I Am. What a trip !

Orthodox skeptics will say that when you die, your whole consciousness, if it ever existed, dissipates to nothing.  There's nothing about your consciousness that continues beyond the body that you are in.  When the body expires, that's it. Death is a finality, etc. etc.

Yet ask yourself: what exactly is it like to no longer exist?  How can we possibly know what it's like?  Even if it's complete emptiness, one must be there to validate this "empty non-existence" - but then the observing one or self is still there, in whatever form or non-form, validating that he/she "no longer exists" after death.  Sort of a paradox.  How can "I" not exist?  

It's difficult to explain this in language, for when you describe something it is projected into the third person, which can always be denied as a false illusion. But again, who are you, who am I, that's thinking our thoughts, looking through our eyes, experiencing our experiences, however false or illusional they may be?  

There's an undeniable self-evident self - an "I am".  Perhaps we all share the same Universal Self, (the I AM), yet we are each unique individualizations of this universal self-sense. 

Renee Descartes pointed to this idea of self-evident self in the introduction of his philosophy, and that was quite an eye-opener for me: "I think; therefore, I am." It's more like "I am; therefore, I am."
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What am I?
I am.
I am. I am not.
I am born. I am dead.
I am my body. I am not my body.
I am what I think. I am more than I think. I am not thinking.
I am aware. I am unaware.
I am real. I am a figment of your imagination.
I am imagining you exist. You are real. You are not real.
I am real. I am not real. I am surreal. (Oh, really?)
I am here. I am there. I am everywhere. I am nowhere.
I am no longer anything I thought I was. It all died off.
I am living the afterlife.
I am living the before-life. I am between lives.
I am living life. I am life itself.
I am now. I was in my memory. I will be potentially.

I am a mystery. I am clear.
I am that I am.
I am (in order) that I am.
I am that "I am".  No, that one!  No, not that one, this one here!
I am. What I am is always changing and dying away.
But after all has changed and died away, there I am.
Then what am I? Whatever I am, there I am.
Therefore, I am.
I am back of all that I think I am.
Are we all the same "I am"?
I am.
I am.
I am.