A Good Model Should Explain All Observations

How about your body? It happens when he goes to bed and starts dreaming. His persona disappears entirely when he drifts off into deep sleep. I can see your face clear. But that’s only a dream. It’s not real. I rest my case. You have no spouse or children and are actually a variety of individuals undergoing bewilderingly different experiences. Some of the time you vanish. Now that I explicitly point it out to you, you agree. Yes, this is exactly how it is. What about all the other stuff? You don’t even consider mentioning it. If John the software engineer is who you really are, then you would be that person all the time.

First Steps

And if you’re not him some of the time, is it just possible that you’re not him at all? That you’re really somebody or something else? A good model should explain all observations. Your model of who you are doesn’t. You’re ignoring a big chunk of your experience, and everyone around you is doing the same and egging you on. Is this or is this not crazy? If you identify with the actor, you’re fine. In fact, you’re golden. If you identify with the character, you’re sunk. John, the software engineer, is also a character. He comes and goes, and his persistence is illusory. Perhaps you’re beginning to glimpse this now. Then who are you really? But now you’re not the character. See the drama and pathos as if you were the audience of a staged play. This is not easy to do, and you probably won’t succeed in your first attempt.

Living On The Edge Of The World

Keep trying until you succeed. You will if you keep trying. A senior executive is interviewing you for what you’re sure is your dream job and asks you to talk about yourself. You’re called for an interview and asked about yourself. Think about the myriad occasions that require you to describe yourself and what you say each time. Sometimes you put on a front, and sometimes you tell the truth. In your own mind, you’re clear about when you’re doing which. But the odds are good that you haven’t given much conscious thought to the question of who you are. I’m suggesting that every time you begin a sentence with I am and add something, anything, to the statement, you’re being superficial and not quite accurate. I will readily grant that you don’t intend to be dishonest. But, as in his case, the ignorance still costs you. Let’s start with the proposition that who you really are is something that is true all the time, something that can never be taken from you.

Lay It All Down

That whatever your description is, it should be universally true and incorporate all your observations. Do you describe yourself as John, the software engineer? That can easily be altered. You can change your name and become Joe. You can go to school and learn a new trade or just decide to become a beach bum. If you then describe yourself as Joe the beach bum, that too can change. What if X, Y, and Z all perish in a calamity? Do you still identify yourself with those relationships by tacking the word former onto the descriptions? In any case, all relationships vanish when you’re dreaming or in deep sleep. They disappear completely, no matter how strong they are in your waking state. This is a major locus of identification. A bullet passes between the fingers of your hand, and you say you’re delighted because it missed me. What if I were to take a machete and chop off your arm at the shoulder in a messy enough fashion that even the most skilled microsurgeon couldn’t sew it back on. After you recovered, what of the severed limb, now shriveled and lifeless? Would it still be yours? If it were cut or burnt, would you still feel that I was hurt? Would you still identify with your body? All these come and go, as you well know. What about your thoughts? René Descartes famously and incorrectly proclaimed, I think, therefore I am. Thought arises in you because you exist, so he got it precisely backward. Whatever you can observe is not you, and I invite you to observe your thoughts. You’re not used to doing this, but with a little bit of practice, you can do so easily. You observe yourself thinking and being angry, roiling with emotions. So that’s not who you are. Whatever you add to the statement I am . The descriptor can change. It disappears in the dream and deep sleep states. It’s not something that is immutably and forever you. Try all the various ways in which you are prone to describe yourself. Each of them is valid, but only partially and only in a particular set of circumstances. You slip into and out of these roles with the ease of a chameleon changing color. Who are you all the time? What is it that never goes away, that can never be refuted? What is it that persists right through your dream, deep sleep, and waking states? The answer is simple, and you’ll recognize it readily when I tell you. The only thing that never goes away is your awareness, the observer that knows you exist. I am is the constant. That consciousness that you exist is with you like the screen that underlies all the movies that play in a theater. You are that consciousness. Why didn’t this occur to you? So you are not conscious of it, just like you’re not conscious of the air you breathe, and the fish is unaware of the water in which it swims. What is consciousness, and what can you do to identify with it and not the transient roles that you assume? The only way you’ll be able to access that message is if you let the story seep into your being, your very consciousness, and grapple with its implications for you in every aspect of your life.