I. Self. Me.

How would you describe yourself in a few short phrases? Try it now.

Did you come up with labels? Did you describe yourself as fitting into a group - your sex, race, job, religion? That's what we mostly do - we describe ourselves with labels that others will recognise. And in doing this we demean ourselves; we become reduced almost to a commodity and lose sight of the fact that in "here" is an amazing person.

Maybe you've written something descriptive about yourself: your likes/dislikes, your behaviour or what motivates you. In which case you have been observing yourself -  and if you have included character defects or flaws in your description, there's real hop that you have been observing yourself honestly.

In observing ourselves, we have "I" watching "me" (which idea alone is worth pages). Humans do this and seemingly is the only animal to do this. Which might be the problem with our living life on life's terms. Because, most of the time we watch ourselves in a worried, censorious way. We worry what we might look like, what others might think of us. And in doing this we become attached to our thoughts and we start to identify with them. And we start to get dishonest and form a mental image more like the ideal us rather than the real thing.

Mystical teachings point towards watching. We start with things - like the breath or a mantra. Then we can move on to watch our thoughts. And then to move on to watch the thinker.

Knowing the "I" is a bit like knowing God, in that I can give you reams of description of what is "not God." In the Cloud of Unknowing we are told:

Do not suppose that because I have spoken of darkness and of a cloud I have in mind the clouds you see in an overcast sky or the darkness of your house when your candle fails…. When I speak of darkness, I mean the absence of knowledge. If you are unable to understand something or if you have forgotten it, are you not in the dark as regards this thing? You cannot see it with your mind's eye. Well, in the same way, I have not said "cloud," but cloud of unknowing. For it is a darkness of unknowing that lies between you and your God.

 So, I believe that in a similar way there is a cloud of unknowing that lies between "I", the observer, and "me", the observed. There is an obvious list of what the "I" isn't. It's not my body, not my thoughts, not my feelings. Most of all, it isn't any external part of me. These are all changeable and so cannot be part of the "I."

The "I" transcends suffering and gives the truth to that phrase that seems glib and improbable at first sight: Pain is unavoidable. Misery is optional. I learned the truth of this saying from a man I met regularly who told me he was off to the Himalayas for a three month retreat with Tibetan Buddhists. From what I described it was clear that this would involve at least two days' walking (Almost climbing); I commented on his fitness as he had a pronounced limp which I knew was the result of severe arthritis. He laughed and replied "Oh, that's no problem. The pain is only in my knee." He didn't need to finish: "not in my head.." Pain is bearable - we can live with it - while we don't let it become a source of worry. My own experience with gout bear this out. And it leads to the conclusion that all my suffering is caused by my identifying with my "self," with something I imagine to be inside me or identify outside myself.

After a term of studying Psychosynthesis, I was asked to write a "target" for myself to encompass my learning on the course. I wrote Today, I will be me, no more, no less. This gave me a great focus for discovering what this "I" actually was, so that I could attempt to be this me

So in observing ourselves, we don't identify with what we find. The "I" leaves whatever we find in the "me" alone and just observes.