WHAT ARE YOU?

WHAT ARE YOU?

Our lives, yours and mine, both began with a wordless question already formed. I don't remember it and neither will you because we didn't have vocabulary then. But we existed, nevertheless, in the question “What am I?” A second question soon slid alongside it, namely “What is my place in the midst of all this?”

Shortly after we were born, we began to be able to look around and focus our eyes on things, and faces that hove into view. The question we were coming from, remember, was “What am I?” So everything that captured our attention got labelled by our budding mind as an answer -- “Me. That's Me. And this is Me. And so is that". So, unconsciously, we began putting together a self-image.

The labeling became an ingrained habit. Psychologists call the habitual process “identifying”. We don't think it; the habit thinks us. Everything we see, hear, taste, smell and touch we robotically assume “That's me; I am that”. We still do it. And like everything else the mind latches onto, it insists on being right about it.

The mind is abetted by a Ruthless Rule of Reality which goes something like this – “Everything you add after 'I am', you become.” It's how you and I create our worlds. It's part of the rules of the game called Being Human. We create the world we live in by whatever we add after "I am...."

The cosmic joke is that it's all jiggery-pokery. We've imagined the whole thing, and our minds cannot tell the difference between something we've imagined and something that has actually happened. Anything imagined sets in train a string of biological and psychological consequences absolutely identical to those that would occur if what we've imagined has actually happened. We act as if what we're thinking and, consequently, feeling is real. But it's not. It's an illusion. 

But it does make for one helluva game. Human life is an improvisation in which we identify with characteristics, traits, attitudes, moods, ideas, concepts and beliefs. We say unto our selves “That's me”, adopt the “character” and then explore the situations life throws at us from that perspective, and generate the consequences of those assumptions. And we do all this as if it's all real and as if our lives depend upon it. In fact, it feels real because we've not been able until now to realise it's not real. We've assumed all along our cherished ideas about life and our selves in it are real, we're imagining it's real, and we spend a lot of energy proving that what we've created is real and true. We've not been able to remember, of course, that we once existed in a simple state of “I am” (with no additives). We've been inventing and pretending ever since.

Is that so bad? A hearty game of “Let's Pretend” makes for great theatrical entertainment. With everyone else playing the same game, it's like a cosmic Theatre Sports in which we are all our own participants, scriptwriters, directors, audience and critics. It's a really engrossing way to pass time.

But it is an illusion, and was never meant to be taken seriously forever. Only until now. Now it's time to wake up and grow up. Every assumption we ever made about “That's me” was, and still is, a mistake. We are not really who or what we think we are, and neither is any one else.

But if that's true, then What Am I? Who are you?

Until you're prepared to sit in the shade, sit down and contemplate the awful prospect that you might have made a basic mis-take, and that your ideas about who and what you are are erroneous.

Don't beat yourself up about it. We're all in the same learning game which dictates that we first have to experience what is NOT before we can come to a deep realisation of what IS. We get lost so that we can find. That way we get the wisdom of seeing things from different perspectives. Isn't that good news? If it isn't, stay in the illusion and keep going. But if you're ready to wake up, consider this ---

Identifying is the only cause of suffering.

Really?

Well don't take my word for it. Look for yourself into something that's causing you bother right now. Look underneath that and you'll find, maybe a negative belief you have about yourself that's keeping you stuck to the spot, maybe an idea about the way things should be that doesn't fit with what is, or maybe some other perception you've latched onto that you're sure is “right”, but is turning out to be a stone in your shoe.

Identity is the only cause of suffering? Well, if life isn't working for you in some way or other, you could choose to hear this as the best news ever! Maybe you've gone along blaming everything and everyone other than yourself for your “failures”? Not much juice is available down that hole. If it were true and the world had to change so that you could be happy, you're chances don't look too good. Perhaps you've looked everywhere else for the cause of your perturbation, but you still haven't managed to dig out the secret saboteur within. If so, what have you got to lose by trying a line of inquiry you haven't tried before? What's something I'm attached to that could be causing me to stew? Can I now let go of my investments in it? Phew!! Just think, if you've got this far not knowing what you are and therefore not able to be yourself, imagine what you could do once you find the actual truth after “I am …....”

One final hint. Because your mind, like mine, is absolutely attached to being right about its old conclusions, you may have to be very persistent in letting its immediate and familiar “reasons” fly through to the keeper and quietly insist on trekking this new line of inward-vestigation. Your mind will protest and may even go a bit nuts. Pay no attention. The “A-hah!” realisations will come.