This is the first in a series of internal pronoun-hacking experiments. We will be trying out a number of alternatives to "I".

In order to have a point of contrast, let's begin by examining your current use of the word "I" to refer to yourself. Observe your inner monologue for a few moments. In the usual course of events, some people use the word "I" internally as they talk to themselves. Some don't. What about you? How often does "I" show up in your inner monologue, along with its analogues "me", "my", "myself", and "mine"?

Before we make any adjustments to your inner monologue, let's begin this exercise with a few moments of witnessing meditation. Sit still in a quiet place and contemplate what's happening. Witness experiences coming and going. Observe your body sensing and perceiving and adjusting and breathing. Observe your feelings and moods and energy. Observe your mind thinking and imagining. Observe your attention moving from one place to another.

Now, see if you can narrate all of that via an explicit stream of observations spoken in your mind. As you're doing so, deliberately insert the word "I" into your descriptions. It might go something like this:

That's a lot of "I" and "my". Register anything you can about what happens when you use "I" as your first-person pronoun. Maybe that's like being a fish and trying to register the existence of water, so don't worry if there's not really anything to notice yet. We're just establishing a baseline for the upcoming experiment.

WHAT'S IT DOING?

For our first foray into pronoun hacking, consider that rather than an "I", you might be an "it".

If a bug flies across the room, you probably say that "it" has landed on the window and is sticking there with "its" little feet. If a self-driving car pulls into a parking spot, you probably say that "it" parked "itself". If a storm cloud is forming, you probably say that "it" is getting darker and coming your way.

All of these "it" entities are complex systems. They have interacting parts and internal processes you can't observe directly. You witness them and consider them to be separate from you, objects to your subject.

There's an even more complex system you're witnessing all day every day: there's a body whose sense organs you have access to, a mind whose mental senses you are equally privy to, and a personality (ego) whose motivations and decisions are at least partially visible to you.

Like the bug, the self-driving car, and the storm cloud, this body-mind-personality system has interacting parts and internal processes you can't observe directly. Unlike those entities, you don't always (or ever) consider the self-system to be separate from you. You often (or always) think "it" is you.

For this experiment, you'll spend an entire day paying attention to what "it" is doing. Observe the body, the mind, or the personality in action, and refer to the object of observation as "it". Wow, check it out! What's it doing now? Look at it, doing the thing it always does.

Your goal, at least initially, is to make a simple linguistic adjustment. You want to notice any time you would habitually assign the pronoun "I" to the experiences and activities of this complex body-mind-personality system. Then replace that pronoun with "it", every time.

Here's the same set of observations as before, but with our new pronoun swapped in:

On a normal day, if you were sitting there, aware of inner monologue, you might not be spelling everything out so explicitly. For the purpose of this experiment, however, you'll want to use the new pronoun as much as possible. Unless you take it out for a long enough test drive, you'll never discover all the curious effects of pronoun change. So be explicit in your thoughts about yourself. In this contemplation, you are an "it", not an "I". Speaking the word "it" to yourself, over and over in your mind, will maximize your opportunities to learn from the experiment.

The first part of this exercise is easiest, the phase where you're sitting quietly. Before long, however, it will be time to get on with your day. You'll be taking your pronoun out into the wilds of daily life. Soon, it will be something more like:

As dramatic as this process seems, in terms of how much you'll be deploying your new pronoun, it's actually quite easy to forget what you intended to do. You will inadvertently slip back into using "I" to internally describe yourself, or you'll just forget to explicitly use "it".

Like many such practices, you'll just need to remember and re-remember your intention to practice it. Realizing you forgot to practice is the cue to start practicing again. If you need to, find a place to sit quietly again for a few moments. Remove all the stimuli of other people and tasks and activities. Come back to a more contemplative experience, simply observing "its" experiences and behaviors. Then, when you're ready, get up again and proceed with your day. See how long you can remember to keep the contemplation going.

Really, only half the contemplation occurs in the use of "it" as your personal pronoun. The other half occurs in you taking note of how your experience changes when you think of yourself as an "it". I encourage you to take some notes throughout your day so you can keep track of your observations. Even if some of the changes feel abstract and hard to describe, do your best to sense into the differences brought about by being an "it".

After really giving this a shot, you might come back to using "I" as your personal pronoun and see if it feels any different now in contrast. Switch back and forth, using each pronoun for a few minutes at a time. Can you register what feels different, or what changes, when you use one pronoun vs the other?

There are some variations on this pronoun choice that you may want to experiment with as well, but please first devote a full day to using "it" as your personal pronoun. Once you've worked that angle, you might want to try a pronoun that's a little less objectifying, but that still recognizes that instead of an "I", there's a system in place doing its thing while you marvel at it.

One I particularly like is "the character", a reference to the character being played by your ego:

Some people can get a similar effect by only referring to themselves in the third person, using their own name:

You can also give "it" a less personal name, like "the system".

All of these variations have their own flavors, and there's something to discover by trying out each of them. I think there's some simplicity to just using "it". In some languages, however, that comes out feeling different than in others, so feel free to experiment in your own language.

I want you to find out for yourself what happens when you try the experiment, but I'll name one thing that you're likely to notice.

Using this new pronoun creates a separation between you (as observer/narrator) and whatever is having the experiences you're observing and narrating. If we're interested in learning about non-duality, this may seem like the wrong direction to go in entirely. We seem to be making the subject/object duality even more explicit.

In part three, we'll examine why this separation might be a necessary step along the path to more deeply understanding just what kind of a something you actually are.