It takes a monumental effort to maintain one’s identity as an individual self. First, you have a body-mind to care for, to manage and control. Then you have your ideals and beliefs to formulate, uphold, and defend.

It’s a non-stop effort in futility as body-mind’s ideals, beliefs, opinions, etc., are constantly changing, pulling and pushing, coming and going.

There is nothing real to grasp, just shadows and phantoms. It’s a madhouse, really. An unending ride on the merry-go-round at the circus of the absurd.

On the other hand, resting as awareness, abiding as consciousness, takes no effort whatsoever. No Maintenance required. Our true nature reveals itself when we come to a full stop.

When we realize that the ‘I am this’ or ‘I am that’ is false, that we are, in the simplicity of being, purely an I with nothing extra added, even then, this wonderfully delicate final state of identification with this separate self – the final thought, I – vanishes in the absolute wonder of the moment.