Can You Feel It?

By Jayden Kyryluk

 

"What we think, we become. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world." - Gautama Buddha 

 

Nothing I have done is who I am. This self-image I have so strongly built up for myself through relationships, travels, experiences, accomplishments, and interests do not even equate to a particle of dust when the true drop of my being is found in the ocean of cosmic consciousness. This ego mind clings so hard to the self-imposed, to the created self and outer public image. It believes that is what it is. Who I am. 

 

The harder I try to cling to the image of myself and build it into something I may believe in, the further I travel away from my true being. I can feel it. Can you? The more we search for who we are in external things and satisfactions, the further we distance from the true definition of ourself found within. I look back at my actions in building up an image of who I want to look like rather than who I really am as a father looks down on his child making an innocent mistake. 

 

Within me a simple phrase appears from the depths, "I am not who I have made myself to be." There is an utter pain yet an immense freedom in feeling that sentence. Not hearing, not reading, but feeling it. It is rare indeed, yet even so, the next task is to realize it. To continue to search for that inner voice in which that utterance appears from. To witness the child’s foolish ways in building himself up to be something he is not. It really is the drama of life to realize that which you are not. A loss of identity inevitably begins with pain but always ends in gain. To open doors you never thought were there and a chance to become closer to that expansive drop found within. 

 

To lose one’s sense of self is not a contraction but an expansion; a necessary step in finding union with all beings. To find oneself in another is to expand and not contract. It may feel like we are losing something to realize that which we are not, but in losing, we gain a sense of that which we are.

 

In losing ourselves, or rather, the person we thought we were, it becomes easier to feel that drop within us also in animals, trees, and the wind. In all that surrounds us. Ego loss should not be identified with fear, but a certain sense of expanding bliss in seeing oneself in the mirror of another’s spark. In what way is this not an expansion? The Buddhists, who have long been inner explorers, have a word called Tathata, meaning "I Am That" or "As-Is-ness"; it represents things exactly as they are right now, independent of the labels, interpretations, or narratives we place on them.

 

So what really is underneath the narratives we place on ourselves? As we continue this path and who we make ourselves out to be fades, so too does the distance to our final goal. Onward we go, deeper into ourselves. I can feel it. Can you?

 

Originally written at Dzongkhul Monastery, Naropa Cave, in the Zanskar Valley on April 25, 2026