experiencing pain from time to time. And we all have this experience, and we all think that we're not doing something right, because otherwise there wouldn't be this pain and loss and suffering from time to time.
Because something about life is not quite right, we undertake a journey. We decide to follow a path of some sort in order to get where we want, that is, a place where we'll feel happy, but truly happy, all the time. And since we don't ever quite get there, we conclude that something must be wrong.
So we undertake this process, this growth and seeking to find something that's missing. To find wealth or power or knowledge or beauty or heaven or nirvana or however we define being more perfect and happy than we are now.
We're going to attain something. We're going to make something of ourselves. We're going to become special and unique, to make this "I" shine, to have this self-identity appreciated and recognised.
And then, when we finally succeed, we're going to pass into some sort of personal heaven or personal enlightenment. This "I" that we possess is going to have some experience that transports it to a place where things are blissful forever.
It doesn't happen. And so we keep searching.
The thing is, it can't happen because it can never happen to an "I," it can't happen to a personal self.
Freedom comes not from bringing the personal "I" to happiness, but in realizing that the separate "I" is an illusion and doesn't actually exist in reality.
When we realize deeply that there is no "I," there is no separate somebody that's doing something, then freedom is born—that which, actually, has always been there. But then there's nobody around to be realizing this or taking credit for it. It's just there. It just is.
Why doesn't the personal "I" exist? Because there's only the One. Nothing else exists. There's only the infinite, the ungraspable, and there's nothing but that. Everything is that. Everything whatsoever is that, all the time, always. There's only that. We're meeting it all the time, we're swimming in it all the time, we are it all the time.
This human circuitry is the infinite's way of appreciating itself. When the "I" realises that it doesn't exist as a separate thing—more accurately, when the infinite awakens to itself through the human circuitry—the infinite awakens to the realization of itself. Only the non-locatable is existent and there is nothing but that and "you" and "I" and the "maple tree" are only that.
It's this human circuitry through which the inexpressible falls in love with itself. And the love of the infinite for itself is indescribably beautiful—this universe as the undulations of the eternal, waking up and loving itself everywhere as everything, hopelessly in love, hopelessly in love.
—jim sloman, 12/9/00 for Dec 9
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