Don’t you see that all your problems are your body’s problems - food, clothing, shelter, family, friends, name, fame, security, survival - all these lose their meaning the moment you realize that you may not be a mere body.
The sense of being, of 'I am' is the first to emerge. Ask yourself whence it comes, or just watch it quietly. When the mind stays in the 'I am' without moving, you enter a state which cannot be verbalized but can be experienced.
All you need to do is try and try again.
After all the sense 'I am' is always with you, only you have attached all kinds of things to it - body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, possessions etc. All these self-identifications are misleading. Because of them you take yourself to be what you are not.
Then what am I?
It is enough to know what you are not. You need not know what you are.
For as long as knowledge means description in terms of what is already known, perceptual, or conceptual, there can be no such thing as self-knowledge, for what you are cannot be described, except as except as total negation.
All you can say is: 'I am not this, I am not that'.
You cannot meaningfully say 'this is what I am'. It just makes no sense. What you can point out as 'this' or 'that' cannot be yourself. Surely, you can not be 'something' else.
You are nothing perceivable, or imaginable. Yet, without you there can be neither perception nor imagination. You observe the heart feeling, the mind thinking, the body acting; the very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive.
Can there be perception, experience without you?
An experience must 'belong'. Somebody must come and declare it as his own. Without an experiencer the experience is not real.
It is the experiencer that imparts reality to experience. An experience which you cannot have, of what value is it to you?
The sense of being an experiencer, the sense of 'I am', is it not also an experience?
Obviously, every thing experienced is an experience. And in every experience there arises the experiencer of it.
Memory creates the illusion of continuity.
In reality each experience has its own experiencer and the sense of identity is due to the common factor at the root of all experiencer-experience relations.
Identity and continuity are not the same.
Just as each flower has its own color, but all colors are caused by the same light, so do many experiences appear in the undivided and indivisible awareness, each separate in memory, identical in essence. This essence is the root, the foundation, the timeless and spaceless 'possibility' of all experience.
How do I get at it?
You need not get at it, for you are it. It will get at you, if you give it a chance.
Let go your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly step into its own.
Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that and the realization that you are the source and heart of all will dawn upon you.
With this will come great love which is not choice or predilection, nor attachment, but a power which makes all things love-worthy and lovable.
A personal blog that covers a variety of topics, including spirituality, personal development, philosophy, and psychology.