Remain strictly focused on your own experience.  Sense into the sense of “I Am”.  Do not focus on what follows the I Am.  Focus just on the I AM. It is the “I” before the defining words that we get stuck on.  Focus on the “I” and Sense the “I Am”.  Stay with the sense “I Am.”  Stay with what you are before you define yourself.   Take a moment, and just say to yourself “I Am” and sense what arises in your own experience. Abide in the sense of “I Am”.  Abide in the sense of “I”.  Now you are exploring the nature of You, the You that does not change. 

Who is it that recognizes a thought but is itself not a thought?  Who is it that recognizes a feeling but is itself not a feeling? 

When you tap into your own consciousness, you tap into the universal consciousness.

From the Direct Experience of “I AM” APAROKSHANUBHUTI by Shri Shankaracharya

Fear is said to come to the ignorant one who makes even the smallest distinction between the individual self or “I-am”, and the absolute Self or “I-Am”. 

The “I-Am” is the unchanging principle of Reality behind all changing phenomena of the waking, dreaming, and deep sleep states. 

The “I-Am” is to be known by the process of negation of all names and forms.  Neti neti.

Body, mind and senses have past, present and future karmas because they are operating within time and space.  But the Self, the “I-Am”, is always beyond the body and mind, beyond time and space.  Therefore, the principle of “I-Am” is beyond destiny. 

He who attains the knowledge of the Self by meditating on the principle of “I-Am” beyond the body and mind, beyond time and space, he directly feels his own Being beyond the relative being and becoming. 

The Self, the “I-Am” which is pure Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, ultimate Freedom.

“Be still and know, I am that I Am.”

That is known as the solitary place in which no one – that is to say, no thought, no language, and no memory – exists in the beginning, the middle, or the end, but by which the universe is pervaded at all times.  This is the state of the absolute “I-Am”, absolute Awareness, in which no thought, no memory, no language exist.  In other words, it is the one, all one, it is one without a second. 

By thinking of one’s own Being, the “I-Am” beyond the body and mind, there is identification of the individual “I-am” with the absolute “I-Am”, absolute Being.   By thinking of emptiness – “I am not the body and mind, although I have a body and mind” – one becomes identified with that emptiness.  By thinking of the Absolute “I-Am”, one attains to perfection. 

Here the positive and negative methods are described.  By the positive method – “I am one with the cosmic “I-Am”, the absolute “I-Am”, absolute Awareness,” one affirms the identity, the oneness of one’s individual self with the supreme Self, whereas by the negative method – “I am not the body and mind, although I have a body and mind” – one should negate one’s identity with body and mind. 

Sat-Chid-Ananda = Existence-Consciousness-Bliss

Here two methods are described the negative method and the positive method.  By the negative method one should know, “I am not the body and mind, although I have a body and mind.”  By the positive method one should know, “I am the ocean of Awareness, pure Consciousness.  I am alpha and omega.  I am one with the whole Existence.  I am Sat-Chid-Ananda, Existence-Consciousness-Bliss