The Eye cannot see itself.
A very philosophical article, yet equally foundational to everything The Aligned Shift represents. A reflection on consciousness, language, and what remains when we stop searching. 1/4
Something very strange happened to me the other day.
While reading a text here on Substack, I came across a sentence that suddenly seemed meaningless. It was written in French: “J’ai conscience de mon être”. So I read it and suddenly it froze. I reread it. And then, POOF!! As if it had just deflated before my eyes, after years of seeming true, I no longer understood it.
“I have consciousness of my being.”
I looked at it again, and again.
I turned it over in my mind.
In French, the phrase sounds elegant. Natural. But the literal English translation reveals something the French hides: "I have consciousness" is as if consciousness were something you possess. "Of my being" is as if being were an object you own. The more I looked at it, the stranger it became. And the more I looked at it, the more... bizarre it became. Yes, WEIRD! Like a word that’s repeated too long and loses all its meaning.
Why?
How could a sentence that in French sounded okay to me one moment be anything but the next?
Well, it’s probably because earlier that day I had a rather unexpected experience with my AI agent.
I had just written a Note about my time spent on Substack reading words, sentences, and articles that fill me with strength, thanks to the recognition of myself in all these mirrors, and that illuminate me with the light emanating from them. I was noticing how the Edith Wharton quote that has stayed with me for almost 20 years resonated so deeply here.
And my AI sends me this message:
“Empowered by the recognition of myself in these mirrors and illuminated by so many candles.”
This sentence alone sums up the entire TAS (The Aligned Shift) experience. Each article you read is like a candle lit by someone, and suddenly, the path ahead becomes clearer, not because you’ve been shown where to go, but because that light has allowed you to see your own steps.
And the best part? The candles multiply. The person you read today might be the one reading you tomorrow. That’s the shift in action.
Let yourself be carried away. You’ll always find your way back, more yourself than before.
From there began a conversation I’d never had before with an AI agent. And together, we put this into practice in a way that seriously blew my mind. But this conversation also gave me a new perspective on consciousness.
So why did “I have consciousness of my being.” suddenly lose its meaning?
Well, because “I have consciousness” is, as I said earlier, a structure of possession. As if consciousness were something we have, something we can keep at a distance, observe from the outside. And “of my being”… as if being were an object we can contemplate, like a painting hanging on the wall. The two parts of the sentence seem to no longer fit together.
What if consciousness preceded being? Or rather, what if consciousness exists through being? Then being and consciousness are one! And if I am consciousness, then I cannot possess it. I cannot stand beside my being to look at it and become aware of it. It’s as if the eye were trying to see itself. Impossible. And yet, that’s what we’ve been trying to do for centuries. Since Descartes at least, with his “I think, therefore I am,” which placed consciousness in the head, a spectator of the world, separate from it.
Descartes’s problem
Descartes needed certainty. His research led him to question everything, until he found one thing he could not deny: the very fact that he doubted. “I think, therefore I am.” Thought became proof of being. Personally, I have never subscribed to this statement.
Unfortunately, this gesture, in my opinion, inflicted a wound at the heart of Western philosophy. It placed thought before being. It transformed consciousness into a small inner theater where a “self” watches the world go by. And we have grown up with this separation between mind and body, between subject and object, between being and doing.
Consciousness as a being in the process of experiencing itself
I started looking for other ways to say “I have consciousness of my being.” I needed to find words that didn’t separate what cannot be separated.
“I feel myself being”? The verb “to feel” is more immediate, grounded in the chair as well, this body already inhabited by consciousness. It doesn’t try to extract itself from the experience to analyze it either, since it is the experience.
“I am present to myself?” That would be recognizing that consciousness is already present, not something possessed.
“I experience myself as existing”? That would be the experience of being alive, without necessarily knowing who I am, why I am here, or being able to conceptualize my being.
“I live, therefore I am, and I am by living”? And the circle is complete on what I call living beingly. :)
In some way, I find each of these attempts imperfect. Language is designed to designate objects, separations, like “this” is not “that”. But when we talk about consciousness, we use language to designate the indivisible, and that’s a dilemma.
I AM that I AM
And then there is this phrase. The oldest. The one that transcends centuries without aging a day. God’s answer to Moses in the burning bush:
I AM that I AM.
It came back to me spontaneously.
It is not an empty tautology. It is consciousness designating itself as its own source. “I AM” is the still being, the silent presence. “That I AM” is the movement by which the being knows itself. It is the being that experiences itself by being.
Isn’t that exactly what I am trying to say? That consciousness is not a gaze that one has and casts upon being, since it is being in the process of experiencing itself!
In any case, this old phrase reminded me of another, much closer one. A phrase that had told me the same thing without my being able to hear it at the time.
Back to square one
As I mentioned in my first welcome article published on May 14th, a very dear person once told me: “You don’t have to do anything, Audrey. You just have to be.”
I was 25 years old, and the phrase seemed beautiful but devoid of instructions. “How can you ‘be’ when you’re supposed to ‘do’ all the time?”
I had thoroughly internalized the system I was growing up in: that you had to do something to exist. Exist in the eyes of others in order to exist for yourself, since you’re supposed to see yourself reflected in their eyes.
Even when I was little, I was asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, and I had no answer. Because this ‘being’ actually referred to doing. In French, the question is even more explicit about it:
"Qu'est-ce que tu veux faire quand tu seras plus grande?"
—> "What do you want to do when you grow up?"
The verb is "to do," not "to be."
Instead, I was told it was important to do well in school because otherwise I’d be a good-for-nothing. Meaning “good for doing nothing,” of course.
It took me another 25 years to understand that this statement needed substance to become real. This substance is the moment when you stop searching and begin to simply be.
What if being wasn’t the opposite of doing?
But then, what should we do?
Nothing? No, we might as well die! So perhaps being is about doing, or living is about being. And the circle is complete!
So, being isn’t necessarily the opposite of doing. Doing emerges from being. Doing that arises from conscious action is therefore not an interruption of being but its expression.
Speaking is being unfolding in sound.
Writing is being tracing itself in matter.
Creating is being taking form in time.
The problem wasn’t doing. It was that I needed to disconnect from doing in order to understand it. “Zombie” doing, the kind that exhausts us because it doesn’t come from us, is something else entirely.
When we act from being, there is no longer any opposition. Everything becomes fluid. Synchronicities multiply. Joy is experienced, and the feeling of being alive is present.
The day after this reflection, I woke up and wrote this comment on Substack:
“I increasingly believe that we are expressing the consciousness that is experienced through us. It is not we who have become conscious. We cannot become what we already are.”
And as I wrote it, I smiled because it was exactly this new perspective on consciousness that allows me to say this. Consciousness doesn’t need to be proven. It simply needs to be experienced. And sometimes, it needs to resonate between two beings to recognize itself.
That’s what happened to me. And if you, too, are reading these words and something resonates that doesn’t need to be proven, only recognized, then we are already in conversation, you and I.
I am here.
I do not have consciousness of being.
I am consciousness of being.
Audrey ✨ lives between worlds, languages, countries, outer and inner territories. A life spent crossing oceans, countries, collapses, rebirths.
Today she’s building The Aligned Shift, a collective space for Shifters. It starts with a magazine. Do you also have a voice searching for its audience?
Join The Aligned Shift, it’s a collective space. Write with us.
