Yup. That sums it up. The greatest question in human existence is: "Who am I?"

This is what people think they are: A body, a mind, a personality, a personal history (based upon memory). Well, all those are temporary things that pass away. What a person really is, is the eternal presence from which those temporary things emanate...manifest...and later pass away.

Paul Burke - So....you want me to provide physical evidence for what is not physical? ;-) Don't hold your breath waiting for that. You yourself (if you think carefully about it) know all kinds of stuff you cannot provide physical evidence for, and you know it beyond the shadow of a doubt. You know it by direct awareness, not observable evidence.

What does Spirit need a body for? It doesn't need a body. It doesn't need anything.

It may freely choose a body, however, in order to experience certain things. What is itself unlimited can become curious as to what would happen when one operated instead within an arbitrary frame of limitation...like a body in a material world. It's fascinating. It's like playing a chess game, and seeing what will happen. It is the playing out of a chosen role.

What is referred to as the spiritual "fall of man" was what happened when Spirit deliberately descended into physical form, and in the process forgot that it was Spirit! That is exactly how a god becomes a frightened, scrambling, ego-driven little mortal creature, in fear of its own eventual demise, competing with others, and in such cases it can even invent crazy religions to appease its tremendous levels of fear and imagined need...or it can concoct equally unlikely concepts like atheism or existentialism in its efforts to compensate for its general level of insecurity and discomfort.

And that is what you see around you. The reason people fight like tigers to be "right" in a debate about anything is that they subconsciously equate being "wrong" with the death of their own identity. The ultimate fear of the embodied spirit that has forgotten that it IS spirit is the fear of death. But Spirit cannot die. Spirit is organized energy and awareness. Energy and awareness change, they change outer form and conscious purpose, but they do not die.