What’s my fundamental nature?
A FEW LAYERS
This is a question with a few different layers.
One is that I can only say something for certain about how it appears to me.
Another is that I can find it in my own direct experience. I can notice my nature. My nature can notice itself. It can become a lived and visceral noticing. My human self can transform within that noticing. And so on.
And there is also a logic to it. This article is mostly about that logic.
THE LOGIC OF WHAT I AM
I am a conscious being. At least, that’s how we tend to see it.
a) I am consciousness
Any conscious being must, to themselves, BE consciousness. Consciousness cannot be some kind of appendix. It has to be central to what I am.
If I am primarily an object, there would be no way for me to experience anything.
To myself, I have to be consciousness.
b) This human self is a kind of appendix
And if I AM consciousness, then this human self is a kind of appendix. It’s an object that comes and goes within the consciousness I am, just like anything else.
c) The world happens within and as what I am
The world, as it appears to me, happens within and as the consciousness I am. Again, there is no other way for it to happen.
d) Capacity
Even more fundamentally, I have to be capacity to all of it.
I have to be capacity for consciousness and everything it forms itself into, all the shifting appearances I call world, others, this human self, and so on.
e) It’s possible to notice
It’s very likely possible to notice this and live from and within this noticing.
At least, that’s how it looks from reports from many apparently sincere individuals throughout time and across cultures.
In my case, that’s also what happened to be revealed to me when this human self was sixteen, without any prior interest in or knowledge about this topic.
f) That noticing will transform this human self
Also, it seems logical that this noticing will invite in a deep transformation of this human self and its life in the world. It seems inevitable, if the noticing goes over time and is visceral. It’s also what we see from reports from many throughout time and across cultures.
EASIER TO FIND THAT LOGIC WHEN THE NOTICING IS HERE
It is, of course, easier to find this logic when the noticing comes first, when the logic happens within the context of my nature noticing itself.
And I am also very aware that this logic is not the most stringent.
It comes as a reflection of the noticing that’s here, and it’s not the kind of apparently foolproof logic you can find in mathematical equations.
In that sense, it’s almost a kind of poetic logic.
I am sure there is a way to make this logic more like a mathematical equation, and I can probably go in that direction myself if I put attention there, but it will likely never be a kind of mathematical equation that would appear universally convincing, and that’s how it should be. That’s how this world is set up.