“I” is the sweetest word on our lips, the story we can never stop telling. But is it truth, or just a mask? This essay peels away the layers of ego, memory, and illusion to ask the simplest, hardest question: What is I?
ALL ABOUT I
The Obsession with I
I think almost in every phrase we have to shove the I in the story, like an obsession. You can turn the radio on and ask almost anybody:
“Tell me more about yourself.”
Here we go…
I is the sweetest concept on our mouths, we revere it, we protect it, we identify with it. I is All!
Or so?
The Glory and the Shame of I
Well, if we say: “Did you win the World Cup?”, well… blushing with pleasure on the cheeks, proudly sighing, pulse accelerating with rushed memories, champagne bubbles sparkling in the eyes, “Yes!” The yes of the winner that knows that only him, and nobody else, can say yes. Absolute truth of the victor.
Then we ask: “Did you steal from the poor lady?” Even a hint of infamy and the same red cheek burns with outrage or shame: “How dare you!”
Who do you think I am?
I as Our Child, Our Doll, Our Mask
We see I as our child, our most genuine expression of ourselves. We want it dignified, happy, like we have never finished playing with dolls. I is our personal voodoo doll, our stellar Pinocchio, our white immaculate ID on two feet, who can show the world our value.
I is the naked one that we show only in intimacy, the dressed one on the beach playing the cool guy from the Malibu beach series, the formal tie-suit professional.
I becomes an advocate, or a TV show star with red hair and piercings, I the beggar with pitiful garments, I the Muslim with the djellabah and kufi, I the Jew with white threads, I the gangster with tattoos and sagging pants, I the seductive in a mini-skirt, or the fat but heart-of-the-group short lady.
I is polymorph. He has many clothes and roles, the same actor who learns to play from a small age the role of son, then elder son or brother, then student, etc. The roles of I are infinite and they fill a social function, for a different play.
Beyond Roles: What Is I?
But this I is as much I as Tom Hanks is Die Hard in normal life. We know that I is a circumstantial image that we have or like to play, feeling more or less attached to it, identified with it.
You may feel by now that I cannot be anybody, anything, it must be one. If we cannot define I by its roles, then what is I?
It is a constructed toolbox that we refine over years. I is just the raw material out of which everybody shapes rational forms to interact with others. You can call it spirit. Whatever we do or play, I is the same overall.
The Skeleton of I
To define I, we must look closely at what we can call its character. Character will define the path your constructed You(s) will take.
In the same situation, we will have different reactions, and what we do is what defines the character of I. Character is something that I follows over multiple roles, so it is like the skeleton of the I.
What else does I have for itself? Energy, knowledge, faith, fears, obsessions, traumas, desires, clarity of perception, intuition, humour, etc.
I is like a box full of artifacts that influence and shape its remnant image. I is polychromic or monochromatic, or maybe just full of BS…
I as Memory, Body, and Inheritance
I has skills and social score.
I is what we call overall an Individual, with whatever sits inside.
So until now, we define I as a toolbox that has the skeleton of character and is full of more or less permanent memories of itself, because we cannot be what we cannot remember… or can we?
Actually, what is embedded in the skeleton of I, the character, may be outside our memory. I never knew my dad… still, I talk the same, speak the same, and basically you could mistake us if we were the same age. That is character perpetuated by genes. I don’t remember it, it is my body that remembers, and the shape of my mind which is similar to that of my father.
So: a box filled with memories, actual information, muscle memories, hand skills, and intellectual skills.
The Killer Question
So is this I? Do we agree?
Well then, the killer question:
If I is like a very evolved robot, still, what is it when we are naked of everything that burdens us? Imagine we have no physical characteristics, no memory baggage, no character, no skills, no clothes or even skin.
What is left? Is it something, or nothing?
Even if I don’t see anything, does it mean I cannot see?
Naked I
This is the fundamental question. We know what is I when we are dressed, but we don’t know when we are naked.
Because, as with the cabbage, the I stays hidden under the last leaf. I is the core of the individual, and this I we must define.
What is the minimum characteristic of the naked I, in the most naïve terms? Seeing, perceiving, catching the ray of light.
This naked I is actually perception itself, the light transformed into sense. We slowly evolve our vision until the perfect understanding of the image. I is a bottle that accumulates experiences of the light and then takes any shape it wants, but it is still the same bottle.
Bottle, Bottleneck, or Mirror?
Is this bottle created or shaped by itself? Some of it is created. As with any contender, it can stretch or shrink, it can be broken. Or the way in, the entrance, can be blocked to the light. Then it stops accumulating or evolving with the light.
But is I really the bottle? Or just the bottleneck? The interface between the light and the container? The hole that serves to communicate from outside to inside, from physical to ideation?
Is I the interface between two worlds, the physical and the spiritual? Then we can make the analogy of the mirror.
I is the surface of the mirror that reflects inside what is outside, more like a mirror in a prism where the plane of reality is reflected in the middle, on the flat surface inside the prism.
The Consciousness Crystal
So if I is a non-circumstantiated phenomenon, it must be more or less the same between all of us humans. With different shapes or morphologies, but made of the same material.
Let’s call it the consciousness crystal, or jelly.
So what is I?
I think we have found our definition:
I is the diamond, the inalienable core of the human experience. While all can change inside, I stays the same from Alpha to Omega.
The Risk of a Blind I
Still we defined I as a consciousness window from the world to the negative imprint of our memory. Memory shapes our perception, we call it prejudice.
Each time the lens is stained we must clear it to see reality as it is, otherwise the observation is biased and memory slowly cannibalizes itself until the I becomes opaque to the exterior.
I cannot then be in the world from the world, but becomes a dead artefact, a dead soul basically that cannot renew itself.
An I cut from the world becomes a monster, as it cannot be humbled or in pace with the universe, a closed system that slowly evolves into the solidification of patterns.
Like the leaf cut from the tree, a blind I is like a dry leaf, slowly decomposing and dissolving into the darkness of forgiveness.
The Puppet or the Master?
I is a place of possibility. Actually, we say commonly I as a determination of a certain person who is interacting: I do, I will do, I did.
I is a topologic place in the web of interactions, a place where we are supposed to have absolute control and freedom to act.
We are like a duo, our core judgment wrestling with the dynamic reality of I actualized. But who is the I of the story? The puppet or the master?
We will always say that the puppet is responsible as the manifestation of our agency, but indeed, our will, which is I incarnated into action, is the phenomenal element that manifests the I.
We determined that I is awareness or consciousness. Then I can have insight or view, but also will, and third it can shape in any form it wants and interact with reality.
We can never actually see I, only its manifestations, its suit and tie, its bank statement, its possessions. But as we say: “The clothes do not make the monk.”
Living I, Now
In order for the I to evolve, it must clear its perception and situate itself at the frontier between the present and the past.
I must live in the now in order to fully embrace its genuineness.
I is a part of the light, a pure total fragment of the universe’s conscience.
A Wave in the Ocean
Ibn Arabi says that I is like a wave in the ocean, it is like the ocean, not the whole of it.
Now.
Who are you? Peel the onion of your self to find what remains after you stand naked, in silence and alone, before the mirror of your own awareness.
This is the greatest of the rules, the source of all wisdom and felicity:
Know yourself!
Welcome! I’m Alex, the voice behind Two One Zero.
I write with passion, sometimes satirical, sometimes poetic, sometimes deeply spiritual. My goal is to connect hearts and minds, to stir thought, and maybe even to spark a smile along the way.
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