the wrapper

One thing that's kind of hard to get your mind around if you aren't having the experience of it on a regular basis and really, who does, is the idea that we all share a self. This isn't something that the thinking mind can understand. But it can misunderstand it mightily and I thought I'd try to correct some of the misunderstandings, or at least point them out. Come at it through the back door, so to speak.

The idea of the individual self is looked upon with disdain in spiritual circles. One is not supposed to have an individual self and perhaps people try to understand that the individual self doesn't exist and try to pretend that they themselves don't exist... I don't know. There seems to be a lot of variety of interpretation around this point.

But the truth is that the "I Am," MY I am, and YOUR I am, are the same. We have the same experience of I Am. Not the same in detail or coloration or nuance perhaps, but at the root, yes, the exact same experience. This is a shared self. As has been said, there is only One of us here.

And yet the glory of this experience of oneness is that YOU are not diminished by the understanding. You are partaking of the shared self completely, and yet the self you identify with as a human—the wrapper—the body—with all its wacky intimate tendencies and habits—that you, although temporary and illusory, also exists as a perceivable self. Only THAT self is not real.

It's not real, and yet it's there, like the you in a dream. It's there, and yet what is saying "I am" is not that. Not the wrapper. Not the body. What is saying I am is the same as everyone else's self.

Rather than being kind of a bummer, or a feeling of loss, this understanding of oneness is accompanied by an increased, rather than decreased, feeling of existence. You exist in a larger gestalt, rather than the tiny isolated one of the body-you. Believing that the individual body-you is all you are is painful.

On the other hand, experiencing the big You, the shared You, is a riotously joyous experience. It's a feeling that your entire nature, everything you are made of, is good news. It's not a somber spiritual experience that only a few can have. It's your true nature and mine. Everyone's. The same.

Yet the little "yous"—the human wrappers with all their funny differences—are not bad. There's nothing bad there. It's like a virtual self—like an experiment—and there's great beauty in it. It's very poignant. It's a wrapper around a tiny bit of what you actually are. It's like we are pretending that we are only our big toes.

And as this motley collection of big toes we have the opportunity to love each other. Quelle surprise! It's a wonderful thing. Of course, if we remembered Who we truly are, we'd love each other automatically. But the forgetting gives it an interesting twist. The forgetting adds suffering into the mix. A very interesting and awful twist.

Comments

[Simon]

The difficult thing about reading posts like this - and I enjoy all of them, but these "makes me really think" ones more than most - is digging about to retrieve the initiative to get back to whatever mundane tasks my wrapper has set out for itself afterwards. Preparing for that meeting tomorrow is pretty important to somebody, but in the grand scheme of things? Not so much.

[marian]

Aye, Simon. Digging about to retrieve some initiative is the story of my life!

[Hal]

Reading this blog brings to mind two things. First is how the word Love is often used as a verb. I have long known that I do not love anybody and it wasn't until I had studied the Course for a few years that I finally understood why I didn't love anyone. Its because Love IS, it is not a verb. You are either Love or you are not. To experience Love for one another is to experience communion between the minds, and thus come to know Love as yourself, the true person that you are. Whenever I try to love someone I have nothing but an empty feeling, a blank, a void. I seem to get closer to Love if I simply search for it within me.
Second, I intuitively know that I am one and not an individual but I have yet to experience this oneness. I think this may be because I am trying to experience oneness instead of allowing it. Does allowing let go of individualness which brings us to Oneness? I don't know for sure, but I do find it irritating that others have experienced it and I have not. I find it irritating because I feel left out, which is purely my ego's reaction to keep me off the subject and make me not want oneness.