I Call it Self-realization

I have seen many many confusions regarding this invitation who am I? If one inquires and the honest answer is "I don't know," then there is resting in "I don't know". But as it is, I sense that very few experience rest, especially among seekers. I can only guess that it is because a great many have misunderstood Who am I?

Beginning from the belief that all is one is not realizing that all is one. Having a belief that I am not myself is not realizing that "I am not myself." Where is the peace? Where is the absence of turmoil? Where are the undisturbed faces? I don't see them, especially among seekers. There is a facade of rest but it doesn't go very deep.

The reason for this, I believe, is this question of who am I? Many have asked it, but who has allowed it to burn everything away? It seems we are too concerned with safeguarding the oneness to lose anything.

In ancient times, there was the idea of renunciation. Today the popular idea is accumulation. There is a prejudice that everything I have accumulated is me that it's all part of the oneness. Then what is the point of asking who am I? The point is missed entirely.

Who am I is a discriminating question. To ask the question who am I is to light a match and allow the whole forest of concepts, of knowledge, of the known, to burn into ashes. Then out of the ashes, there is a new you, an unknown you, an unknowable you. Then this unknowable you returns to ordinary life. Life is the same, and yet totally different. Because there is no knowable you, everything can be experienced without you dividing it up. You don't interfere. You are out of your own way.

This has the effect of oneness, but oneness is just a word. Life simply is as it is, with one difference. There is a wisdom that knows you are the source of it all. There is an understanding that all that is seen has come from the unseen, and you are That. In my experience, this is why nothing is experienced as separate from you. It is because you are the source of all, you are the unseen from which everything arises, or the screen upon which the objects of life appear. Were it not for that, there would be none of this.

This I find in my own experience. I don't find that I am the body, or that I am the mind, or that I am your body or that I am your mind. My experience of my self is as That from which all of This arises. Call it oneness if you like. I cal it self-realization. I call it finding out who am I.

The body came from you, not you from it. Like bees to a honeycomb, you made it. Cell by cell, you formed it. For what it's worth, that is my understanding and my experience.