Friday, July 11, 2008

I think, therefore I am

I think, therefore I am is the simplest and truest statement of the false, or ego self. That thought begets all other self thoughts. Your whole identity is wrapped up in subsequent thoughts.

The "I" thought has taken over when you believe, "I think therefore I am." This is a false identity. You are prior to the "I" thought.

I am, therefore I think, is truer. At least it points to the "I am" that is prior to thought. Beingnes is multitude. And that's OK. But the truth is prior to the multitude that believes it is.

All bodies have a sense of beingness, of I amness. But, did any body create this sense? Did you create your own beingness as an individual? Or, did beingness arrive, unbidden, to take you for a drive? Take a look. Are you the driver? Or are you driven.

When the beingness arrived, it took a couple years for the mind to develop. At around two or three, the conceptual mind found it's first foothold as "I." The rest is a house of cards. The whole you that you think you are is based on this first "I" thought.

You have to go back to the original "I" thought and back track from there. The "I" thought is the result of Being in a body. You are the Beingness that created the body.

You can only think your way out of this by coming to the end of thought. Or, one might say, when thinking is no longer satisfactory, and sees its own limitation, perhaps there will just be seeing/knowing, without a thinker, without a you.

2 comments:

Ron Marson said...

"I think, therefore I am," divides into:

I think...

I am...,

And the turn-arounds:

I don't think...

I am not.

These 4 phrases might describe birth journeys into self development, the dream of creation:

I am not > I don't think > I am > I think.

And death journeys back to the Source of all dreams.

I think > I am > I don't think > I am not.

To stand at the threshold between mind and No-Mind feels to me like standing in "I don't think," between "I am" and "I am not." Sailor Bob calls this "full stop," not "taking delivery" of thought as it arises. In that blissful space my mind gets nervous with nothing to chew on, and tries to frame conceptual understandings of the Mystery (as I'm doing now). It likes to arrange thoughts using labels like Reality, Awareness, What Never Changes, etc. However my mind might arrange these labels rightly or wrongly, it has NO CLUE as to what they mean. My consciousness can't begin to contain the enormity of Mystery they point to. But the heart already IS that enormous Mystery!

Nisargadatta says, "Consciousness is always a movement of change. There can be no such thing as a changeless consciousness. Changelessness wipes out out consciousness immediately. A person deprived of outer or inner sensations blanks out, or goes into the birthless and deathless state. Only when spirit and matter come together, consciousness is born."

This helps my mind rest more easily in "I don't think," enabling the heart to realize the impersonal bliss of its own sweet natural nonexistence: I am not, therefore I don't think.

Everything happens for me, giving me exactly what I need, exactly on time: I don't think, therefore I am.

And by the grace of God, I embody her will: I am, therefore I think (and act).

Anonymous said...

In the book "spectrum of Ecstacy", I rather liked the author's comment, "I hurt, therefore I am" which of course points to the sense of identity derived in so many from the act of creating stories about an imagined or illusioned solid and continuous self.