The Living Paradox

That, what couldn't be simpler

I looked into the mirror and saw my face.

Not merely the familiar impression of it, but its details: the shape of the eyes, the texture of the skin, the lines around the mouth, the asymmetry, the bone structure, the hair, the expression. All these features came together to create the person I had learned to recognize as myself.

Then something became strangely obvious:

This face is not me.

It is an appearance. A temporary arrangement of features. It has changed since childhood, and it will continue to change. Time will alter it. Illness may alter it. An accident could change it within seconds. Even a different expression can make the same face appear like another person.

Yet if the face changed, would I cease to be myself?

There would still be a sense of being here.

The Face as a Collection of Features

We usually look into a mirror and immediately say, “That is me.” But what exactly are we identifying with?

The reflection is made of separate elements. Eyes, nose, mouth, skin, hair, shadows and proportions. No individual feature contains the person. Even the complete image is only a visual form perceived from the outside.

If one feature changed, we would still say it was our face. If several changed, we might need time to adjust, but the inward sense of being ourselves would remain.

This does not mean that the body is unimportant or unreal. The body is intimate. It carries our history, communicates our emotions and allows us to touch and move through the world. Our appearance can matter deeply to us.

But something can be deeply personal without being the whole of what we are.

The mirror shows the body as an object. It cannot show the one who is looking.

The Undeniable Sense of Here

When I shifted my attention away from the reflection and toward the experience of looking, there was a clear sense of location.

I was here.

Not there in the mirror, but here behind the eyes, within the body, looking outward into the world.

This sense of “here” seems so ordinary that we rarely examine it. Experience appears to be centred somewhere inside the body. Sounds arrive here. Sensations are felt here. Thoughts arise here. The world seems to be encountered from this intimate point of view.

There is a natural sense of being someone, somewhere.

And yet, when I tried to locate this “me” precisely, it became less clear.

Was I behind the eyes? Inside the head? In the chest? Spread throughout the body?

Every location I could notice was itself another experience: a pressure in the forehead, a sensation in the chest, an image of the body or a subtle feeling of centredness. Whatever I noticed could be perceived.

But where was the perceiver?

The Presence That Has No Age

Beneath the face, the personal history and the changing contents of experience, there was also something remarkably simple.

Presence.

Not an abstract spiritual idea, but the immediate fact of being aware.

This presence did not seem young or old. The body has an age. The personality has developed through time. Memories refer to a past, while plans imagine a future. But the awareness in which all of this appears does not seem to carry an age of its own.

It is not old, because age belongs to something that has moved through time. It is not new, because newness also requires a comparison with what came before.

Presence is simply present.

It is so simple that our cognition, our rational mind, our intellect cannot understand it.

We may say that we were aware yesterday and that we will be aware tomorrow, but awareness itself is only ever known now. Even a memory of the past appears as a present experience. Even an image of the future appears now.

This does not mean that practical time disappears. Appointments remain real. Bodies age. Causes have consequences. But beneath our movement through time is something that never seems to enter time in the same way as the things it perceives.

Located and Limitless

Another paradox emerged.

Experience seemed to be located here, within this body. I was looking out through these eyes, not through someone else’s. I could feel these hands and not the hands of another person. My perspective was clearly situated.

At the same time, everything I knew of the world appeared within awareness.

The mirror, the room, the body, the sounds outside, the thoughts in my mind and the feeling of being located here were all present within experience. I could not step outside awareness to find an independently experienced world beyond it.

This does not mean that the external world is merely imaginary. It means something simpler: whatever we know of reality is known through experience.

From one perspective, awareness appears to be inside the body, looking outward.

From another perspective, the body and the whole perceived world appear within awareness.

Both descriptions feel real.

Neither cancels the other.

they coexist as a paradox.

The Living Paradox

We are embodied and yet not reducible to the body.

We are located and yet awareness itself has no visible boundary.

We have a face, a name and a history, yet none of these fully captures the one who says, “I am.”

This is not necessarily a contradiction that needs to be solved. It may be a living paradox that can only be recognized and inhabited.

The personal self is real as an ongoing human experience. It has needs, preferences, wounds, responsibilities and relationships. Denying this level can become another form of escape.

At the same time, the person is continuously changing. Thoughts change. Emotions change. The body changes. Beliefs, roles and identities change.

Something remains present through all of them.

Not as a fixed object hidden somewhere inside us, but as the open capacity in which every object, sensation and identity becomes known.

Looking Without an Answer

The mind may try to convert this recognition into a conclusion.

“I am awareness.”

“I am not the body.”

“The world is inside consciousness.”

These statements may point toward something meaningful, but they can also become new concepts to identify with. The original recognition is quieter than the words used to describe it.

It's a Gnosis beyond words or what could be described and what only can be known in the very moment. it can't be remembered, it can't be imagined, because it simply Is.

We can look into the mirror and see a human face with its beauty, imperfection and history. We can care for it. We can recognize its vulnerability. We can know that it will change.

And at the same time, we can notice that the one looking cannot be found in the reflection.

It's not about constructing a final answer, but to remain with the mystery.

Look into the mirror.

Notice the features.

Notice that they are seen.

Then turn attention toward the sense of being the one who sees.

not even the one seeing, but just Seeing.

Where exactly are you?

How old is the awareness that sees this?

Where does it begin, and where does it end?

Open yourself to that. What is not the verbal answer.

The immediate reality of being here: intimate and ungraspable, located and without boundary, human and timeless.

That is the living paradox.

If you want to explore that living paradox - because it really is the magical endeavor - I invite you to go deeper and embody this understanding by working on your own pace through my free mini course. I also offer one-to-one guidance. find out if that could be something for you in a free 45-minute consultation, including a coaching process, without any strings attached.