Where does your self start and where does it end? This seemingly trivial question is often explored in non-dual meditation.
I’ll spoil it for you, though you should really do the exercise yourself sometime. The default, assumed answer is “I start inside my physical body and end just a few feet beyond it”. Right about where your “personal” space end. That’s where you end. No, you really end at the skin. Right?
Right?
Nah.
You’re everything. There is no start. No end. That’s the big reveal. Seriously, go try it out sometime. It’s a mindblower.
But I’m here to tell you now… it gets even weirder than that. It’s all the parts between “I’m this guy” and “I’m everything” that I’m interested in.
You’ve got selves on selves. Inside selves. Out there selves. Parts. Pieces. Higher selves. Lower selves. Past selves. Future selves.
We’ve got so many damn selves I don’t even know what to call them. Me. I guess.
And these guys are interacting too. And they’re all you.
I’m not talking about the non-dual, source consciousness, “we’re all one” punchline here. Yeah. Sure. That’s a given. It’s table stakes.
I’m talking about YOU. The selves I’m talking about aren’t “you” in a theoretical sense that you can’t relate to. You’re experiencing them. Like… right now.
You just didn’t realize how much you there is. How many you. Until you start looking.
How do I know?
Well, I started looking! And buddy, I’m losing count now.
As a personal academic exercise I’m going to try to create a taxonomy of self. This is based entirely and solely on my first-hand exploration, so the labels might not make a lot of sense, but listen to the description and the try it out. Try to feel for the self I’m describing. I bet you’ll find them. Err… you.
I find it so surprising that we still feel like we’re just one person. Stranger still, despite how many of you there is and how distinct they each are… we kinda are still one person. There’s a single unifying thread of consciousness throughout it all.
And that is the most You you there is. Don’t forget that as you read through these. That’s the one you are the most. Not “the entire universe”. Come on. You don’t associate at that level. I don’t anyway. This is the you I’m most interested in.
The one that is yours and yours alone.
Potential axes:
- Body
- from the smallest parts (cells) to the whole physical body
- the dead parts and the alive parts
- tool extended body (trash picker, car, etc.)
- target transposed awareness (flow states, video game characters, movie immersion, etc.)
- Networked body
- your atoms
- your body as a part of a greater ecosystem
- Social (many levels)
- Ancestry and genetics
- personal genome
- ancestral memories, traumas, etc.
- descendants
- epigenetic variance
- Time
- present (multiple)
- past and future (incarnated)
- the selves before and after incarnation
- Levels of consciousness
- higher selves
- your human selves (from the reptilian, to mammalian, to the pre-frontal cortex)
- Non-physical
- a light body
- emotional
- memories and wisdom
- parts (as in IFS) and sub-personalities
- field of “extra” sensory awareness
- Altered states and weird selves
- dream
- field of awareness
- unconscious
- Man, there’s so many weird ones here I don’t even know how to describe ‘em
It gets weirder still once you realize that many of these “selves” don’t even belong to you exclusively. Even some of the ones you really really thought were only yours.
If we rule those out, as well as the ones which are essentially just coloring, casting about or changing the shape of your conscious awareness (watching a movie, personal space, emotions, etc), you find that there aren’t too many fundamental selves. Most of what you considered “you” is actually borrowed or shared property.
Ruling out the time or “dimension” varied selves and the selves that are essentially just stuff you’re riding around in (body, light body, higher selves), we find that there is one — and as far as I can tell — only one you remaining.
It’s the you that belongs to no one and nothing else. It’s the only thing left before you get towards that singular, unified, undifferentiated field of consciousness — and we’re way above my pay grade at that point.
That’s You.
A soul, if you like. Whatever it is, it’s yours. It’s the thing that rides around inside all of your various other selves. Changing bodies, experiences, and perspectives like clothing. It does seem to change, and yet it never does.
I think that’s what we’re doing here. Uncovering, exploring, authoring who that core self is. We are the eternally evolving answer to a simple, but profound question.
Who am I?
Whatever your answer, that’s who you really are.