II - Pondering on myself
My outer identity is ordinary knowing:
it is what others see of me:
my body, my place in society, my job,
my house, my car.
But who knows my Inner Identity, my I?
This is extraordinary knowing.
It is not body. It is not my job,
nor house, nor place in society.
These I experience as separate things.
If I lose them, I remain essentially as I am.
What I see in the world outside me
is not the I that sees it.
'I' do not change when my experiences change.
This Inner I exists unseen in our inner world.
What we perceive within us is 'not I':
we perceive the multiple activities in the psyche.
I am constant; unchanging.
The multiple activities change all the time;
the storms of life beat on them and drive them,
and in them is 'no dry land'.
My Inner I is my inner identity.
What is this inner identity?
Ask yourself: Am I my thoughts?
Do I cease to exist when I am not thinking?
Prayer and meditation become real when their activity stops.
Every time I meditate and enter that emptiness,
I prove to myself that
I not the spinning of my thoughts.
Ask yourself: Am I my feelings?
Do I cease to exist when I am not feeling?
Prayer and meditation become real when their activity stops.
Every time I meditate and enter that emptiness
I prove to myself that this is not so.
Ask yourself: Am I to be found in my actions?
Do I cease to exist when I am not acting?
Prayer and meditation become real when their activity stops.
Every time I meditate and enter that emptiness
I prove to myself that this is not so.
Ask yourself: Am I to be found in knowledge?
Do I cease to exist when I am not aware?
Prayer and meditation become real when their activity stops.
Every time I meditate and enter that emptiness I prove to myself that this is not so.
The activity of my mind is what I see in myself. This is the self-knowledge that is always changing.
But what I see is not I.
Who knows my Inner Identity?
That is something more.
That is the identity beyond experience:
the self that experiences all your experiences.
Stripped of all experience for a moment,
self then experiences itself.
We know ourselves when ordinary knowing ends.
This is extraordinary knowing.
My inner I is my Inner Identity.
It is not thought. It is not knowledge.
It is not feeling. It is not action.
It is not 'the mind of the body',
which Saint Paul called sarx - the flesh.
These, I experience.
If I lose them, I remain as I am.
All these change,
but what I see in my psyche
is not the seeing-I that sees it.
My seeing I does not change.
When I know this Inner Identity,
this is extraordinary knowing.
That is the identity I experience:
the self that experiences all my experiences
and which, stripped of experience for a moment, experiences itself.
I know myself when all ordinary knowing ends.
This is extraordinary knowing.
Truth is that the Inner I
contains the multiple minds of the psyche.
Aware of its content,
it is normally unaware of itself.
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