You are not 'you'. You Are You!

"You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop" - Rumi

I used to fear death. I used to fear annihilation, and I used to fear hell. I used to fear God and I used to fear other people. But thanks to the ideas suggested in this blog, not any more (not as much anyway!). 

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Einstein said “The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self." I think what he and others echoing this same message are saying, is that the root cause of suffering is what he called the delusion of separation - the illusion that 'you' are a separate being - a body, mind or soul, completely separate and independent from every other body, mind and soul, and from the rest of creation itself. 

But as Einstein suggested, You are not 'your' body, mind, or soul. You Are The Body, Mind and Soul (capitalised). You are not 'you' - You Are You! 

The little 'you,' the you with a lowercase 'y', is the delusion of separation, or ego, that we are caught in for the majority of our lives. This 'you' is 'your' mind, 'your' thoughts, 'your' feelings, memories, experiences, roles, titles, names etc. But this 'you' is the delusion. Spiritual teachers throughout history tell us that the delusion of the little 'you' - the tiny individual separate from All That Is - is the only source of fear, and therefore the only source of suffering in our world.  It is the perceived need to protect and promote the little you that creates worry, anxiety, and anger. It is what causes violence towards others and even violence towards ourselves. It presents as greed, intolerance, and judgement. 

But the little 'you' is but the tiniest fraction of the real You. The real You is not separate in any way from the rest of creation. The real You is creation. Throughout history, it has been traditional to assign capital letters to the divine, either as a mark of respect or as an acknowledgment of ultimate sacredness. And thus when I use a capital 'Y' for You, I am talking about the real You. You Are not the little you. You Are All That Is. You Are One with the Infinite, Eternal, and Divine Cosmos.  

The real You cannot ever die and cannot ever suffer. As Jon Kabat-Zinn says, 'he who dies before he dies, does not die when he dies.' When the little 'you' dies into the real You, you realise the real You is infinite and abundant, overwhelming, Peace, Love, Belonging, and Joy.

I'm not suggesting I've done this, by the way! But I'm getting closer. In our current state of evolution, the little you and the little me will keep being reborn day in day out, and everyday fears and sufferings will continue off and on - and it has to. While painful, the delusion of separation is also a necessary one - we couldn't function as 'individual beings' without it. To complement Einstein's quote above then, Wes Nisker says in the film Planetary: "The spiritual path is not to eradicate your personality, but to expand the context in which it lives, and gain wider identities." 

The game we call 'this life,' - the dance between the real You and the little you - is a magnificent one, it's just a bit skewed at the moment in favour of the little you! But as spiritual teachers tell us, it is our evolutionary fate that as we continue to awaken more and more to the real You, and the real Me, that the reality of love, peace, belonging, and joy will become more and more our default state. 
 
There's not so much science in this post and it's a bit more out there so I'd love to hear what you think - please comment with your thoughts.

Love and peace and Namaste,
Mark