Where all of this time are you? Try now to see if you can locate yourself between your feet and your head – if there is any part of your body in which you can find yourself. Of course, the answer is no. No, you are not down in those feet or in your knees or in your stomach or in your chest or in your head. You just are not there.
The question now comes, Where am I? Where am I if I am not where I believe myself to be? I thought I was sitting in this chair, and I find I am not there. My body is; I see it. But I cannot find myself in this chair. I cannot find myself in this body. Where am I? Who am I? What am I? Why am I? This practice, this contemplation of I or meditation upon the I when continued for short periods – today, tomorrow, the next day – will always result in one answer. That answer is – I is invisible, I is incorporeal, I is spiritual, I is not limited to time or space. Once this perception is attained, you have the identity of I. You will know why you cannot be influenced by circumstances or conditions. You will know why you are the master of your fate and the captain of your ship, because you are an individual identity, an individual consciousness containing within yourself full dominion over your entire life.

You will find further that the nature of your identity, of the you that you really are, is God identity. In other words, what God is, I am. You will find that the nature of God is identical with the nature of the I that I am. Then you will understand Moses revelation – I Am that I Am. Not you are or he is or she is, not that there is a God up above the sky. I Am that I Am. I Am that I Am. I Am that I Am. I Am. I Am that. You will know then why the Master gave that as His full and complete revelation to the world. I and My Father are One. Had this been a relationship between Jesus and God, then of course He couldn’t have been the way shower for us. Then He could only have looked out on us with pity and said, “how sorry I am that you aren’t one with our Father – your Father and My Father.” But it was impossible for Him to say, “your Father and My Father” and then not know that this is the relationship He was revealing to the world of His identity. By virtue of being a way shower, showing us the way to understand our identity. “Know ye not that ye are children of God?” In other words, even as God is My Father and I am the Son, even so is God your Father and you are the Son. All that the Father is, you are. All that the Father hath is yours. Then you understand that “I of my own self can do nothing.” That is, the very moment that I cut myself off from that oneness with God, I am as a branch of a tree that is cut off and withereth. That is why it is a very sad thing, sometimes hearing metaphysicians going around saying, “I am God or I am Spirit.” It’s sad and tragic, because it is as if a branch of a tree were saying, “I am a tree.”
As Joel separate and apart from God, I must admit I am nothing and can do nothing and be nothing. Only in my conscious realization of my oneness with God can I say, “God constitutes my being. God is my true identity, and the quality of God and the quantity of God is the quality of my being and the quantity of my being. Therefore, since God is immortal, I am immortal. Since God is eternal, I am eternal. Since God is infinite, I am infinite by virtue of my oneness with God. For any human being even to claim, not only that they are God but the son of God or even spiritual, is mockery of truth – unless in the same breath they are realizing that this can only be true because of my relationship with God – because of my oneness with God. All that the Godhead is, is flowing into expression as my individual being.
Now do you see that I cannot be subject to environment; I cannot be subject to lack of education; I cannot be subject to what my neighbor thinks or does. For I and my Father are one, and what I see the Father do, I do. Not what I see my neighbor do and not what my parents did before me but what I see the Father do. Then I do, for I and the Father are One. The infinite nature of God’s being constitutes the infinity of my individual being. Therefore, “every soldier has a baton in his knapsack,” says Napoleon, which we can interpret to mean that the lowest and the least of us has the crown of Divine Sonship locked up within us, if so we recognize it and recognize its source.
You see, if you were sitting in a rubber boat out in the middle of the ocean and neither had a checkbook with you or it wasn’t any good and no supermarkets around, there would still be a demonstration for you to make, unless you want to give up and jump into the ocean. That demonstration is – here where I am fulfillment is. The place whereon I stand is holy ground. For all that the Father is, I am and all that the Father hath is mine. It doesn’t say that you have to be close to the corner delicatessen store. It says that the place where I find myself, even if I make my bed in hell, thou art there. Even if I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, thou art there – eternal life, eternal harmony, eternal being. But it is only demonstrated by those who know, consciously know this truth. That is why in the experience of Rickenbacker, all was saved by one man. The others would have perished without him. He alone in that boat knew his true identity and was able to sit with folded arms and inwardly, quietly, peacefully realize, “here where I am, God is.” And demonstrated it for himself and for his companions, even though they didn’t know that he knew the secret of his identity. Rickenbacker has proved himself to be almost indestructible. Only by knowing the truth, and he knows it.
Now everyone of us has a life to live. Each one of us at some time or other is blaming others for our lack of demonstration or perhaps giving too much credit to others for our demonstration. The truth is no one could give us more than we can accept. On the other hand, no one can deprive us of anything once we know, consciously know, the truth of our identity. Once you begin to understand that this[body] is not you, this [body] is yours. You begin to have dominion over it. You begin to understand that it cannot do what you do not instruct it to do, what you do not permit it to do. This isn’t true only of your body. It’s true of your mind.
~Joel Goldsmith
The Blessed “I”