What color is the screen?
Picture this: you're in a movie theater watching an engaging film. The plot is well-scripted, the acting superlative, soundtrack superb. You're deeply engrossed. Then the projector freezes on an image of clear sky. Nothing but an azure expanse of atmosphere comprising the still frame.
What color is the screen?
Your eyes report blue. The brain certainly agrees.
But of course the screen has no color. It's merely a frameless framework upon which the movie is projected. The screen has no inherent properties. Nor is it affected by the drama it so pristinely portrays. The screen simply is. Without which there could be no experience; no excitement, no emotion, no time.
Our true self is much like this movie screen. An eternal, infinite vastness of pure is-ness, otherwise known as Divine Love. Upon which the experience of life seemingly unfolds. For linguistic clarity we'll refer to this true self as Self to contrast it with the body-based sense of me, or lowercase self.
Like the theater screen, Self has no intrinsic characteristics. Its existence serves as the backdrop for projection. Unlike the screen, Self is aware. You, as this Self, know that you know yourself. You are the knowing, while self is the known.
We, as selves, are convinced that our body, thoughts, and emotions are our identity. If asked, "Who are you?" we'll generally reply with a name and any other descriptors that seem relevant to the question. "How are you?" unfailingly elicits some expression of emotional content. I'm fine. I'm great. I'm not doing so well.
Yet when deeply pondering "Who am I?" the picture gets a bit fuzzier. Who am I? Am I this body with all its peculiarities? Am I my mind with its various thoughts and feelings and memories? Am I more than this?
Such contemplation contains its own closure. The very essence that is aware of a body and mind must be beyond such limited and limiting constructs. Awareness is the knowing; body and mind the known. Your real Self is this awareness. The screen upon which body and mind play out their drama.
When we forget our true nature, limitless awareness seems to contract, confined within the narrow boundaries of bodily experience. This vast, fathomless Self appears to shrink into a finite, separate entity - a "me" with a particular name, form, and story.
Yet this contraction is merely a mistaken thought, a temporary forgetting of our true, boundless nature. As we read in A Course in Miracles:
You are [infinite Oneness]. All else but this one thing is folly to believe. In this one thought is everyone set free. In this one truth are all illusions gone. (W-pI.191)
Join me in Thursday's class where we'll explore the journey from pain to peace through practices for expanding awareness beyond the constricting borders of bodily identification. I look forward to seeing you then.