The eternal 'I-am' and what it implies
The secret to suffering is in plain view, but few care to look at it
Vic Shayne
author
13 Pillars of Enlightenment: How to realize your true nature and end suffering
Two simple words start our world ablaze with experience, pleasure, suffering, and a life to be lived: “I am.”
I am.
What does this short sentence imply? Have you ever thought about it? The I-am is the reason for believing that we are embodied people with certain identities, attachments, memories, interests, relationships, and so on. And it is the beginning for all of our problems and the world’s problems. Our life experience and worldview begins with I-am.
I-am is a grammatical construction and a metaphor that stands for something much greater. When a noun is placed at the end of the I-am, our world takes form and we suddenly have something called a life, purpose, meaning, problems, emotions, successes, failures, and on and on. Whatever we add to the I-am subject is an object, and the object becomes an identifier and modifier of the I-am — I am tall, I am Joan or Stanley, I am a Christian or atheist, I am angry or fearful, I am a father or mother, I am sick or healthy, etc. We convert the unchangeable I-am into something changeable, ephemeral, and untrue.
Pause for a moment and consider what this I-am is. It is immune to change or destruction. It is ageless; while body grows older, the I-am remains as it has always been. It is also beyond concepts like witness, observer, a being, or anything that can be thought of. The I-am is a primal experience without an experiencer. It is the bridge between the world of matter and the ineffable that is beyond anything conceivable or perceivable.
When we say, “I am,” we are declaring that we are present, but this is all that we can really say about it, because it has no description, attachments, or form. We feel it and know it, but words do not do it justice.
All else is a construct and illusion
The I-am stands alone and needs nothing else, and yet we pile one idea on top of another and then attach it to the I-am. On and on this compilation goes until we have lost all sense of the I-am. Our thoughts become focused upon the object so that we can no longer see or understand the subject — I-am. And this is the reason we have a world full of suffering, violence, resistance, disharmony, divisiveness, enmity, and endless conflict. It all begins with each and every object that every individual places on the end of the I-am. Why do we do this? Because we have been trained and habituated by other people’s ideas and beliefs. We accept what is untrue with great alacrity, earnestness, resentment, and zeal. And we add it to our own sense of I-am.
Uncovering the I-am
If you were to persistently focus on the I-am in all your spare time, eventually you would fully realize what you truly are beneath the façade of all the objects you have inadvertently connected to it. And you would be free — illuminated, enlightened, or whatever you choose to call the state where you awaken to what’s going on. The ancient Hindus used a Sanskrit word, moksha, to explain this. Moksha means freedom. When you realize that the I-am is independent, immutable, and not actually connected to any of the objects you have attached to it, then you — as consciousness — are free of all the objects in the most psychological sense. This is moksha — spiritual, psychological freedom.
Conflict comes from our way of thinking
The sense of self is created out an accretion of thoughts attached to the I-am. We believe things without knowing why. Lifetimes come and go without ever waking up to this fact. We are looking everywhere except at the I-am to find out how it works. Religious leaders and their pious followers pontificate on and on about the words of Jesus, Mohammed, the Buddha, and all the rest, while they remain ignorant of the role of the I-am. If this weren’t true then they wouldn’t lecture others by way of secondhand teachings and thereby add to their burden placed upon the I-am. We cannot be free, illuminated, as long as this I-am is mired in attachments.
Just consider for a moment how many people there are in this world — around 8,000,000,000. Each person has attached countless beliefs, secondhand knowledge, emotions, and proclamations onto their individual I-am. The I-am has been linked to infatuation, hate, joy, sadness, depression, exhilaration, authority figures, religious ideas, political beliefs, sports teams, and leaders. Many of these connections or attachments stand in opposition to others within the same person; and socially, they are in conflict with the beliefs of others, resulting in arguments, hate, bitterness, brotherhood, sisterhood, extreme divisiveness, wars, terrorism, fist fights, poor judgment, slander, and so on. The list is endless, and it all begins with a strong commitment to a flimsy, temporal idea that could be dropped at a moment’s notice — if not for the strength of the attachments that have created the sense of self.
Just this morning I was explaining the I-am to a dying man, someone I have known for decades. He said he didn’t understand what I was talking about and wondered how he could possibly see this from my point of view. He said he wanted to understand, but couldn’t grasp what he called such an abstract idea. Why couldn’t he? It’s because of the strength of all of the conditions and burdens he places upon his own I-am that color every single thing about him and the way he thinks and acts.
When the I-am thinks it’s the body
The strongest belief that people have connected to the I-am is that the I-am is inseparable from the body. If you ask them who they are they point to their heart and say, “I am Bob” or “I am Lisa.” This belief of personage has caused more fear, terror, and suffering than anything else.
But the body is not related to the I-am, except as an erroneous idea or belief. It is this idea that makes a person filled with desires, fears, longings, anxiety, and all the rest. When the I-am thinks it is the body, then it runs around saying, “What about me?” Its desires are insatiable, and it is too often willing to fight and die trying to feed itself with possessions, riches, nutritionless food, vices, and associations.
The I-am knows better, but it is not free. Those who seek spiritual enlightenment need to know this first and foremost. The I-am is fundamental. All else is changeable—and the cause of endless cycles of illusion, pleasure, and suffering.