The thought: "I"

 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.

Asking the question, what is true?

Sigmund Freud's posited construct of the mind was tripartite, consisting of id, ego and super-ego. Id is the instinctual drive; Ego is more than just a sense of self, it is the organising aspect of our psyche; while Super-ego aims for perfection and is super-critical, punishing imperfection with feelings of guilt and shame.

I am no expert in Freudian psychology. No doubt if I were I could write a book just talking about these three aspects of self and telling you how Freud's own thinking on them developed. But I am not and I cannot. It is interesting, however, that our common everyday use of the word ego has parted company somewhat with Freud's theory. Ego is the Latin word for I, so we tend to make the word synonymous with our sense of I-ness. What in non-dual tantra might be called ahamkara. 

The word ego is tossed around as if it is something undesirable. As such it is being confused with another term, egotism, which is the state of being excessively self-absorbed. So when we say something like "Oh, he has such an ego!" in that judgy, perjorative way that we do, we are really saying that he is egotistical, that is, self-absorbed. And what a terrible way to be, poor person!

Of course, the self in which this poor person is so absorbed is not that capital S Self that is used as a descriptor for the Universal Consciousness, beyond concept, which is therefore impossible to describe. No, it is the small s self, I, me. It is a thought and a bunch of ideas, beliefs about what "I" am.

Note well that it always another person, never ourselves that we hold this belief about, that they are self-absorbed and egotistical. Yet this belief about another is surely created as a reaction to another belief, that things should be a particular way which make me feel comfortable and this person is in someway violating that and therefore must be wrong, namely, they are self-absorbed. Is it not our own self-absorption that created a belief that things should go our own way that leads to this other belief that another person is self-absorbed.

The message here is that it is all belief, all thought and you just cannot trust it to be in anyway true.

Maps of the territory 

Freud's theory of Id, Ego and Super ego is nothing more than a map or model of the mind and sometimes perhaps its view is useful, but there are other views which might serve us better, sometimes.  It is like Google maps.  We can see the map, the street view, perhaps we might even be able to see a satellite image and so forth. We use the view that is most useful. 

The yoga tradition has also mapped the territory, in many ways, with the purpose of pointing us beyond the mind to the essence of our true nature.

What do we really know is true?

This is the essential question on the spiritual path. In many ways it merges into this other big question:

Who am I?

In answering Who am I? we might come up with all sorts of labels and beliefs. A name? That is a label. A place in a family, wife, husband, mother, father, sister, brother? Are they not labels too? Can a label be true? Do they tell you what is your essence nature?

It can be scary as you begin to peel away all the labels, all the ideas, all the beliefs and begin to recognise them as being quite unreliable, things that in fact feed your own self-absorption. The pathway to Self-absorption is destructive. Big S Self-absorption, which is to rest in your essence-nature, cannot co-exist with small s self-absorption. The moment we fall back into small s self-absorption we are forgetting our big S Self.

Small s self is quite worried about being destroyed and is as adaptable as a super-virus to any attempt to undermine it. But the thing is that it is the absorption that we are overcoming in order to abide in our essence nature. Then we can utilise the small s self to navigate life without being pulled into absorption, simultaneously knowing our true Self, which is so much more!

Practice

If you are ready for this scary journey here are some things you might do.

Practice iRest® Yoga Nidra meditation. Within the iRest protocol you are invited to examine your beliefs, pair them with opposites , notice the emotions that co-arise and trace them into the feelings in the body, pair them with opposites and ultimately recognise that neither is completely true, opening the way for experiencing that which is true.

Another practice is to take a notebook, a pretty one is best, one that you could really value. In it write everything that you think is true about yourself , others and the world. Putting it out there can help you find objectivity and might help the process of taking it into meditation and really examining its veracity. When it is full find an opportunity to ritually burn it. With it burn all attachment to those beliefs.

Surrender

In the end there is no doing, no practice. It is simply being prepared to surrender.