The I Am Without Qualification
El Yo Soy Sin Cualificación
A student explores how choices arise spontaneously and how the sense of doership dissolves with increasing awareness, leading to a subtle inquiry into what remains when every label placed on "I am" is seen as saying too much.
The I Am Without Qualification
A student explores how choices arise spontaneously and how the sense of doership dissolves with increasing awareness, leading to a subtle inquiry into what remains when every label placed on "I am" is seen as saying too much.
I've been trying to stay with just living my movements as they are, in a way that I'm not trying to force something to happen or having an idea to create and actualize.
Where you're going is a subtle question. You could see that ultimately there are no choices. There is constant movement. Choices are happening. If you look at a choice, it comes and it happens. There isn't a choosing. You could then say, "I chose coffee instead of tea," but the moment coffee was chosen, the choice simply appeared.
It's experienced as a choice in the sense that there is a moment of contemplation of options, and then one of them happens to be the one where the movement is directed. That's what we're calling a choice. When that happens, we can say, "I chose." But if you actually look at the moment it happens, the choice appears just like anything else. It comes out of nowhere.
The finger exercise
You can explore this by contemplating moving a finger. It's a very simple exercise. Just have a finger out, then decide to move it, then leave it still, keep deciding to move it, and look at when that choice happens, where it comes from. You can say, "I'm choosing," but that which we call "I'm choosing" is appearing. You can actually start to be aware that it's a very spontaneous appearance. There isn't actually any control of that. It's really subtle, and you have to have unobstructed attention. If there is too much filtering and thinking, you're going to think that you are controlling the choice. But the choice is appearing.
Yes, it's about increasing awareness of what's actually doing, the happening of action by itself. And this increasing awareness reduces the sense of doership, of somebody doing. More awareness of how breathing is happening by itself rather than by me doing it.
It's important to see that the choice appears not from something I can call "I."
Right. A lot of what happens, I didn't even have an idea of. I didn't have the idea of this group. It just came out of no planning, no searching. That's how I discovered this group and joined. That's just one example: the experience just came and happened.
The other side of the paradox
And then there's the other side, because it's a paradox, or it can appear as a paradox. Any specific choice doesn't come from something I can call a self; it is appearing. Everything is being created in the same way, and it has an origin which is mysterious, but it's not different from what I can call "I."
It gets harder to relate to the "I."
Yes. The "I" points to something that becomes harder to relate to, because you can only relate to an object. It can appear like a relationship with an idea when "I" is an object. But the more you see that "I" is not an object, the word "I" points to something there is no relationship to. It's what is.
Yes, and for that, I cannot not be it. I cannot not find it. It's different from what I was talking about before. This one I cannot find, but I cannot not be it. I don't know how to describe it.
It is, and it's this. But we can't know what this is.
It just has no reference.
The reference is this. It's just that you can't know what this is. And by "this," it's everything. There is something that is real, but it's not in any particular way.
The only thing I can say is: I am alive.
What is alive?
Now the question begs: what is alive? What is life? Because what you can say is "I am." Adding "alive" implies something that is life or liveness, and liveness implies something that's not alive. So now there's already too much.
What I'm thinking is existence. It exists. Whereas the other "me," the me in a context, doesn't exist. It's nonexistent, and as something nonexistent, it has no awareness. So awareness is the true nature of reality.
Awareness and reality: the same or different?
Absolutely. Now the question is: what is the nature of awareness? You're saying awareness is the nature of reality, but it becomes a semantic challenge. Is awareness a thing that reality does, or are awareness and reality the same thing? Because if awareness and reality are two words for the same thing, then you can't say one is the nature of the other. Also, the word "existing" has a root that implies something separate from something else, something that emerges from something. That is already saying too much. It's a knowing that is unverified.
What I think you're speaking to can be said as: being is; non-being is not.
Yes, there is a sense of being. But there is still a gap, like "I'm being it."
Yes.
There is still a step there. It's not entirely just it. That's what I feel uncomfortable about.
The distance in "I am alive"
That's why you express it as "awareness, which I am, is the nature of reality." What I infer is that you know you have awareness, but there's still a distance. "I am alive" again qualifies the "I am" as something that has a subtle paradigm to it: life versus death.
Totally. That's what I feel.
So keep looking at those interpretations that are qualifying the "I am." There's still a subtle knowing of what the "I am" is, by the "I am."
That's the belief I am holding.
Yes, because when we say "I," that word points to something. You could say that which it points to is reality, that which is real. Now, what is reality? What is the nature of this reality? That's where the belief comes in, because you could say reality is awareness, or aliveness.
Once it is seen for what it is, all the words are not true. They all don't really work. Even "awareness" or "consciousness." To say "what I am is consciousness" or "what I am is awareness" is already too much. But when we are experiencing it as "what I am is alive" or "what I am is awareness," there's still a subtle kind of substance to that. There's still a subtle subjectivity, implying something which is subject to that which is being known.
Does being require experience?
And really the only question that addresses that is: does there have to be experience for this knowing to be so? This "I am," does it need experience? Does it need perception, sensation, sound, sight?
No.
It's important that you know this through experience, through a knowing that's not learned, a knowing that is coming from you and not from something you've read or been told, so that there is no doubt.
If all of what is being known, all sensation, perception, sight, sound, the world, the universe, everything that exists, everything that is being known right now, if all of that disappears: can there remain being? The knowing that you are, does it require experience?
If you know that, then "life" is saying too much. Perhaps you're using "life" as a word to refer to it, and that's clear to you. While you're calling it life, you could also call it awareness, you could call it emptiness. But if there is any qualifying to the "I am," it's going to become a subject. It's going to become a self.
Keep looking there. Thank you for your devotion. It's wonderful.
Yes. Thank you.