who is the you?

You know that you who you say you are? The one who went to bed age 4 woke up the next day and the one who grew to be 14 and went to bed later and the one who fell asleep last night, the one who woke up this morning. You know that person? One person?

The body has certainly changed, you don't fit in that old shirt any more and you're not quite as cute looking. When you doze off at night, is it you who dreams? The dreams seem mostly to have you as actor, a similar you to the one who fell asleep and the one who will wake up - where is that you though when you are in deep sleep? Is that you a fixed solid unchanging you? - Don't just read over these questions, answer them: Where is the you in deep sleep?

Who is in charge, who's breathing? Automation? Who is beating? Same one who beats all day? yes? Where are you though? Asleep? The you who is awake now, they sleep?

Is the you who you say you are a collection of ideas? A you who exists when the thinking mind is active and disappears when it sleeps? So by day you are a mind in a body in a world but at night you are a sleeping body in a bed and no mind, no ideas, no constructed self..

This you who you are so sure you are seems a little wispy, a little uncertain: at times it is a collection of qualities, ideas and beliefs, opinions and values - at other times it is an automated, unconscious, body - a sleeping body that has non of these mind qualities that live all day.

You won't say you are a body who wakes and sleeps, you will insist that these transient ideas that arrive on waking and disperse on sleeping are what define you. Well what an unreliable you you are! I can't rely on you to give me your wonderful you opinions on life when you are asleep, I can't get good information from you while you dream - I must come to you for those 16 hours a day when you are awake as you are only you then.

Who are you?

You're not that.

You're not that mind as it comes and goes. You'll insist also that you are not only the body as that lump of flesh is doing nothing. Who are you?

Behind all is "awareness" as who knows they were asleep? On wake your mind infers that it, the mind, must have been asleep, but the mind is wrong. There is a subtle and incredible state behind all states, one preceding mind, with no use for memory and so impossible for mind and memory to have as conceptual parts. When you are asked who you are your mind runs through memories and constructs a you, but this you is made of false and changing parts. Fall asleep and that you is gone so no matter how well the mind is convinced of itself, sleep, and it is proved wrong.

An ungraspable root exists. Ungraspable as it precedes all grasping, all doing all thinking, consigning, all sleeping, all waking, all being. This subtle core is the root of all and is awareness - as what can exist that is not held by awareness? Awareness precedes all division so this root - that we all must be - is one awareness. We are not the mind, the body, the automation, the ideas, the constructs, the changing, we are - awareness itself, and by this root all can be.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao