It's brisk on the patio this morning. Mid 50's. It is not so cold that a long-sleeved T-shirt is necessary to remain here, although it would feel better. For a while, at least. Yet the chill brings an added sense of life to mind. The sensation is on the edge of inducing goosebumps for both physiological and emotional reasons. It's a simple soft reminder of being present, connected, and influenced by nature. Somehow, we appear to draw a line between ourselves as a species or individual, with all of nature on the other side. Physically, in our core, we are matter that will ultimately return to nature. Our bodies do not simply vanish when we die any more than the molecules that were the rain do when they evaporate into the air as moisture. It's all so seemingly cyclical, transitory and temporary. And our thoughts, our emotional experiences, from fear, regret, loss, love…, they too ebb and flow as our understanding and perspectives shift and change. About the only thing that seems consistent throughout all of nature, in as much as one might perceive throughout one's life span, is our baseline of permanent consciousness. Awareness. As in, "I think therefore I am". Am what? What or who is "I"? Over the course of a lifetime, our beliefs, ideas, ideals, values, understanding, desires, and opinions change. Maybe subtly, and at times significantly, they are as flexible and fluid as our bodies. Consciousness, however, that overarching presence and awareness, detached from our opinions, our desires, our identity even, seems innately permanent. At least at the individual level. If that is the case, and the "I" that thinks and therefore "is", is an independent and consistently present state of awareness witnessing the transitory and impermanent presence and experiences of a physical and emotional existence that we know to be limited, what might become of that "I" when the physical ceases to exist? At least in the conventional form, we recognize it as a life.
