As we start the New Year it seems like an appropriate time to take a look at the basis of what The Road to Higher Consciousness and it’s sister site, Games of Consciousness are really all about. Namely, who are we at our most basic core? What is meant when we say the word ‘I’? Sounds like an off-the-wall question to be sure, but the answer we give to it, as individuals and as a species, will determine not only our own individual lives but the future of life on this planet as well.
Unfortunately, the search for this answer is made harder than it needs to be because the language we are using is a bummer. It just isn’t designed to allow for usage that’s out of the ordinary. In this instance, we can’t both say ‘I’ in English and refer to the same person. For one of us, ‘I’ is referring to the person writing these words while for the other ‘I’ is referring to the person reading these words. So let’s recognize right off the bat that, since we’re using words to try to communicate some esoteric material here there’s probably going to be a little confusion. I’ll do my best to be as clear as possible, but sorry, that’s just the way it goes. In fact this has been understood to be the case at least as far back as the time of Khana, a 6-10th century Buddhist monk, who said “The path is blocked by vowels and consonants”.
But that said, back to the question at hand. What do we mean when we say the word ‘I’?
Normally we use ‘I’ to relate to the physical body in which we happen to find ourselves at any particular point in time. There’s good precedent for this since that’s how people seem to relate to us, everything from the number of airline seats we get assigned when we buy a ticket, to how many times we can vote in any given election, to the house we can walk into after work without having the others living there getting all bent out of shape and calling the cops. It’s simple, right? I look in the mirror and that’s me, that’s ‘I’. On the surface of it, one body, equals one person, equals one ‘I’, just seems to make sense. Right?
However is it really? Are you… that is to say what you mean by ‘I’… really the body in which you find yourself? One day long ago I looked like a young man. Now I look like an an old man. Am ‘I’ any different now than ‘I’ was then? Sure, there are a number of things I could do when I was younger than I can’t do today, but is that because ‘I’ am different or because the body I find myself in is different? And what about people who due to the misfortune of war or illness or accident wake up one day to find a part of themselves physically missing, are they any less ‘I’ than they were the day before?
So what do you think? Are you really your body??? Or is your ‘I’ something else that exists inside your body? To be continued…
peace……………….ag
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