When does individuality (sense of separate beingness) start and do we ever lose the oneness we were prior to that?

The individual side of us originally did not exist. Who and where were we as individuals in, say, 1949? Even after birth, it still took some time for the intelligent awareness that we were to learn and acquire, the identifications and preferences – what we call personality and ego. So, we entered as forms associated with an essential awareness (which almost certainly in that oneness pre-existed any physical birth). Later all else was acquired/learned from outside of us, including all the ‘me, my and mine.’ The newborn infant had no ‘me, my and mine’ but did have intelligent awareness. As it grew and developed what we call mind/ego, it increasingly identified with the learning it acquired from external sources and forgot its essential Self – but that Self is always present – like the life force – as we could not exist without its foundation.

Much of the resolution of this, for me, comes with the awareness of my state when transitioning from sleep (not yet conscious of any personhood) to waking. In that often too brief in-between state, before remembering who I am, where I am or the when of things, there is a clarity of just awareness being present AND being aware or conscious of it (which I was not during sleep – but can be more and more with practice). This awareness of awareness does not happen through physical senses – does not belong to the realm of time and space. That same awareness WAS present during sleep, but just not noticed.

Part of what is becoming increasingly evident to me is that this conscious awareness is not personal, not mine. It is the same awareness shared by all, just as all share the life force. It IS the oneness. I’ve just been imagining it belonged to me. Also, this awareness is actually ALWAYS present but not noticed in our daily life when our attention is pulled outward to so many other objective phenomena including thoughts. It is my sense of what Roy means by presence and also that something about him that never changes.

For those interested in this subject, Brian recommends the work of DAVID BINGHAM: ‘We are already the infinite Being and always have been.’
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