Mythology and folklore are filled with stories and legends of the undead – vampires, ghosts, zombies, etc. – dead beings that behave as though they are alive. With a little twist, human beings can be added to this legendary group – living beings that behave as though they are dead.

We think that we are alive, but everything we identify with as an individual self, as a body-mind – thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions – has a brief life span. Most thoughts pass within seconds or minutes. Moods pass within hours or days. And our body-mind gradually, sometimes suddenly, gives up and dies. In other words, all attributes of the body, mind, and world are bound by the limits of time – they are born, live for a while, and then die.

If we live our lives identifying with this illusionary separate self made up of temporary attributes all destined to vanish, we might as well be counted amongst the walking dead.

Why not discover that within you, within each one of us that is timeless, that is unborn?

First, recognize the knowing presence within you, us, that says ‘I am’. Now drop the thought ‘I am’ and what remains? Something remains because you are still here.

What is it that exists in the absence of thought? After all, when a thought comes and goes, you, the one aware of the thought, don’t come and go with it.

Is this aware you ever not here? Is this aware you that experiences feelings disappear when a feeling fades? No. It is ever-present, timeless.

This aware you that knows the coming and going of all things, yet doesn’t come and go with them, is the source of your being, the source of all of our beings, as there can only be one.

We think that our ever-present awareness is ours alone, yet when we investigate the attributes of this ever-present consciousness, no limits can be found, and something that is limitless allows no room for two. Would it be possible to fit one infinite sky inside another?

Ever-present awareness has no beginning or end, experiences no birth or death. It is timeless and beyond space.

It is the unborn.

And you, I, we, are that.