It is entirely unclear if such thing as an entity as me exists.
It seems like there is, in an everyday way.
Everyone, mostly everyone, thinks there is.
But when I look into it, it seems very uncertain, slippery, shady.
It’s easy to make people, ourselves, into entities, into a who.
Even animals I can make into a who.
Even objects.
We make everyone into a who.
Even ourselves.
But there does seems to be a who,
in the sense of a doer,
a willer,
an observer,
a watcher.
The one making an effort.

Some say there is a who, all the way down there,
like a real self,
a true self,
a higher self.
What’s a higher self doing all the way down there?
Deep within is the higher self, they say.
A lower self?
Still, the notion of entity seems to go unquestioned.

The old question goes: Who am I?
Yet that question is riddled with assumptions.
Or if not assumptions, implications.
Of an I and a who.
A being.
Maybe that’s the point,
that the inquiry of ‘who am I?’ undoes the notion of a who and an I.

Or, is the doer not an entity at all but just an effort?
A tension.
Does an effort need a someone to be making an effort?
A force doesn’t necessarily need an instigator, a director.
Is it so for us?

None of this selfness is clearly so.
I seem to only exist in the eyes of others
who think they exist.
They think therefore they are.
The saying: I think therefore I am.
Does that mean thinking is proof of a thinker?
Or does it mean thinking creates the thinker,
and that without thought there is indeed no me?
I take the latter.
But I am not sure he meant it this way.
Or has been taken this way.
I haven’t even read the context in which he said or wrote these words.
What was the inquiry, the line of thinking?

A me may be useful to operate in this world,
to get by, to interact.
But it might not be essential.
And in the interior world it doesn’t seem helpful or very useful.
I want this, I want that.
I think of myself,
a heck of a lot.
I think of myself this way, that way,
I like myself,
I hate myself,
what do others think of me?
Et cetera.
No wonder the idea of a true self is so widespread.
It’s very appealing.
That below the selfish self is an real me,
unspoilt and pure and clean.
We know nothing of this.
It is a belief, a comforter.
While believing in a true self
things remain the same.
We are happy to say things like
‘part of me wants to…’
and
‘on one level I feel…’
and have no qualms about voices in our heads.
Unless too disturbing.
Within all these voices, who is the me, what is the continuity?

Maybe it’s a trick of memory.
Memory remembers a feeling of me
yesterday
and recognises this feeling again today.
And, aha, I exist.
Sure you exist:
There’s a body, a nervous system,
a brain and whatnot.
You exist as a centre.
Yet psychologically,
do you?
Or were we taught that we do?
And haven’t unlearned.
Yet.