“To be really who we are, we need to subtract from ourselves, not add,” Franciscan Sister Norma Rocklage explains. “Our true self is to get rid of whatever we have piled on ourselves that gets in the way.”
I am more than the sum of my experiences; there is something else; the real me wanting to be known. I live in my own narrow, limited world, commanded by associations from all my subjective impressions. This is the prison Pat wrote about in her Poem “Mark 10:17 – 25” (January 21, 1972)

I live in the soft prison of my desires,
Home of all my comforts.
There is no other tenant,
And nothing breaks the silence.

Outside, in clarity of sun and wind, 
God’s voice reaches men
As well as angels, 
Hands touch, 
And eyes look out for love.

I am a prisoner,
Reaching no hands outward,
Having withdrawn self to self.
Accustomed to my prison now,
I love it, fear to leave it.

The real me is not thought or felt. The real me is remembered from the memory of that love deep within, from my love for Pat. I love; therefore I am. God is love and must be present for me to exist, for me to be “I am.” I must feel the primordial vibration of God’s Love to be truly “I am” and one with my beloved. God and she are the life within me. There is an “I am” experiencing the One God made Pat and I in marriage. It is our soul and it shall never die! She is still within me; she is the one knowing our self. Our soul is who we are; the “I am” of us.
Yes, Pat is still here with me the point of her poem “In Prison with you” (October 1992)” last two verses:

I am still here
But now I can 
get out
any time I like.

What stops me is 
The fact
That you won’t come
And I know
You would be lonely.

We seek to approach God, to open the door to what is hidden in us and pass beyond. It is necessary to submit entirely to the Kingdom of Heaven within; to feeling the divine, to feel the sacred in us, for each to love each other and Love. God is found within. Truth, the only truth, is in consciousness. The Lord our God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is how Pat “hypnotized the guards” and set us free.