The More Appropriate Question

           As the shift in consciousness approached here, two related experiences kept occurring. One was the awareness that it did not matter at all what this person was experiencing. A while before, I had become aware that for much of Liz’s spiritual life I’d been merely managing moods. When Liz was in a good mood, I judged I was spiritually centered. When Liz was in a bad mood, I thought I was spiritually off and had something to look at. But even after I’d sorted that out, I was still concerned with Liz’s experience until I came to realize that what Liz was experiencing had nothing to do with reality! So how could it matter?

Related to this was that whenever something occurred that led to a “What am I?” kind of experience it would come to me that the more appropriate question was, “What is real?” Ego was still here and interpreted this to mean that only what is real could be called the true “I”. But now I understand that Spirit was exposing the identity question as bogus. “What am I?” was based on the false premise that reality would turn out to be some sort of identity.

While discussing with a client a few weeks ago that ego, neutral consciousness, and Spirit were still being sorted out here, she asked, “Where are you in all of this?” And I told her that there is no “I” or “me” here anymore. Which came as a surprise because not only had my spirituality been pretty much identity-based but there had always been something here insisting it was real and which wanted to land on the correct identity for itself. But it turns out that all insistence on an “I”, “me”, self, or identity was ego. They are not necessary distinctions.

Of course, I still use “I” when speaking and writing because that is the way we communicate in consciousness and it would be time consuming and awkward to fuss with trying to say things accurately, especially as “getting it right” does not matter. It turns out that “I” is simply the shape of consciousness and when Spirit is here, an “I” statement first comes to mind, and then is gently followed by the quiet awareness of what is really occurring. For example, an experience of expansion may be registered by this consciousness and “I am free now” may come to mind. But what will follow is the awareness that Spirit is here, as It always has been, and what this consciousness is registering is the contrast between the expansive experience of Spirit and the constricted experience of ego that it registered before. The “I” statement that comes to mind is not an identity as experienced when ego was here, it is simply an expression of consciousness registering a new experience. Consciousness has no agency with which to form an identification. “I” is just its shape.

Consciousness arose to be the false reality ego would assert to oppose Reality (God). So, it has a specific shape, but that shape is neutral in itself, just as a set is built for a specific play, but the props and setting and scenery have no meaning until the play is put on. Spirit is also here in the neutral setting of consciousness but grants it no meaning—It does not put on a play. Yet, at first, consciousness registers Spirit within the context of its inherent shape—“I”—before it registers Spirit as It is, not an identifier come to live in, as, and through consciousness (the person), as ego had done, but merely a Presence, the Source of Which is beyond consciousness, and which simply co-exists with consciousness.

Because of the “I” shape of consciousness, Spirit is often referred to as a True Self or True Identity. But to call Spirit by those terms would be to redefine those terms because Spirit’s Presence in consciousness is nothing like ego’s stultifying identification with consciousness. This is why the more appropriate question is “What is real?” rather than “What am I?” It liberates consciousness from the limitations of self or identity, which ego has dictated are the parameters of reality. Consciousness is then open to Spirit, an experience that is not an identity. 

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