From Enlightenment Intensive participants: 

"I am this"

 I was working on the question “What am I?”  On the final day, not long before the last sitting, I somehow opened up fully to the question.  Instead of noticing, as I usually did, a certain frustration that I really didn’t know what I was, I found myself really wondering about the question.  I honestly didn’t know what I was and I wanted to know.  And somehow in the last dyad before dinner, some shift happened in my awareness just before the dyad was over.  Stunned, I stumbled to the door of the room we were sitting in and out on the porch which overlooked the Oakland hills.  Suddenly I was overcome with joy and grief.  I knew what I was without even having words for what that was.  All I could say is “I am this!”  It was like being reunited with my soul.  I remember thinking, “All these years and I never knew,” while at the same time noticing how familiar the feeling was.  “I have always been this.”  The emotions overwhelmed me.  Joy and grief, love and sorrow, tightly entwined.

 As I looked around I “saw” that “what I am” is everywhere and everything.  What I saw astounded me.  It was like seeing things before there were words to describe them – things were still what they had always been – plants, houses, hills, cars – and yet when I looked at them they were completely new and I could see that they too were what I was.  They too were ‘this.’  ‘This” is everywhere and everything and in that recognition was the sweetest and most powerful love that I had ever experienced.  How can I not love what I am? - J.S., computer programmer

A Christian awakening

 I suddenly grasped hold of the question and for a brief moment possessed the answer. The intuitive flash, the direct experience of who I am. It came and went but with so much power I was taken over by its energy for a number of hours... for me it is an acute Christian experience. I believe I discovered, for the first time; the meaning of St. Paul's words, "I live, now not I but Christ lives in me." That momentary flash was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and where this leads I have no idea. The Spirit blows where He wills. - V.K., Catholic Priest

From the great spiritual traditions:

Islam

Rumi:

What was said to the rose that made it open was said
to me here in my chest.

What was told the cypress that made it strong
and straight, what was

whispered the jasmine so it is what it is, whatever made
sugarcane sweet, whatever

was said to the inhabitants of the town of Chigl in
Turkestan that makes them

so handsome, whatever lets the pomegranate flower blush
like a human face, that is

being said to me now. I blush. Whatever put eloquence in
language, that’s happening here.

The great warehouse doors open; I fill with gratitude,
chewing a piece of sugarcane,

in love with the one to whom every that belongs!

Hinduism:

From the Mundaka Upanishad:

 

Self is everywhere, shining forth from all beings,

vaster than the vast, subtler than the most subtle,

unreachable, yet nearer than breath, than heartbeat.

Eye cannot see it, ear cannot hear it nor tongue

utter it…

He who finds it is free; he has found himself;

he has solved the great riddle.

Christianity:

The Gospel of Thomas

 

Split wood, I am there.  Lift up a rock, you will find me there.

...

His disciples said to him:  When will the Kingdom come? 

Jesus said, "It will not come by waiting for it.  It will not be a matter of saying, 'Here it is' or 'There it is.'  Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it."

 

Angelus Silesius

 

God, whose love and joy

        are present everywhere,

can’t come to visit you

        unless you aren’t there.

…

 

God is a pure no-thing

        concealed in now and here:

the less you reach for him,

        the more he will appear.

 

From The Cloud of Unknowing:  

There is no name, no experience, and no insight so akin to the everlastingness of God than what you can possess, perceive, and actually experience in the blind, loving awareness of this word, “is.”  Describe Him as you will:  good, fair Lord, sweet, merciful, righteous, wise, all-knowing, strong one, almighty; as knowledge, wisdom, might strength, love, or charity, and you will find them all hidden and contained in this little word “is.”  God in his very existence is each and all of these.  If you spoke of him in a hundred like ways you would not go beyond or increase the significance of that one word, “is.”

Buddhism

Ryokan (a Zen monk):

 

First days of spring – the sky

is bright blue, the sun huge and warm.

Everything is turning green.

Carrying my monk’s bowl, I walk to the village

to beg for my daily meal.

The children spot me at the temple gate

and happily crowd around,

dragging at my arms till I stop.

I put my bowl on a white rock,

hang my bag on a branch.

First we braid grasses and play tug-of-war,

then we take turns singing and keeping a kick-ball in the air:

I kick the ball and they sing, they kick and I sing.

Time is forgotten, the hours fly.

People passing by point at me and laugh:

“Why are you acting like such a fool?”

I nod my head and don’t answer.

I could say something, but why?

Do you want to know what’s in my heart?

From the beginning of time: just this! just this!