Who am I?
Who am I is probably the greatest question that humanity has ever faced. Searching for the answer to this question is the cause of wars, famine, in fact the entire corrupt nature of humanity can be traced back to one cancerous point where someone was trying to prove who they were based on an opinion, expectation or intention.
Anything to do with trying to define who you are through action is based on moving the world around you to accommodate an idea of self, defining yourself by how hard you can push back at a world that pushes you around. Or even just feeling empowered by your ability to accept it as inevitable.
No matter how you deal with it the truth remains that the universe is impartial to our decisions or the effect they have on us emotionally. The universe cares equally about every outcome, no matter what happens and does not favor any one part of itself. If you find yourself in conflict or struggle, always remember it is always you that is pushing. But who are you? And what exactly are you pushing against?
We cannot forget that the universe does not have a desired outcome in any situation except balance, thus there is no negative and positive, these are just illusions to a mind trying to substantiate a material world. So, it stands true that negative action isn’t the only form of resisting movement. Helping people, doing good deeds and so on can also be ways of defining yourself through actions. What is the difference between the two? This can only be determined by examining one’s relationship to the Known and the Unknown.
The answer lies within the difference between who we truly are and who we think we are. Who we think we are arises within every decision, every time we choose a direction based on preference. This image is the point that the environment has reflected you into, like light being pushed to a point, in order to create the material you, your statement of position, your body, your physical organism.
For some reason we feel bound to it, as though it is this ball floating on the surface of the ocean being pushed around by the waves, having no say in what goes on around us or where we will end up.
Who we think we are soon becomes the point of departure for all the movement throughout the world, you have been told your whole life that you are good at math through positive reinforcement then you will approach a mathematical problem with confidence. If you were encouraged through negative reinforcement, then you may approach the same question with fear, regardless of your actual ability to answer the question.
The place you come from in order to approach the problem is who you think you are. No matter what you do it will come from a place that is defined by your moral characteristics, but what is that really? To act the way a good Christian would act, because you of course were told you were a good Christian, and that is clearly defined. Even the term “What would Jesus do?” comes to mind.
I am not questioning morals or the act of helping people in any way, I am simply suggesting that if you do a good deed just because you are trying to secure your position as a good Christian, or a comfy place in the afterlife, then the deed loses all meaning as you are not genuinely committing the act. It is who you think you are, who you think you should be, or who you want to be.
If I am not this person, then who am I? How can I find who I am? The answer is as simple or as complex as your existing conflict. If you ask yourself the question “Who am I?” then you are already limiting yourself as “Who” has a sense of other which is in itself limited by the comparison to the “I”. It becomes the point of departure for the invocation of an answer that is also already limited by its point (“I”).
Let me suggest a new approach to self-inquiry, let us rephrase the question. You ask “Who am I”, I say “Who is asking this question?” this now causes the mind to reverse its way of observing and “I” becomes the open space prior to thought instead of a limited point of thought. You are no longer the question that needs to be answered by the universe, but the answer to the question “What is the universe?”
Now you may say to yourself it is just a different way of looking at the same thing, it doesn’t change it, so let me give you another example. Let us look at our feeling of insignificance, this can be illustrated in the old saying, “the more you know the more you know you don’t know” adults breaking all knowledge down into bite-size pieces and feeding it to us one at a time until we become one of them repeating the pattern. This is the case as we were raised to believe that any one person could not know everything, only God can know all. This makes us content to know what we know, and we should be thankful for that.
Look at the size of the universe and look at how tiny we are in comparison! In contrast I should know that much less than the universe or be that much less significant. This is the ultimate feeling of insignificance and separateness. I have come to reverse my relationship to thoughts by one realization, that I am being reminded of something I already knew. I knew it all as one picture, so I didn’t recognize that piece until you just showed me.
You are never learning new things you are just creating new ways of identifying the same patterns by shuffling around where you are when you look them, constantly being reminded of something you forgot you already knew. This has a feeling of significance, that by being in this body you need to forget things, or you would cease to exist. You feel yourself being pulled back to the oneness only to realize that you like it here in existence and you were holding yourself here the whole time! It was and always has been your choice.
As soon as you recognize these patterns you should release them as you found them so you don’t compare it to the next one that looks similar and distort it. This is how “who we think we are” is created.
The true Self is prior to thought and can never be seen except to equally observe everything that establishes our statement of position (everything known/the totality of our awareness), by resting in the fact that “who is asking the question” is the luring desire that comes from its opposite (the unknown) and all activity is in the relationship between both these halves.
