We care too much for words and their meanings, the images and emotions they evoke.
We're all familiar with them: The hurt and anger. The guilt, shame, embarrassment. The pride and desire. The greed, lust, envy.
We fuel each with rich golden attention as we remember or dream about experiences. To repeat or never to repeat, that is the objective.
From a young age, we do it so much, so often, and so frequently that we don't realize the self-identity we're automatically fabricating in the process.
The psychological tattoo darkens every time we let words hammer the ribbon of our mind.
Imagination birthed a species-defining tool for communication: language... and, in that unwitting Trojan horse, an unexpected visitor.
I.
What does "I" mean?
Not the body... that's my.
Not the mind... that's my too.
Not the soul either... anything objective is my. They're observed.
Hmmm. Who is "I"?
...
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We care too little for direct experience. We take it for granted.
Unfiltered at birth, the blissful brightness of life slowly dims... until it disappears beneath the wordy retelling of memories and dreaming of futures, anchored in the collage of images.
We lose touch with reality in the fog of who we thought we were and who we're trying to become.
Look gently at your own direct experience right now, as you read these words: Not your opinion of them, but the act of reading itself.
The letters and words morphing into images and meaning. Sensations, emotions, feelings, thoughts. Touching. Tasting. Smelling. Hearing. Seeing.
Pure experience is overflowing with meaning because it’s fresh, unfiltered, alive. That’s why we try to repeat it.
But memory is a copy. And repetition dulls the spark.
Yet, still… who witnesses all of this?
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We didn’t arrive with language. We inherited it. And with it, a scaffolding for separation.
The moment you learned "your" name, you began to forget your being.
Before the story. Before the image. Just being.
The image emerged: A self to build. A path to walk. A purpose to fulfill.
Singularity imagined as duality. Perfection divided into imperfections plus missions.
A journey of zero distance. Back to where you are. Right now.
Words painted the boundary. And we believed it defined "I."
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But if you trace back carefully, you’ll find no beginning. You’ll find no fixed point where “I” began. It happens now. In each action and reaction.
The earliest memory of it arising varies. For most, it's around age 2-3.
Just a blur of sensation, shaped by stories, stitched with language, rehearsed into “fact.”
Flowers stitched with thread make a garland... garland is another name for their togetherness, their wholeness.
The individual self you think you are?
It's a mirage. Like the garland.
Instead of flowers and thread... there's only This which we perceive, and That which we are.
Every word you clutch tightens the illusion of an individual, separate self. Each one fuelling an imagined identity that demands performance, comparison, and defence to overcome its imperfection and reach its goal.
All words are pointers, like a map to terrain. Symbolic shorthand. Impermanent. Unnecessary.
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This is the addiction few of us get to escape:
The constant addiction to become someone. To be seen. Understood. Remembered.
What in us longs so deeply to become?
Is it our image of a separate, imperfect self now... measured against another image... a future ideal... or nostalgic past?
A self continuously repainted by the words we feed it... in the silence of thought, or the sound of speech.
Every image is a mask. Even the highest spiritual ones.
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So, what is there when the words stop?
What was there before they started. What is here now and always will be.
You were there then, as you are now. As you will eternally.
You Are, before you know you are.
Not as silence: But something quieter still.
Not as emptiness: It's so full there is no brim.
It never speaks. It never leaves.
It was never born and cannot die.
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I'm not sharing concepts or idle poetic mysticism. It is direct, verifiable experience beneath the language that covers it.
Return there.
Let “I” fade.
Let names dissolve. Let memory drop. They'll return when needed. As they always do.
What’s left isn’t less. It isn't nothing. Those are images of words we've learnt in school, at home or at work.
It’s That which is You... complete, whole and perfect, before words created a story about being small and separate.
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Pause and reflect:
What would you be… if no one ever told you who you are?
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Practice:
When you catch yourself reacting to events, thoughts or anything that causes you suffering, ask gently:
Who is experiencing this?
Then, mentally drop everything you've been told about who you are. Do not search or wait for responses from your mind.
Say nothing, just listen.
Define nothing, just observe.
Remember nothing, just perceive.
What you're doing is simple: gathering your attention without words, without a goal.
We live inside clouds of language and distraction, but attention cuts through.
Let your attention be your companion and guide you to what waits beneath the story.
And yes, the paradox of using words to point beyond them is not lost on me.
