Moving from I to We

Q - Who am I?

You believe yourself to be what you call 'I, me, and mine'. This concept is very powerful within you. It began very early in your life, when you recognised yourself as an individual state of being. Enquiry into that I leads to a deeper understanding that behind that feeling of 'I-ness' is a greater reality. But I believe their is also a concept that arose before the I concept. This is out of keeping with some thought which holds that we began with the I concept. However I believe that the first concept formed; the fundamental label that as infants we first put upon the world, and beneath which lies ultimate reality, is the 'We', the state of we-ness. As babies we would have recognised our deep interelation with others, as the essential of life. The family, which is the baby's world is essential for the baby's survival. 'We-ness' at this stage is far more important than 'I-ness'.

Take a moment to feel the meaning of the word 'WE'. Feel it. Throw open those connections to the the 'other', which is the opposite of 'I'. We: friends, family, pets, those you have known, colleagues, aquaintances, strangers, those you have never met, animals, insect, the inanimate. What to you is 'We'. This feeling of we-ness, wherever you choose to delineate it, is the first feeling, before even identity. It is the rawest state of being, the original, and the best path to the ultimate reality, that existed before concepts came to rule and dominate our existence.

Q - If We-ness was such a perfect state of being then why did I-ness come to dominate?

We began life feeling ourselves as WE, as part. Once the concept of We had been established in our minds however, then the binary processes that our minds use to create meaning came into play. When our state of we-ness altered, for example we were left alone, shouted at, were hungry and not fed, we had a state of being that was not in keeping with our concept of we-ness. Unweness, if you will. This unweness created the concept of I and Other, and a road into the slow death of conceptual identity began. We took refuge in 'I', for surely it would be an assured state of being that we could control.

We need to recognise the 'I' as no more than a concept, that is paired with 'Other'. Then we will begin to glimpse a strange fluctuating, dynamic state of being; a sometimes strnage and wonderful place, even frightening at first, but the place where genuine, happiness and enlighten ment can take place.