I in the Sky
There is a body projecting you,
that is the one doing the things that you do,
and this body called yours can know through and through,
but can’t know what it knows, so for that it has You.
For that it has I, to be more precise.
But who is this I that thinks that it is
the one who does all of the work,
taking credit for things that it does not do,
like a know-it-all ball-hogging jerk?

This I is a network of thoughts that are thunk 
with the body from whence they came,
a network that changes like everything else
but tends to think that it’s the same.
And all of the thoughts that it thinks of itself
are hash-tagged with I, me, and mine,
including the thought of a thinker of thoughts
which thinks it thinks all by design.

But what are thoughts really, and do they exist?
They do, but they are not real.
Like rainbows appear out of shimmering mist,
they color the sky of the mind.
But without the sun the rainbows aren’t there,
and without the moisture that moves through the air,
and without the observer there’s nothing to find,
no colors, no thoughts, an I of no-kind.

Thoughts are reflections of what is out there,
and what it feels like from inside I’s lair—
an inside and outside contrast and compare, 
made up of the game of there-and-not-there.
Neurons fire up or stay powered down,
as reaction-reflection to what is around,
patterning patterns of senses we’ve found
to help us rise off of the ground.

And if you know all of this, can you hope,
to fix mistakes you think that you make?
Or will you just bind yourself up with a rope
that seems real but really is fake?
Whatever you do will be what you do,
and done by the body projecting you,
which is the one watching “I,” its reflection—
the great “I” which rises in every which way,
in endless waves of resurrection.

—Saint Andrew of Snohomish