View source for Who Are You

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==Video==

<center><youtube>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1jWGULfMko</youtube></center>

== Narration ==
''[Begin narration]''

Greetings and welcome. My name is Ise.  Let’s start today by asking a big question, perhaps the biggest question of all.  Who are you?  Who are you as an individual?  Who are you as a person?  Who are you as a being?

This question is a big question, that is for sure.  It is one we have been asking ourselves as a species since the dawn of self-awareness AND it is one we all ask ourselves continuously throughout our lives.<ref>Images of life’s stages (childhood, adolescence, adulthood, etc.)</ref>

So, what’s the answer?

Well, despite the fact that humans have been thinking about this question since their beginning, these days when you ask you are offered only two rather dull, boring, and well-rehearsed choices:

* The science choice
* The church choice

'''The science choice'''<ref>Images of teachers, professors, and modern educators</ref> is that we are all evolving apes, struggling to move forward from some violent primordial past. According to this answer, we have a goal in life and that goal is to work really hard so we can rise above our monkey status and die the winner at the pinnacle of some eons-long evolutionary chain.

'''The church choice'''<ref>Images of churches and other Ideological Institutions</ref> is that we’re banished bad people, fallen angels, karmic rejects struggling in some kind of cosmic school towards forgiveness, redemption, and karmic clearance. If we want to graduate from this cosmic school, we have to do what we are told and<ref>Image of Ten Commandments</ref> work really hard. That way, we can ascend to the top of some cosmic spiritual ladder after which we can graduate, exit the birth cycle, and enter into some glorious heavenly paradise of higher existence.

And that’s it. That’s the two answers our parents, priests, professors, playwrights, and poets will generally give you when you ask.

When you think about it, these two answers are not even that diverse. Really, the two are the same, just with different characters and slightly different plot points.

In both, we are told we are not perfect.  In both, we are told to work really hard so we can win the proverbial race.  In both, there’s an end goal, a hierarchy of worth, a winner’s podium, and a perceived graduation.

When you think about it, there is really no choice here.

''[Begin text scroll on screen]''

There is, however, a third answer, a third choice. This third answer is definitely not mainstream, but it is available for your consideration.

This alternative is typically provided by people who have had powerful spiritual experiences and who consequently believe that we are not broken-down angels or evolving apes, but are instead powerful sparks of incarnated God Consciousness entering into a body in order to create a utopian playground for Spirit.

In this view, the purpose of life is not to work but to connect with your divinity, to empower that divinity, and to use that power to create environments and experiences where all of us, where all of life and not just some chosen few humans, can experience the bliss, love, joy, and creativity of Spirit.

That’s the real choice to the Big Question: “Who am I?”

* Perpetual ascending child/ape, or
* Incarnated spark of God Consciousness.

In the end, it’s your life and your choice. But choose wisely, because in case you haven’t noticed, time is running out fast.

For the [[Lightning Path]], my name is Ise. Welcome home.

''[End text scroll]''

== Inspirational Quotations ==
<blockquote>“I am the body” is the opinion of the fool. “I am body and soul” is the view of the scholar, while for the great souled, discriminating one, his inner knowledge is I am God.  — Swami Vivekacudamani</blockquote><blockquote>You are a distinct portion of the essence of God in yourself. Why then, are you ignorant of your noble birth? Why do you not consider whence you came? Why do you not remember when you are eating, who you are who eat; and whom you feed; do you not know that it is the divine you feed; the divine you exercise? You carry a God about within you.  — Epictetus</blockquote><blockquote>The image of God is found essentially and personally in all mankind. Each possesses it whole, entire and undivided… In this way we are all one, intimately united in our eternal image, which is the image of God and the source in us of all our life.  — Ruysbroeck</blockquote><blockquote>I looked for God I found only myself, I looked for myself I found only God.  — Rumi</blockquote><blockquote>Knowing the science of “I am God” is the science of bodies, but becoming “I am God” is the science of religions.  — Rumi</blockquote><blockquote>Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?  — 1 Corinthians 6:19</blockquote><blockquote>My Me is God, nor do I recognize any other Me except my God himself.  — St. Catherine of Genoa</blockquote><blockquote>We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul. The simplest person who in his integrity worships God, becomes God.  — Ralph Waldo Emerson</blockquote><blockquote>I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Muhammad and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It’s just that the translations have gone wrong.  — John Lennon</blockquote><blockquote>Father rejoice with me, I have become God… When I looked into myself, I saw God within me and everything he has ever created in heaven and earth… I am established in the pure Godhead, in which there never was form or image.  — Sister Catherine, *Treatise*</blockquote><blockquote>I am he Whom I love, and He whom I love is I: We are two spirits dwelling in one body. If thou seest me, thou seest Him, And if thou seest Him, thou seest us both.  — Hallaj Husain ibn Mansur</blockquote><blockquote>Behold but One in all things; it is the second that leads you astray. Benares is to the East, Mecca to the West; but explore your own heart, for there are both Rama and Allah.  — Saint Kabir</blockquote><blockquote>I am you; you are me  You are the waves; I am the ocean.  Know this and be free; be divine.  — Sri Sathya Sai Baba</blockquote><blockquote>He who knows his self knows God.  — Ḥilyat al-Awliya</blockquote><blockquote>The seed of God is in us. Given an intelligent and hardworking farmer, it will thrive and grow up to be God, whose seed it is; and accordingly, its fruits will be God-nature. Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God’s seed into God. God expects but one thing of you, and that is that you should come out of yourself, in so far as you are a created being and let God be God in you.  — Meister Eckhart</blockquote><blockquote>It has been… the contention of mystics in all ages that God Himself is the ground of the soul, and that in the deeps of their being all men partake of one central Divine Life. The facts, at any rate, all point in this direction.  — Rufus Matthew Jones</blockquote>'''Script Notes'''

[[category:scripts]]
[[category:ontology]]
[[category:bigquestions]]