the thing in the mirror

Who am I?
Who wants to know?

The Buddhists (and others) would say there is no self. We're just an amalgam of opinions and emotions, habits and fears, all housed in a temporary body that's an ever whirling expression of cells and DNA.

I recently watched the pilot of Caprica, a sci-fi prequel to the fantastically re-imagined Battlestar Galactica. In the show, a precocious girl discovers a way to create a 'conscious' virtual replica of herself by programming all her memories, life experiences, preferences, dislikes, etc. into an artificially intelligent probability machine. I love that idea.

Personally, I tend to think of the self as the Witness, the conscious observer that encounters experience through body, sense, thought, emotion, but is not any of those things.

This self is different from the ego, which I suspect is really just a subtle (or not so subtle!) mental construct. Not conscious itself, the ego is simply reactive, programmed to perpetuate itself at all costs. I imagine there's something reptilian in the ego, something primal and evolutionary. A hyper-vigilant will that marks turf, keeps tabs, and is wholly geared toward defending identity.

Identity, of course, is what we fear to lose. Identity is the set of physical, emotional, and mental parameters that have helped us get where we are today. It's our favorite color, our fourth grade teacher, a favorite flavor of ice cream, a scar on the chin. Identity is detritus, story. Identity is the residue of a life lived.

Recently I've taken to narrating my life silently to myself:

He gets in the shower. His mind races with thoughts of the upcoming day. What's on his calendar for the week? Don't forget to deposit that check! He rubs shampoo into his scalp. The shower needs a cleaning. He'll do that this weekend, he decides, as he tugs at his cock and turns his back to the spray.

This simple exercise helps me get some perspective on my existence. I see how plausible it is that I'm a complete work of fiction!

My favorite quote: "The Universe is made of stories, not atoms."

Our day-to-day existence is an elaborate construction of story lines. A scaffolding of data collected and cross referenced. To penetrate these stories, peel them back, and encounter the fresh pow of here and now--that's some serious magic.

Raw desire, soul-shattering emotion, melancholy, and motive--all arising from karmic cause and effect--experienced as weather rolling across the sky by naked consciousness prone in the wheat field below. A sublime piece of cosmic theater.

Who am I?

That's for you to know and me to find out...