Is there an 'I' to be released?
My training suggests that there is no I to be released. Intellectually I understand this and during meditation I sometimes get a glimpse of this.
However, my daily experience is overlain with a sense of an “I”. This is experienced as my own set of needs and volitions, resulting in happiness and contentment when met or disappointment.
My I has it’s own ways of doing things, it’s conditioned responses and habits. These are based on previous experiences - my accessable memories and unconscious drives.
There is a sense of an existing I steering this body through the day, making decisions and putting things into action.
There is a sense of a particular and quite individual personality.
Is there yourself and those around you?
Intellectually I can see how I am connected to those around me in many ways. They give me ideas, food, culture and stimulate my responses. When I stop and reflect I can see how our experiences arise mutually, like a dance.
However, my desires and volitions also feel separate to those around me, as if driven by an inner force. These are sometimes in conflict with others and I think they would not accept my contrary volitions as being the same as their own.
Also, my body feels separate to those around me. I can see that we share process like digesting and transforming the produce of this planet and sharing the same oxygen, but my body feels discreet. I can experience the energetic quality of body in meditation and note that it does not correspond with my idea of what my body looks like, the edges can be fuzzy and contact with objects often fails to reveal a felt boundary.
What are you?
I might be a collection of habits and volitions, but I feel more solid than this. I often feel like a particular flavour of consciousness (my personality) manifesting in a discreet physical body.
However, when I look for the part of the body that contains this entity, I cannot tie it down to a particular point or centre.
I sometimes think of myself as awareness itself. This does not seem to have a centre either and the edge of this awareness cannot be found in my meditation practice. However, in meditation I usually experience a sense of a watcher – an entity within the experience.
I could be thoughts and emotions, but there is a sense of a subject experiencing these.