"I" Means Whatever Occupies Conscious Awareness

           As the shift in consciousness approached here, a thought that kept coming up was that the better question is not, “What am I?” but rather “What is real?” And since, what I’ve discovered is when we talk about the “I” or self what we mean is “what is experienced as real”. “I” is a designation that moves from identity to fact, depending on whether ego or truth (pure consciousness) occupies conscious awareness.

I’m not talking about the “I” in our casual discourse—the “I” starting this sentence being an example of that. In English, anyway, it would be ridiculously awkward to have a conversation avoiding “I” and “me” and “my”. But when we express our spiritual or nonduality experiences, “I” becomes the designation of what is felt in conscious awareness to be real. For example, as the shift approached here, there were frequent experiences of “I am nonlocal.” This mind (conscious awareness) was everywhere rather than in a specific place. Clearly, the “I” in this experience did not identify with the person, Liz. So, it was not the “I” of ego but an “I” that designated something else.

What this indicates is that “I” refers to whatever occupies conscious awareness (your immediate experience) as reality. So, “I” can vacillate between ego and truth (pure consciousness) as ego and truth vacillate in conscious awareness. This leads to statements like, “I felt in the world but now I feel the world is in me and I am just watching.” This is accurate because the “I” moved from designating ego to designating truth. But this movement of the designation “I” can seem to indicate that what “I” indicated before—ego—is now having the new experience, which can be misleading as what occurred was ego moved out of conscious awareness and truth was exposed to be already here. So, “I” went from indicating something false that is temporarily here to indicating the truth that is always here.  The “I” did not go on a journey of transformation or discovery, but the thing that had claimed the “I” for itself fell away leaving the “I” to refer to conscious awareness.

Clients will ask if perhaps conscious awareness is the “I” and maybe it went on a journey, going from identifying with ego to now identifying with what it really is, pure consciousness. This seems like a logical conclusion, and that is certainly what was expected here, but that’s not the experience. Conscious awareness, which is part of pure consciousness, does not identify with anything because it doesn’t do anything. It just is as pure consciousness just is.  Identifying with is an ego action and when it occupies conscious awareness, it takes the “I” for itself while conscious awareness does nothing because it simply is. To consciousness, which means truly to conscious awareness, ego is just something appearing in it.

When ego falls away, while experiences may first come in as “I”, there is understanding that “I” does not refer to what “I” designated before, ego. When I or others say the “I” or self is gone, we mean the “I” or self of ego, of identity. There is no one here anymore to claim that it is the doer, thinker, feeler. Thoughts and feelings arise. The person does things. But there is no longer anything here to say, “This is me.” “I” now refers to the space in which thoughts, feelings, and actions arise. “I” see those things and know them to be a passing mirage. And it has always been that way, just blocked from conscious awareness by ego. No part of truth fell for the mirage and thought it was real. And as conscious awareness is part of truth, of pure consciousness, it was never deceived by the mirage. Only to ego is the mirage an illusion because it believes in it.

What makes this difficult to get across is you cannot see a change in consciousness in the material world. The person does not change, but the orientation of one’s mind to the person and the world changes. If this happens to you, you understand this massive shift. But from the outside, you may see shifts in the values, demeanor, and life of someone whose consciousness has shifted, but you would probably put these down to a personal transformation rather a shift in consciousness. No person is enlightened precisely because the person is not transformed into truth. Certainly, ego is not, either, as ego falling away is one of the aspects of enlightenment. To see enlightenment, you must look inward to the enlightened mind, the other aspect of enlightenment, not outward to another.

So, when someone says or you feel “I was that but now I’m this” during or after nonduality experiences, what is occurring is not a transformation but simply the movement of the designation “I” as conscious awareness registers what fell away and what is now revealed to have been here all along. 

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