This is an awesome thread of questions Gwen - when I read them as you've written them, it takes me on a journey through all the layers presenting themselves in you.

Allow me to respond directly from the source that I know (from my perspective on reality):

Who am I? It's a paradox.
'Who' you truly are is that which precedes being.
Therefore there is no 'who'.
It's experienced as emptiness, when that sense can be recognised in the soul.
The emptiness is then experienced as pure presence.
Pure presence is what precedes the soul.
When the soul arises into being, then it becomes the sense of "I am" - depending on the degree of identification with the sense of separation.
But the "I am" is only a sense, an experience, of presence, of everything and therefore nothing, because there is no separation when there is the condition of everything and therefore no relativity.

I 'experience' it as a total lack of experience that penetrates all experience.

So the soul is really the sense of "I am" as an experience but is not "I am".

Before the soul is self-realised, it will confuse itself with reality in various ways:

- first it confuses itself with the bodymind; the attachment forms what is really meant by 'ego'.
- once the ego has gone, then a part of the soul tends to form a shadow identity; usually karmic based on where the soul is still getting attached to reality in some way due to past life experiences.
- the soul will also likely form spiritual identities around some or all of the Seven Rays of Divine Impulse. Each ray kind of forms 'echos' in reality and eddy currents around the echos; and because of the 'noise' the shadow aspect of the soul is drawn deeper into the eddy current of consciousness and held there. Thus the soul thinks and behaves like the echo. The shadow knows how the soul should be and so behaves like the soul. It's what you could call an 'imposter of the soul'.
- finally all identities are dissolved and there's a knowing that you are simply presence. There's no need of "Who am I?" It becomes a seriously amusing question! (to oneself) You end up laughing to yourself about it! At least that's what happened to 'this' soul.

Until self realisation (meaning the soul fully realises itself as an expression of the One Life), each being will have lots of internal conundrums about the true identity of the One within them. There'll be kind of experiences of presence, but quickly either the ego or shadow identities own the experience and make them all about the small I.

Who am I? There's no one here! LOL!

Open