Me and Myself
Edited from the Gold Coast Talk, 13 December 1993.
I make a distinction between myself and me. I say that myself is not me – thank God. I define ‘me’ very simply. I say that ‘me’ is in everybody’s immediate experience of their own reality inside their body. I say that ‘me’ is the tenderest, sweetest, deepest place inside the body that your intelligence can reflect upon.
I say that ‘me’ is sometimes felt as love. Me - inside the body hearing these words – is sometimes felt as joy, sometimes as peace, sometimes as rightness or sometimes as sheer clarity with no feeling at all. Clarity being ‘no problem’. There is no problem in me, no unloving, no lack of joy, because ‘me’ - that tenderest, sweetest, deepest part inside the body, that youngest and yet most mature place inside - has no opposite.
All over the world the people have left me. Their intelligence has been distracted from me by religious beliefs, by the many distractions of the scientific mind, by all sorts of beliefs and opinions scattered around the world like confetti. This glorious, tender, clear, authoritative place - me - does not depend on any belief, any opinion. It is immediately accessible to the intelligence hearing these words. But you, the people, have left me. You have preferred to put your intelligent reflection on yourself. And as soon as you do that you have self-consideration. As soon as you are in self-consideration, you are self-ish, which means narrow, cut-off, isolated, problematical.
The whole world is focused on itself and the self has opposites. My self is feelings. My feelings are emotional. They have opposites. My self gets depressed and then there’s some good news and my self gets excited and elevated. But as what is excited or elevated has to ‘come down’, it’s not long before my self makes a problem of my life; for its name is problem, fear and trouble. So I go down into my self again and know depression or guilt or worry, fear, jealousy or missing out. Or I know wanting and trying; and all the tensions that creates inside my beautiful, natural body, which is otherwise aligned with me, the tenderest, sweetest place inside the body.
The good news is that myself is not me!
The Film of Feelings