There's no \"I\" in \"You\"......... Is there?

Hello All,

If you want to ask where the flowers come from, even the gods of spring don’t know.

I was watching the news this morning as I always do, and I got to thinking, “Who is this “I” that’s watching the news? I mean I can’t see him. I can’t really talk to him in a way that would appear sane to an outside observer. So who is this “I” guy anyway. So much emphasis is placed on “Knowing who you are” or “Knowing your place” and I’m beginning to wonder if anyone really knows who this “I” or subsequently “You” fellow is. If were all going to talk about being yourself and finding your path shouldn’t we first know who this “I” is who’s finding that path or finding itself? I would think so.

Make no mistake, this is no small task this finding the “I” in “You”. We’re told early on things like “Every child is special” that “We’re all unique” yet in the same breath we’re told “Your not the only pebble on the beach” or “What makes you so special” or my favorite, “There’s lots of fish in the sea”. So which one is it, we’re unique and special or just common ordinary rocks or fish among other rocks or fish innumerable? As George Carlin said, “At what point does a child cease to be Special and become just an ordinary adult”? So all of these things in my opinion serve to confuse us as to the nature of “I” or “Self”.

So who is this “I” and where do we look for him? Can we find him in Holy books? Is he some force beyond us? Is “I” our physical bodies? The color of our hair, the curve of our hips, the shape of our faces, or the color of our eyes? Or maybe it’s something beyond all of this. Do your eyes do the seeing? That is to say when you look at something do your eyes do the “Looking”? If your eyes aren’t responsible for the “Looking” but just the ability to look then who the hell is manning the monitors!! While our eyes do allow us to see they surely aren’t the ones seeing. That’s something well beyond the realm of having eyes to see. because we have them “To See” and not for seeing. So we can say our eyes were developed by whatever method suits tour beliefs to allow us to see but not to do the “Seeing”.

Then there’s this organ in us that we make such a big stink about called the brain. Is the “I” there? Many would argue “Yes it is” and be done with it. But how can you prove that it really is the “I” in “You”? What was this brain made for anyway? It runs our bodies without so much as a conscious thought from us. It just goes about the business of pumping, breathing, eating, digesting, and a myriad of other functions without any help from us, beyond supplying it with the raw materials it needs to carry out these tasks, whatsoever. What about thinking? There’s the rub! It needs us to think. So again I ask, who’s the “Us” it needs to think? Where does that come from?

Science has come a long way as far as the brain is concerned. They know where your thoughts of speech take place, memory, and a host of other functions. But they can only be seen AFTER they happen. A thought has to be made first before it can be seen. So if we can see the thought as it’s carried out, why can’t we see it before it becomes a physical action or an electrical response in the brain? If it only exists during it’s action then where was it before it was action? Who created it? Who would have the power to do such a thing? And that brings me to the crux of this post. I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Not like the “The Secret” book series, just a little cover up created by us to hide “Us”.

Who created that you ask? Who would have the power to create something from nothing? Some would say God, other’s would say Gods, and still others would say random chance. yet I say to you simply that it’s no gods or force that holds this power of creation. The power of creation lies not in any Holy book or spiritual path you can take because all these paths by their nature lead to one thing, one truth. The author of creation, the maker of your world, the bringer of all of the blessings and all of the bad tidings in your life......... Is you.
The “I” is the creator of our world. You are that “I”. We are all a part of the force of the universe and therefore a part of the force of creation. Each of us, as do all living things, contains within a spark of the divine. Really think about it. We for the most part create our circumstance. Granted some things seem to be out of our control, but not really. It only appears that way at first because of what society has taught the “I” in you.

We’re told early on in the west at least that the nature of man is evil, but he’s a creation of a divine God that is not responsible or can tolerate the presence of evil. So at first though we’d say, if you think about it, “If this divine god can not create evil and we’re made in his image, then why are we not already created perfect and without evil?” And this is of course contributed to free will, otherwise known as the “I” in you.

Funny thing about this “I”, at least as we’re shown as children, is that while he can create bad things, he’s just not capable of good by himself. He needs a “Higher Power” to be able to undo all of his bad. yet if you think about it, the bad, as well as the good, were all just a choice. In the same way we choose bad we can choose good. It’s this conditioning by society that’s told us we can’t, nothing more. It’s this being told we’re not special and not unique when we “Arrive” in adulthood that gives us this. It was and will always be the “I” that makes those choices and no one else. there is on external force or being that can make them for you.

That’s not to say there’s no God. That’s really not the point of this article. The Bible, just as the Sutras I read, is of immeasurable value if taken in the right context. And I’m not one to tell you who created the universe anyway because I’m really not concerned with that. The point of this all? To rediscover the “I” in you. In the New Testament I’ve gotten the impression that Jesus really didn’t understand why he needed to heal the sick. I think the sick he came for were the sick of spirit and not of the body. the body is impermanent (Something we’ll cover in a future post), only the soul or the “I” endures after physical death. If there is one god anyway and we’re all created in his image, doesn’t that make us sons of God as well and as such on an equal footing with Jesus and the disciples? Maybe Jesus, like Buddha, came to show us that the path to enlightenment can indeed be walked, and he, as others before him, just showed us how to walk it.

So knowing this when we look in the mirror who do we see? Is it just an ordinary guy or girl? Nothing special here, nothing to look at. If we listen to society then that’s just what we see. And we always think back to the wonderful time in our early youth (Provided we had a normal childhood) we we’re “Special”. I leave you all with this. When you look in the mirror, try to see the great “I” in you that created the universe and everything in it, because as surely as you are standing there, the “I” in you is looking back. The divinity in you is just as real as anything you can taste or touch, smell or feel.

So next time you look in that mirror maybe, just maybe, you’ll see the face of a Buddha, a Christ, a God, even a Jedi master, staring back at you because really, all these things are within our grasp if we can just learn to see the divine within us all. Until next time may the force be with you, because really you are it and it is the“I” in you.

In the mystery,
~Merin~