Have you ever noticed how "I" attaches itself to everything?
For example, it is cold. Immediately there is a thought, "I am cold".
What is the opposite of "I"? The answer might come up as "you", but it is more like anything that is "other". Can you see how "I" is the fundamental separator, dividing experience into what is this body/mind and what is everything else. The "I" thought is the duality thought.
It comes online around two years old, and it is no accident that this is the age at which childen are really beginning to acquire language, the ability to communicate thought. Without getting into the complex linguistic and psychological hypotheses around this point, language seems to express thought and thought also seems to be shaped by language.
To illustrate that take this example. I have heard that Inuit languages have many, many words for ice and snow. They live with ice and snow, and have developed more nuanced thoughts about ice and snow, so have more words for ice and snow to express that. In turn, learning their language, that subtley of thought about ice and snow are readily available to them because the language describes it that way.
I digress. The point really is that we have a word, "I" that refers to this body/mind and separates this body/mind for all others. Cutlurally we learn that as we develop. Psychologically it means we develop an ego, a sense of self. And it is pretty darn handy too. We can possess things, we can tell mine for yours. But pause for a minute and consider. It is just a thought!
In our thought processes we give "I" regal status. It owns everything. Whatever happens, I will take almost immediate possession of it. Even on the meditation cushion, entering a state of Pure Awareness, which by definition is a no-thought state, and there it is: I am aware, As soon as it happens, that's a thought and we are no longer in Pure Awareness. Damn!
I-ness is a great cause of suffering. "I" gets upset whenever its expectations seem thwarted. Watch your moments of conflict. "Other" does something not in alignment with the way "I" would like it, and suffering happens. It is a resistence of reality.
This ego-identity is also the source of self-images and beliefs, like "I am fat", "I am right", "I am not enough". In fact the ego-identity is nothing more than a whole bunch of I statements. "I am <insert name here>", "I am <insert job here>", "I am <insert position in family (mother, daughter etc.) here>". The ego-identity suvives by the strength with which we believe these statements.
The ego-identity that the "I" thought represents is defined by Christopher Wallis in Tantra Illuminated (p. 130) in this way:
Ego ... is a persistent contraction of awareness in the form of a collection of self-images that causes suffering through artificial self-limitation.
Non-dual spritutual awakening requires a loosening of the power of the "I" belief. Many spiritual traditions talk about this ego falling away, viewing it as an enemy. Of course anything that is being rejected, or that we have an aversion to will keep on coming around.
Richard Miller, creator of iRest®, often talks about self falling away, but he counsels that it will not happen if you do not feel safe with yourself. (Received in in person teaching.) So every promise you make to yourself, keep it. Then perhaps you can go on where the ego cannot go. I find this useful in Yoga Nidra, to take "I" like a little baby, cared for and loved, and place it the cradle of my heart, inviting it to rest there so Awareness can go on alone. Upon return, ego is again assumed, but like the nurse, the police officer etc. put on the uniform of that profession in order to perform the job, putting on the ego in order to come back into the world, but it is seen through as a kind of ruse.
Of course, in iRest we also work on the "I" beliefs, challenging ourselves to take their opposites, and bringing them back to the body. Gradually the tenacity of these beliefs about ourselves begins to loosen, and the ruse of the ego is again revealed.
In Non-dual Saiva Tantra (NST), everything is an expression of Supreme Consciousness which contracts itself from a completely unbounded state which is full of potentiality, to express itself as the manifest universe. So the tradition teaches that far from denying the go, all that needs to be done is to expand that which is included in the "I" thought to include everything! One meditation to use in starting to work in this way is to place a beautiful object that you value before you, and meditate on being that object, of including it in your selfhood, by way of a first step in this expansion.
NST also offers us practices where we "burn" away all our self constructs, emptying ourselves for the light of Awareness.
One of the simplest approaches is to just notice the "I" thought attaching itself to everything. See what happens.
