In the grand scheme of evolving life, memory and imagination are relatively new abilities.  With few exceptions, these abilities remain underdeveloped.

By default, we feel ourselves remembering things of the past, expecting things to happen in the future, and experiencing in the present stimuli that seems to originate from outside/beyond ourselves.  More often than not, we seem to be at the effect of these mentations, rather than at their cause.

With mastery over our memories and imagination, we catch ourselves enacting our old stories for the sake of continuity, so that we, as specific persons, go on living comfortably amidst familiar circumstances.

Are we the ones doing this or the ones watching this happening?  We cannot be both.

As we witness our body-mind configurations and conspiracies, we begin to realize that we, as the observer, must be beyond the fascinating animations of our embodied and en-minded selves.  We have a body and mind, yet, we, ourselves, are neither our body nor our mind.

When we wake up from the delusions of our false identity our charade becomes untenable.

Shedding of the sense of self without having a replacement can be quite disorienting, the primary reason why so few of us maintain an awakened state for very long.

Identifying with the story of our Soul’s capacity, even temporarily calling it “I”, may keep us from backsliding all the way into the quagmire of our more-limiting story-driven personality.

We have changed our story, and as long as we identify with any story at all we remain storied selves; this is true.  However, for the vast majority of people, awakening to our True Selves and resting in our final I Am comes about gradually; it can take many years to become unconditionally detached from our body and mind.

The important thing is to earnestly move in the direction of this ultimate goal.