What is I?

So many of the masters in spiritual teaching point to this as the most important question: What is this thing called "I"?


We may have great factual knowledge but not know who it is that knows. We may have great insight and understanding but not know who it is that understands.


It's highly likely that much of what we think of as "me" is stuff we've inherited or adopted from other people - attitudes, opinions and behaviours from our parents, other influencers and role models. I am constantly surprised when one of my (sometimes strongly held) opinions and beliefs aren't really mine at all. They're ideas I picked up along the way. Yet it is so easy to identify with them and believe that they are "me."


The "I" is reached through self-observation. When we look at ourselves we begin to see what masquerades as the self but isn't the self  - and in this way we move closer to knowledge of the "I." We get to see the one who is doing the watching.


It was only when I started to observe myself that I began to see the truth - that much of what I considered to be me or to belong to me was something I had added to myself. It wasn't really me. I also learned that I subtracted from myself too, especially when I tried to


My idea of me is constantly filtered - mostly by my fears and my desires, but also by my beliefs and my cultural conditioning. In some ways I don't have real sensations but rather react to images formed in my mind. 


With an awakened spirit I can ignore the filters and have a real experience, engaging with the world in the here and now. This is when and where we make contact with our true self, openly and honestly. It is sometimes referred to as the Buddha-nature -  the true self that manifests itself when we lose the ordinary self, or see through the things that we have attached to ourselves, or come to believe are really us. In Buddhism when we can penetrate to the true self we gain enlightenment.