What Am I?

Our Experience of “Being”

• “You” are present during the day. You are the one who is looking without even realizing it. “You” is the unifying element in all of these experiences. All-day long, a steady stream of perceptions, emotions, and feelings flows to and from you.
  
• Are certain sets of characteristics ourselves? We suppose they are, but would they come to mind when asked to consider one’s self? “I’m smart, strong, gentle, fast, persistent, intense, timid, educated, black, Asian, funny, a good Christian, or whatever.
  
• Psychology is an important arena in which to look, but it’s not the primary issue that we need to address right now. Neither the psychological nor the philosophical domains are appropriate to our task here. If we want to experience something beyond the limits of our beliefs and knowledge, then we need to grasp what “something” is.
  
• In our culture, we just assume that what we are is what we identify as ourselves. This is a reasonable assumption, but it is mistaken. The value we place on knowing creates discomfort whenever we encounter what we do not know.
  
• We do not personally experience how we came to exist. What is all this that is experienced as ourselves, or as anything else? If I point to a chair and ask, “What is that?” you will probably say, “It’s a chair.” Now I know what to call it, but I could still ask, “What is a chair?” This informs me about its use, and so its relationship to me and my needs.
  
• “We do not perceive the nature of the chair, only the form, and name,”. “We search our minds for its name and how we can use it; in short, we “identify” it. This is certainly enough for our needs, and we go no further”.

Like the chair, we experience our “selves” as a conceptual, abstraction. We perceive ourselves in the same way we perceive the chair. We cannot claim that our ignorance is due to our ignorance of the chair; we are not aware of our nature either.

Paul Begala

• When it comes to the body, we still know a little more about it than we do the chair. “Some people claim to be nothing but a body, and some claim to be an entity within a body,” he says. “Most importantly,  the  aspect that we  call  our conscious self is  still  not  fully understood”
  
• It is fine that we do not know what a self is. We do not know what anything is. What is important is to recognize that we do not know. We cannot fully experience the nature of existence.
  
• In so many ways and on so many levels, we pretend to know. We do not experience the true or ultimate nature of reality, including ourselves. The unknown aspect we are talking about, by the way, is the most essential aspect of being. It is the essence and nature of existence itself.
  
• Philosophy is just like watching Gilligan’s Island and drinking beer. There seems to be nothing we can do about it, so what is all the fuss?

Identifying Ourselves

• Self-sense built upon presumptions that have distorted our identity from the beginning. In general, we live an experience in which we both know and do not know who we are at the same moment.
  
• Our assumption that what we identify as the self is indeed the self provides an experience of “knowing” who we are. We do not know how we came to exist or the nature of our existence.
  
• Can any of us say straight-faced that their inner workings are clear to them? We all seem to have some concern about what may be true of us deep down in hidden places. People have doubts regarding themselves, both existentially and psychologically.
  
• If we do not perceive something, we cannot identify it, nor identify with it. This is so because we do not know of the existence of whatever not perceived. Whatever we perceive and identify as the self is what we claim is “real”.
  
• What we know of ourselves is what we identify with in our field of awareness as ourselves. Our eyes can look at a chair, but cannot “be” the chair.
  
• Most of your sense of self is found in self-images, self-concepts, self-awareness and the specific and general sense you have of yourself. There may be a difference between what you call yourself and what you experience as yourself.
  
• “It is generally accepted in our culture that there exists a “person” within the body, an awareness that “is” one’s self. All that is perceived and identified as one appears to refer to a source from which these attributes come.
  
• For those who are not interested in abstract philosophical pursuits, this may seem irrelevant and headache-producing. It is important to grasp the foundations upon which we stand as a self and as a culture. The explanation is more difficult than the matter itself.
  
• When we look out of our eyes, they see what is in front of us. It is possible that we do not perceive ourselves, but only what comes into our field of perception. Do we perceive the self, or do we perceive what the self perceives?
  
• In recognizing something, the first order of business is to perceive it. All of these “perceptions” of ourselves are dependent on the concept. We cannot be expected to identify the true being of what we are if we do not “perceive” ourselves.

Our Conceptual Self-Experience

• The assertion that our self-experience is really just conceptual doesn’t sit well, does it? It is difficult to “experience” and even harder to “live”. A concept of something is not the thing itself.
  
• A concept is a representation, an “abstraction,” not “real” in the physical or objective sense. Concepts do not exist as physical objects but as mental formations. A concept of ourselves is not the same thing as a concept of ourselves.
  
• When we consider ourselves, what comes to the forefront are our currently perceived concepts of our self-identity. Any number of thoughts, feelings, and images can emerge, but they exist solely within the conceptual domain.
  
• Within our experience, and helping comprise our experience of ourselves, reside many taken-for-granted notions of self-concept, self-image, and self-identity.
  
• What dominates our experience overall is the concept we have of ourselves as a whole. Remember, concept mimics reality. A well-done full-fledged conceptual composition regarding ourselves will look, feel, and seem for the entire world very, very real.
  
• There is something quite unknown about our existence, also in this very moment. We simply do not know, that is a fact, but not an ailment.
  
• What is being “me,” or “I.” If we consider “what am I being?” or “where am I being,” we naturally assume this is the same thing as what is identified as ourselves. However, in so doing, we fail to acknowledge the difference between the thought of something and the thing it is as itself.
  
• In this very moment, our experience of not knowing what we are overwhelmed by what is perceived and “identified” as ourselves. If indeed we are not what we perceive, what is all stuff that we know, love, and call ourselves?