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Identity

Actual

‘I’ Cannot Get Rid
of ‘Me’

‘I’ Does Not
Really Exist

Can I Disappear
the ‘I’ and the ‘Me’?

‘I’ and Being

Used by the speaker or writer referring to himself or herself. A self. The subject or object of self-consciousness, the ego.Oxford Dictionary

In fact there are three I’s and only one is actual –

  1. normal I – A psychological and psychic entity residing within the flesh and blood body comprising both the ego (who you think you are) and the soul (who you feel you are).

  2. spiritual I – A Grand identity wherein the ego is not eliminated, but escapes into a massive delusion (ego-trip) of grandeur and Divine Splendour, Oneness and Immortality, while the soul is given free reign to indulge in psychic powers and blissful imagination.

  3. actual I – What I am is this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware. The first person pronoun is not used here to refer to any psychological or psychic identity because in actuality there is nothing other than the physical – this carbon-based life-form being conscious. There is a consistent quality of perfection – an unvarying purity. Here is an on-going innocence, an ever-fresh magnanimity, which ensures a nobility in character that is vitalized as an endless benevolence – all effortlessly happening of its own accord. Thus probity is bestowed gratuitously – dispensing forever with the effort-filled vigilance to gain and maintain righteous virtue. One is free to be me as-I-am, benign and beneficial in disposition. One is able to be a model citizen, fulfilling all the intentions of the idealistic and unattainable moral strictures of ‘The Good’: being humane, being philanthropic, being altruistic, being beneficent, being considerate and so on. All this is achieved in a manner any ‘I’ could never foresee, for it comes effortlessly and spontaneously, doing away with the necessity for morality and ethicality completely. One is swimming in largesse.

The Thesaurus particularly sums up ‘I’ very well. ‘I’ can only have a subjective sense of the actual world, for ‘I’ look out through these eyes, ‘I’ hear through these ears, ‘I’ touch with this skin, ‘I’ taste with this tongue, ‘I’ smell through this nose – for ‘I’ am located inside my head. The little man, or woman, inside the head who is pulling the levers and desperately trying to control ‘the show’. Given that ‘I’ exist inside my head (and heart), ‘I’ can only have a subjective view of the world and certainly not a direct sensate experience of what is actual.

The spiritual view is that ‘I’ as the thinker is the issue and then one is extolled to actively encourage ‘me’ as the feeler to run rampant. My experience when I started to run with the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ was that it was feelings which continually and relentlessly emerged as my experiencing.

Thus ‘I’ needed to feel grateful for being here in order to transcend the underlying feeling of resentment at having to be here at all, and ‘I’ needed to feel love in order to bridge the gulf that ‘I’ as an alien entity feel between ‘me’ and other human beings. ‘I’ feel compassion for others as a way of being able to indulge my own feelings of sorrow and ‘I’ feel indignant when someone else suffers injustice as ‘I’ really like a good fight. ‘I’ am ever fearful of what others think of me or feel about me, ‘I’ am ever on guard, ‘I’ am ever ready to defend myself against having ‘my’ feelings hurt. ‘My’ ploys are many in the battle with others – confrontation, withdrawal, snide remarks, denial, a bit of undermining, a bit of cutting down to size, a bit of a whinge to someone else – ‘I’ can be as cunning as all get-out in these battles, if need be.

‘I’ readily believed in the spiritual beliefs and wallowed in the blissful feelings as a welcome escape from everyday reality and the promise of an after-life was poetry to ‘my’ ears and salve to ‘my’ heart. ‘I’ felt deep-down that there was no hope for Humanity and no hope for me, and from these feelings were born a desperate belief in an after-life as an escape from the despair of life on earth. The list goes on and on as ‘I’ fight it out for survival with others in a grim world, and ‘I’ will ultimately do anything to stay in existence. ‘I’ am rotten to the core – the combination of animal instinctual passions and an ability to think and reflect make the human animal not only malicious but cunningly malicious. This lethal combination allows the human species not only to wage wars, inflict genocide, rape, murder, torture and pillage to a scale unprecedented in any other animal species but allows for the psychic warfare and power battles, blatant denial, fantasy escapes, corruption, deception and deceit that is endemic in all human interactions.

But there is a third I – and that is what the actualist seeks. An end to the ‘who am I’ and ‘why do I exist’ questioning, the recognition of the fact that I do exist as a mortal flesh and blood body and the experiential discovery of what I am.

The spiritual search will never bring peace on earth. ‘Self-immolation is the only solution.

Freedom from the Human Condition – Happy and Harmless

© The Actual Freedom Trust