There is a popular system of looking into one’s self. It is the foundational inquiry where you dig into who and what you really are. You systematically toss out all that is temporary and get to the core of the self. Contrary to what many believe, though, it doesn’t say the body is illusion and the spirit is real. The foundational inquiry digs into the dualistic and the non-dual. It looks at what the self is when all the qualifiers are dismissed temporarily then looks at how the qualifiers are used to help define the self. The foundational inquiry reveals a physical form with a conscious awareness of the fact it exists and a being that is beyond the form. It seems to reveal two parts of one thing, but this is where the foundational inquiry gets particularly interesting as what is revealed is actually triune.
When you first begin to ask yourself who you are, you will describe yourself with your name, roles you have played, things you have accomplished or physical experiences you have had. You might also include the goals you have, ideas you have about your character or physical attributes. These are the things society has told us make up who we are. And these are things we have agreed to use as identification. There is no doubt we need identifying factors. That’s just part of life and because of them, we can say our story is our first recognizable self.
Then we move deeper into the inquiry and realize that every single bit of the story we have told about ourselves is a temporary thing so we question who we are without our story. Here we find the version that doesn’t have any borders or story. The intriguing thing here is that the self that seems to be behind the story is the same self that has the story. That conscious awareness is merely detached from the story. It is as Joseph Benner calls it The Impersonal Self. (That is an excellent book you can get through the affiliate link by clicking the name.) These two versions of the self make up two-thirds of the trinity, but what of the third?
Both of the parts of the self we have discussed so far are interior. There is the self we refer to any time we begin a thought with “I” which we follow with some qualifier and the detached self which doesn’t limit itself to form, experience or definitions. That brings us to the third which is the exterior.
Because our perceptual experience comes through the bodily form and so far no one has detailed a way to have lasting experiences of the self without the body, we can say that the self who has the name and history and the impersonal self which is detached are both joined to the body for as long as the storied self lives. Some of the greatest spiritual minds that have ever existed would point out that the body is not the self and while I won’t argue with their wisdom, I will say that this triune being of which I write must include that which we have been trained to see as ourselves if we are ever to understand more.
The foundational inquiry reveals we are an awareness that has a physical body and because of perceptions through that physical body, have stories to define our fundamental being, a triad which cannot be separated from itself and continue to exist.
You have ideas about who you are. You have a conscious awareness that observes the ideas and witnesses them. Then you have the body that has made all of this possible.