Mirage

"I AM" is simply Life, aware of itself.  It is only when that "I AM"-ness gets mixed up with the particular experience, that we have a story of the individual, a story of the divided, the separated existence.  At some point we begin to question this story, this idea, this framework of existence.  When we ask "what AM I?" we begin to pull back the screen - we begin to pull back the curtain on that illusion of separated, independent existences.  Just to ask "what AM I?" is to reject our common idea that each thing comes into existence and later ceases to exist. 

The search, then, is to start from the unknown, to have put aside our present ideas and to start walking into the dark without a flashlight.  We are trying to find out where existence is split up, where it becomes divided.  We trace back the existences of each thing, trying to find any independence of existence in each.  Surprisingly, the deeper we look, we don't find evidence of separated existence in each but the same existence, the same IS-ness.  Ultimately we can only find one of THAT - that IS-ness - that FROM WHICH each of these "things" arise. 

It turns out that each thing is not it's own existence but a form-ation or pattern or expression of One existence, one essence, one indefinable, limitless-ness.  This is beyond existence or Being, beyond this or that, beyond any attempts to measure or define, beyond all attempts to put our finger on it, yet it is undeniable.  All "things" ARE that, in essence, and the only problem is that we give new existence to the patterns, we give the attributes of birth and death to that which really has no birth or death, except in that it appears and disappears to us.

That "I AM" is simply the light of knowing, knowing these appearances and disappearances - if we apply independent existence to each, we must also give that "I AM"-ness it's own existence - me vs. the world.  Yet if we see that these appearances are merely passing expressions of that one essence, like waves of one Ocean, then the necessity to divide yourself as separate of the world falls away.

Right this very moment, Life is aware of itself, through this capacity called "I AM" - Life is present and aware of itself as the sky, as the clouds, as the trees, as the singing birds, as the slight pang of hunger, as the racing thoughts... Life is aware of itself as the haunting flute in the song, as the feeling of butt in chair, the clang of pots in the other room. 

This present experience is a limitless capacity - an openness allowing any thing to arise - space for each expression.  It is only when we attempt to define these expressions that we must also give each thing a life of it's own.  And that's ok as long as we realize each thing is merely a mirage - a mirage we have to investigate.  Once we investigate it still appears as a mirage, only we no longer have the urge to quench our thirst, since we know it has no reality of it's own.