Something Personal: I Am (not)
My friend, how do I begin to describe the darkness I’ve been submerged into. God guides me through his own will and movement in the world, yet I cannot seem to see where he is taking me. Internally, he pushes me to and fro in order to expand my reasoning and understanding about the world and his creation. But there is one thing that still eludes me, regardless of my studies and knowledge—myself. I elude myself. Maybe that is why God has been distant, so that I can spend time finding me.
Life void of understanding who I am has pushed me into attempting to understand everything else. Mentors call me a professional deconstructionist, while others see the value of learning in me and attempt to bring it forth with affirmation. But affirmation only works if the one being affirmed truly believes that he/she is, or has the quality of, the affirmation. Without the belief, without the knowledge that he/she already is that which is affirmed, any attempt is void and potentially fatal.
Fatal in the sense of never becoming truly incarnated. Fatal in the sense that reason and intuition do not act upon the affirmations. They whither and die like a plant suffocating from thirst during a rainstorm. It is being blessed by that which it needs, but there is something near, something within, that drains the nutrients from the water before it is able to reach the roots. When I don’t believe the affirmations that I receive from people within my heart, mind, and soul then they merely drip off on to the ground.
Why? What am I missing that will not allow me to receive such confirmation? Why don’t I believe that it is true..
Is that it? Do I doubt myself and thus doubt the reality of the statements? I see them as false? For if they are not true then they surly are false.
It is that I do not hold myself to that esteem because I am hard on myself.
I am hard on myself.
I am not worthy. I am not happy. I am not able. I am not giving. I am not smart. I am not intelligent. I am not mature. I am not wise. I am not in shape. I am not a priest. I am not that which I am.
But what am I?
To understand who I am, I must ask who am I.
Can one live in this paradox of unknowing? Is the I am the yin to the am I the yang? Where it is not the two individual yin/yang but a trinity represented as a whole?
The eternal spark, God, supreme consciousness uses dharma, Tao, spirit to return itself (I Am) to itself (I Am), changing from the humanity’s Am I.
The difficulty lies within what comes before and after the two statements. In both, questions can be applied. Who am I? I am who? What am I? I am what? And so on. Or an identifier: God I am. I am God. Human I am. I am human. Therefore the end result of asking am I is inevitably I am. It is the eternal doubt-answer-doubt-answer spiral of that consciousness-existence-consciousness-existence. Does the am I question really matter then? Or is simply the result of I AM. Void of labels; void of characteristics; void of lists of affirmations and degradations; void of identity; void of self; void of ego; void of existence; void of nothing. I AM all, therefore I AM nothing. I AM all, therefore nothing AM I. It begins with I and ends with I.
I am the heartbeat. I am the breath. I am the thought. I am the movement. I am the force. I am the still. I am the God. I am the Human. I am creation. I am creator. I am that. I am this. I am everything. I am nothing. I am sound. I am quiet. I am emotion—joy, sad, anger, pain, happy, love, passion. I am feeling—touch, smell, sight. I am all.
Yes, it is true that it is about what you are not. The not leads to the negative, the absence of, the no-thing. But that negation leads to an experience which is in itself something.
I am not worthy; thus I am God. I am not happy; thus I am emotion. I am not able; thus I am force. I am not giving; thus I am creator. I am not smart, wise, or intelligent; thus I am thought. I am not mature; thus I am creation. I am not in shape; thus I am feeling. I am not a priest; thus I am human. I am not that which I am; thus I am nothing.
I am I.
I’n’I
