Who Am I, Really? – Part 1. A Closer Look

Where do you go look when defining who you are?

Where does your identity exist?
I’ll pose the question now and give you an opportunity to take notice..

WHO ARE YOU?

Stop and think..
.
.
Who are you?…
.
.
No really, actually think. Take 10 seconds, stop reading, turn away, and ask yourself “Who am I?”
.
.
.
.
.
Where does your mind go? Where did you look? Where did you go to find your identity?

Most of us will look into our past to find our identity.
Interestingly, as most of us sort through our past, we seem to do so with a little Debbie-downer leading the way, biasedly highlighting our less illustrious decisions and experiences.

Is that who you are?
The hurt you’ve suffered,
the pain you’ve endured,
the mistakes you’ve made,
the disappointment you’ve dealt with,
the agony you’ve lived through?

Well, where do these things exist now?
Only in your memory of the past.
It’s an interesting thing, the “past”,
for it is no more than a concept and it is not real.
Not real as in it does not exist anymore.

Just as interesting is a memory,
for it is only an idea. A different kind perhaps, but still,
just an idea.
Yesterday does not exist,
perhaps but in a photograph.
It is only an idea in your head.
The past is not here with you as you read these words.
It is not here, and it is not right now.
It is long gone,
like the wave that reached the shore.

Evidently, it seems you won’t find YOU in your past.
Oh, but how easy it is to be fooled into thinking so!
Wise was he who named us human beings and not human were-ers.

But I’ve been left a scar!

Have you?
Where is the scar?…..
Consider instead, you’ve been left with a disempowering view of yourself and your life, and a reality of your own construct… More. Ideas.
See, you’re a fascinating creature, you human being.
You like to make stuff mean something.
You don’t just like to, you actually can’t help it. (We’ll talk more about that in a Part 3 of this series.)
Often to the point that this something becomes your reality.
And no one can convince you otherwise since you’ve collected all this evidence to support your case.

But this stuff that you gave meaning to is only stuff,
an unreality in the past,
stuff that happened.
Not quite who you are.
It is now only left in your memory along with the meaning that you added.

It can seem a little tricky at times,
this whole game of ideas, memories, and meaning.
They are all thoughts. And, thoughts are all they are.
Thought, however, is one of the most powerful forces in the universe,
for it creates the world around you.
The thing about thoughts is that they’re social butterflies.
They like to hang out with similar thoughts.
And before you know it,
thoughts form a concept,
concepts form a belief, and
beliefs form a paradigm of reality which give way to your experience of this crazy thing we call Life.

So the past challenges and difficulties is not who we are. We will continue to explore this question further in upcoming posts in this series, and throughout the entire blog.

But what to make of all these memories of past experiences and events?
Well, you don’t have to make anything of them!
Alternatively, it seems you get to make a choice with your struggles and transgressions from the past.
You can choose to point at these past experiences and events, the stuff,
and define yourself as them.
As the hurt, as the pain, as the mistakes, as the disappointments, as the agony.
Or,
you can take from them.
Take from the hurt, from the pain, from the mistakes, from the disappointments, from the agony
that which serves you.
The humility, the growth, the sensitivity, the lessons, the relatedness, the strength.
The choice is yours.
I invite you,
choose the latter.