I Am that I Am

The I Am

Every great book of this kind, every deep conversation, every true meditation, is ultimately pointing in the same direction: back to your true Self.

In the book of Exodus, Moses asks God, “Who shall I say sent me? Who are You?” And God replies, “I Am who I Am.” In the original Hebrew, the meaning is not fixed in time. It also translates to “I will be what I will be.” To me, that matters deeply. It suggests not a static identity, but Being itself—ever-present, ever-unfolding.

Blasphemy was never Jesus saying, “I and the Father are one.” If anything, true blasphemy is saying, “I am not,” or “I will not be.”

Across cultures, traditions, and centuries, great teachers have returned to the same essential question: Who am I? And they’ve offered countless descriptions. Yet every description is only a signpost. Like a great meditation, a great book, or a great conversation, it does not give you the truth—it points you toward it.

Because the truth cannot be told. It can only be experienced.

Words can only gesture. They point a finger toward the moon, but they are not the moon. Every spiritual teaching is, in essence, pointing toward the same thing: the I Am.

I once heard a teacher ask a group a simple question: “Are you aware?”
The group answered, “Yes.”
Then he asked them to wait until he raised his hand before answering. He asked again, “Are you aware?”
He paused.
Then raised his hand.

The point was simple but profound: the answer “yes” is a thought—but awareness is already there before the thought appears. Awareness does not need permission to exist.

Deepak Chopra says we experience sensations, feelings, thoughts, and images—and everything beyond that is the story we tell ourselves. We construct a storyteller. That storyteller is what we often call the I: consciousness, awareness, soul, the God within.

Language gets in the way of understanding this—but language is also what we have. So we use it. We use self-talk, poetry, art, writing, music, meditation, and shared conversation. We read someone else’s signposts. Sometimes we meditate precisely to step outside of language and experience awareness directly.

There is a presence that has always been here—before birth and after death. Birth and death are experiences within that presence. Even the “present moment” exists within a larger field that has no beginning and no end.

That presence is the I Am.
That presence is God.
That presence is what I call I.

There is nothing in this universe that is not God—including you, including me.

And this is where it becomes difficult to explain. You may hear this a hundred times, read it in many forms, encounter endless metaphors—and only catch a glimpse. Then, twenty or thirty years later, something clicks. The aha moment arrives. And even then, it comes and goes. I’ve had it many times, and I still forget. Or maybe I don’t forget—I just experience it anew.

The soul, awareness, God—none of these have labels. That is why they are so hard to define. The word God alone carries countless meanings shaped by culture, upbringing, and personal experience. If you see God as a father and had a painful relationship with your father, that shapes your understanding. If you see God as distant and you’ve felt lost your whole life, that shapes it too.

Call it the Holy Spirit, awareness, consciousness, the soul, It, He, She—language collapses under the weight of what it tries to hold.

The Chinese say, “Every day, unlearn something old.” That has only grown truer for me. We pile concepts on top of the I Am until it disappears beneath them. Many people never even ask the question “Who am I?”—because asking without labels can feel frightening. Individuality feels threatened. The ground feels unstable.

For many, it’s easier to live inside the illusion—the matrix—than to face the unknown.

And yet, I believe the I Am already knows everything that matters.

A powerful practice before sleep is simply to ask: Who am I?
What gifts do I have?
What is my purpose?

You are not asking the mind. You are asking the I. The awareness. The presence. It may not know every detail of the story, but it knows everything that matters.

Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door will be opened.

But most of us do not listen. We don’t ask. Or we ask briefly and stop when no answer comes. True discipline is doing something with no visible results, no rewards, for a very long time. You knock when nothing happens. You ask when silence answers back.

That’s why it’s called a breakthrough, not a walkthrough.

This book does not give answers. It shines a light. It uses labels—often polar opposites—not because they are the truth, but because contrast helps point the way. In truth, we are not divided. We are not broken into parts. There is no good side versus bad side, no yin versus yang inside us.

There is only One.

Even Oneness can become a label if we are not careful. One is different from two—but the truth is beyond numbers altogether. There is nothing outside of God. There is nothing inside God. There are no walls. No boundaries.

There is only what is.

We experience life through sensations, feelings, images, and thoughts. Everything beyond that is story. And the I is the storyteller. That’s why so many philosophies describe life as play. The world is the game. The experience is the play. But the experiencer—the true Self—remains unchanged.

Whether or not one seeks this truth is not for me to judge. But for those who do, there is clarity. Release. Awakening. The quiet recognition of who you are, what you are, who you’ve always been—and who you will always be.

This book is for those willing to take that journey.

The journey of I Am.