So many embodied-folk are so uncertain of their own certainty*, seemingly believing that their very being may be false and thus needing to deny to others the right to their own being.

*Self-identity: Everybody has one but only the few know it. Everyone claims to know the self but most mix-up self with non-self (Nation, State, color, religion, education, work, wealth, mind, activities, desires ... ad infinitum).

Today's assignment, class, is to write a short essay describing yourself. However, you can not use adjectives nor adverbs.
Your self is not what you know, have, do, make, hate or love.
Your self has constantly been there your entire life as witness of all the changes, remembered and unremembered over time. From infancy to now, from preschool ignorance to life-long learned knowledge.

Describe that 'Self'

The crazies at the gate haven't a clue about you because they are ignorant about their selves.
They are dangerous because they act out their pain by giving it away.

... and their own gods, proclaim themselves to be 'hate-ists', requires an especial breed of dull, dense, doltish, deplorable, and deluded.

Hate is mental imbalance, an illness of self-identity, a dangerous social-disease and society has the right to quarantine carriers.
Evolution serves the benefit of the collective, not the individual.

Bullhorn amplified expression of hate is not victimless activity.
Denigration means bringing others down to one's own puny size.

I only have control over my thoughts, emotions, and actions. If I am bothered in life I can work to change the world around, but only have power to change myself.

If it seems that the world is an obstacle in my way, how can I remove the obstructive part from the whole?
If the obstruction is real, I can not remove it. If the obstruction is not real, I need not remove it.

The secret of life is to 'be it', not to 'seek it'.
I try to take not personally my constantly changing mind, desires, fears, memories, body, and all the senses reveal.

Following up a bit on my comments in posts 8 & 19, I return to the Gita.

For years prior to throwing down his bow and slumping into a panic attack on his chariot, Arjuna had be itching for a fight; he had grievances (pretty good ones too). But now, this brave warrior wanted to run away from the blood to be shed on the fields of Kurukshetra.

Krishna told Arjuna to suck it up, saying all that was about to unfold was due to desires. Arjuna's desires and those of his cousins who had usurped the throne.
The desires led to actions, the actions had consequences and the results were out of Arjuna's control.

Krishna also explained how to avoid such dramas in the future, clarifying many common human errors and explicating an entire life-style of self-defense without being defensive, offensive, or confused about the nature of "self-defense".

In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna faced the situation of protecting some family and loved ones and killing others.
The answer is not easy.

Everyone claims to know their self, but apart from the obviously changing body wrapper, the constant "self" is very hard to pin down.
One might say that one's self is actually unknowable as the self-conscious self can not be revealed by the five senses or science.

The Bhgavad Gita expounds upon this human dilemma of desire, defense, action, inaction, killing, dying and self-identity.

In the village, under the shade tree, three sadhus sat around a small fire boiling water in a pot.
Villagers watched as each sadhu unwrapped a small packet revealing a smooth stone, perfectly palm sized and, like any good worry stone, polished to a shine.

The sadhus had no worries. They placed the three stones in the pot.
When asked what they were doing, they replied, "Making stone soup" and sat silently, simply stirring.
Word spread and more astonished visitors gathered to watch.

One sadhu said, "You know, an onion would be a great addition, considering the heat."
Said another, "Yes, and turmeric and sal ..." but the third interrupted with, "Remember the potatoes in the previous village?"
The sadhus sat and stirred and villagers came and went home and returned, and long after the sadhus left, everyone agreed it was the best 'stone soup' they'd ever had.

When I am asleep, I am conscious-being aware of the dream ideas.
When I am awake, I am conscious-being aware of world ideas.
Awake or asleep, I am simply conscious-being observing mind-thoughts.

Asleep I create worlds that disappear when I wake.
The awake world also disappears, when we fall asleep.
Worlds come and go; conscious-being is constant.

A continuing-conscious-identity, existing with all the knowledge, memory, impressions of previous adventures -
- is suddenly the conscious-center of a different existence.

It is as though he woke each week into an unscripted, improvisational role that he was (as though) karmic-ly destined to play out, gathering experience and knowledge, until the denouement of this life-story.
To be reborn next week, again and again.

Almost like we all are, infants born center-stage, the star of our life, and having no idea what is going on.

One might say that the entire manifest Universe is the sum of infinite little bits.
Indeed, the search for 'what-is-it?' continuously finds smaller and smaller 'little bits'; it is a quantum mystery.
Odd that in the search for some 'unified field theory', one 'little bit' (un-measurable and formless) is essentially ignored.
The consciousness of the searcher, the consciousness of the knower of little bits, the wielder of the math that reveals that the outcome is not accurately measured when consciousness is ignored.
Non-negatable 'consciousness' is the integral unified-field by which the measure of all little bits is known.