To realize that what you truly are — life, awareness — is already whole and complete. Nothing needs to be added.
Think of an omelet. No matter how many ingredients you add - cheese, ham, onion, or basil - it remains an omelet. The essence is always the eggs. In the same way, you are always what you truly are, regardless of roles, labels, or achievements.
This week's reflection is inspired by an excellent metaphor from the book The Complete Book of Awakening by Helen Amery and Sara Priestly. It’s not about adding more, but about peeling away. Not about building up, but about dissolving. About discovering what has always been there, beneath all the layers we have added through the years.
So, about these omelettes…
If you crack a few eggs into a bowl, whisk them and put them in a pan and fry them, then fold one half over the other, then there you go - you have an omelette. Simple. That is the essential omelette. Eggs are essential to any omelette, or else it is not an omelette.
Now imagine adding cheese, a little ham, maybe some onions and fresh basil. It’s still an omelette, right? Only now, it has a different flavour and a new texture - but it’s still an omelette. That doesn’t, howvever, neccessarily mean it tastes better.
But what if we take away the eggs? What would happen to the omelette?
No matter how many yummy, luxurious extras you have in the pan, it would not be an omelette.
Because without the eggs, there is no omelette.
So, the question is not what do you like in your omelette - the question is: What is essential to you? When we are talking about your true self what are we really talking about?
What about you is so essential that without it, there would be no you? What would not be able to exist without the essential ingredient? What about you is as foundational as the egg is to the omelette?
Life.
Without life, this body doesn’t move. Without life, thoughts cannot appear. Without life, nothing arises. Life is the essential. It is our essence. It is who we are. It is the one ingredient we never stop to notice. Everything else has been added.
What do I mean by ‘everything else’? The ingredients gradually added to the eggs, to life: the thoughts, the feelings, the personality traits, beliefs, opinions, the roles and masks - your identity, your strengths, your fears - your entire story of who you think you are. In short: that which we refer to as our "self", the "I" - your "me, myself and I". They are just added.
In my previous reflection I wrote about conditioning, and in the reflection before that I wrote about the nature of thought - both are toppings. Conditioning which is built over time, in combination with thought, which is also developed over time, gradually forms what we call the ‘self’.
This "self" is an idea of “me” with its stories, preferences, and unique personality - it is not something we are born with. It’s added. Just like we add ingredients to the omelette, we add layers of identity onto life itself.
The 'self' is a topping that we don't want to or can't do without, because it makes life that much tastier, but it is not who we are in essence.
This is so hard to see, I know. Because we have poured so much time, energy, and money into trying to fix the "ingredients" that have been added: we try to get rid of the onions, add more herbs, exchange the ham with chicken - convinced that the omelette needs something to make it "better" and "complete".
But what you are comes before all of that. And what you are is, just like the eggs, already whole and complete.
The self we think we are seems so real. So familiar. It’s been with us so long - performing, defending, striving and holding everything together…and we never pause to ask:
Who or what exactly is doing all that?
Where did it come from?
And what would be left if I stop believing in it?
It’s built - layer by layer - through innocent conditioning, and made to feel real through the nature of thought. Over time, we began to believe that the roles we learned to play were us. We forget that beneath all the toppings, it was always just egg. We are already whole and complete to begin with, even before the layers of identity.
What you are is life – life is the essential ingredient in everything. Life arises within consciousness - without consciousness, we couldn't even be aware of being alive. Everything else is added.
As always, I am not asking you to just believe this. This isn’t something to take on as a belief. But it could change your life.
This must be seen - glimpsed - in your own experience. Only then does it become real. Irrefutable. Undeniable. Life-changing.
Because once you glimpse it - even just once - it changes everything.
We see that we are life itself. We come before the identity. Before any performance. We see that it is life that animates this body and without life, the body would be nothing but form. It doesn’t mean that we don’t have difficulties, or challenges - circumstances do not magically change, but the way we view them does.
So what we add on top - our roles, fears, achievements, regrets - are not who we are, but patterns formed by thought and conditioning.
That’s why inquiry, questioning everything, is so central to the work that I do. We suffer because we believe we are the ham and the jalapeno – wishing we had some more cheese, so angry with ourselves because we put the onions in – again. Dammit.
Suffering eases once we see that the identity we’re defending isn’t our true essence. We are protecting and defending the toppings, but we are the eggs.
When that starts to become clear, a different kind of peace emerges. One that was never missing - only covered up by thoughts and feelings.
And maybe, just maybe, we can stop trying so hard to fill the omelette – stop trying so hard to hold everything together and focus more on what’s essential. Life. Consciousness. Love. Peace. Wholeness. Awareness.
Because what's truly essential can’t ever fall apart.
With much love,
Suzanne
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