Normally, one's 'I' is thought of as one's physical body and whatever is inside. The 'I' may also define one's relationships with others. Liking something or someone also defines one's 'I', even more so dis-liking. Immediate, so-called instinctive, responses or thoughts also delineate one's personality, the I-me-my set of emotions, thoughts, sensations, actions, and memories in my conscious, subconscious, and unconscious.
One may also define one's 'I' by what one cannot or will not do, where doing includes thinking, speaking, and physically acting.
This is where sneakiness comes in.
In Living with the Himalayan Masters Swami Rama's Guru taught him graphically about perspective. [1] He suddenly hugged a tree and frantically begged to be rescued from it. It took a while for Swami Rama to calm down enough to realise who was grabbing what!
Now, think of meditation, an activity requiring little energy [2] and greater and greater relaxation over time. Its effects are palpable, but not instantaneous. In some ways, the effects are reductive, not additive, of the 'I'. Indeed after a particular stage, one has to deliberately relinquish the 'I'-sustaining thoughts in order to progress.
This may be one reason why people have trouble with meditation. They are so comfortable with their 'I' that they refuse to let go of it. Further, if meditation is defined as an effort-ful activity, they use the excuse of an inability for physical activity for not meditating and so losing their self-created 'I'.
NOTES
[1] The lesson was on mAya. mAya doesn't hold us, we hold it.
[2] In India, most things come with terms and conditions. If someone says, "It's easy to do that," there's generally some, or a lot, of context, background, and previous skill development left out. Meditation defined as effortless focus is not one of those things. When the focus is not effortless, one is not in meditation. In Heartfulness meditation, the situation is even easier, the source of the light in one's heart itself pulls one's attention inward and creates the effortless focus.
