Reflection: What Is This?

Reflect on the sense of ‘I am’.

Notice how it is always associated with some state (I am tired) or notion (I am from Singapore) or action (I am going to New York in the summer). How does your particular ‘I am’ feel when it’s associated with a state, notion or activity? Sometimes positive, sometimes negative, sometimes confident and sometimes uncertain?

In summary, it’s changeable. Can you have any ‘I am’ that is independent of a changeable state or activity? If not, your sense of self is always changing. What then is your ‘I am’?

So ‘I am’ sits on very uncertain ground. Yet that’s the place where responses and decisions arise; and it is the target that everything strikes. Therefore without clear understanding, ‘I am’ is always prone to uncertainty, to being offended, to false assumptions and to impulsiveness.

Pause now around what is happening to your sense of self. Try to bring calm awareness to that experience, rather than grasp or reject it. Does this make the ‘me’ sense less vulnerable?

Also, notice what responses give you clarity, self-respect and warm-heartedness. Notice that they too come from a full awareness rather than a habitual ‘I’.

With time, you can affirm such responses and trust full awareness. Then perhaps there’s less need to make an ‘I am’ out of anything.

Does that offer more peace of mind?

This reflection by Luang Por Sucitto is from the book Meditation - An Outline, (pdf) pp. 47-48. Also: Meditation - An Outline (Audiobook)