Part 2: Who Am I?
Who Are You, Really? Reconnecting With the Presence Within
Have you ever asked yourself that question? If If not, take a moment right now, close your eyes, put your hand on your heart and silently ask yourself, Who am I? What comes immediately to mind when you ask this question? Often people hear things like a gender, job title, familial role, cultural or religious identification or value driven statements like vegan, animal lover, environmentalist and so on.
These are roles you play, but is that who you really are - just a jumble of arbitrary and chosen roles that can be changed or list at any time? Or are you something more?
Who Answered The Questions
Let’s take it a step further. Who answered that question? Whose voice did you hear? Who is behind all the activities, emotions and thoughts in your life. Can you feel someone is there? A presence? Can you sense it? If not, close your eyes again and breath deeply for a few moments. Remain with the breath and see if you can feel that subtle something—the awareness that notices everything else.
That presence is with you throughout every experience you have. Through the joys, the sorrows, the mundane and maddening, through passion and pissed off, through love and heartbreak. Behind every emotion, every thought and every action….the presence remains - steady, calm, clear and spacious.
That is the real you - your soul. The part that is always watching, listening and quietly guiding you to greater things if you choose to connect with it. This is your silent inner wisdom, your life force or your consciousness.
The Consciousness That Connects Us All
In yogic philosophy we know that this is the same inner wisdom and life force that flows through everything in creation. From rocks, plants, water and trees, to the people you love and the people you would love to magically make disappear from your life (It’s ok. We all have them!). This is the life force or Consciousness that binds us all together, connects us, at the subtlest level.
This Consciousness (life force, God or Source - choose what term feels good to you), flows through every living thing. We are not separate from it, we are a piece of it. Think of Consciousness as the ocean. We are each a wave of the ocean, not seperate, but distinct. We came from the ocean, we are made of the same elements as the ocean and we will return to the ocean. We are the ocean and we have access to the same power to create a life that feels purposeful, connected, impactful and authentic to who we are at the deepest level.
The key to creating this life is to connect back to the ocean, or Source, and align yourself with its energy. This alignment is akin to swimming with the current. You are in the current of life and the current carries you to answers you seek, synchronicities that open up opportunities and signs pointing you in the right direction.
But How Do I Find Myself?
The question you may be asking is, how do I find myself? I don’t feel that presence you mentioned. How do I access it?
Take a moment to pay attention to your thoughts. Don’t try to manipulate, control or stop them. Let the mind be free. Just allow thoughts to do what they do, coming and going, shifting and changing.
Now ask yourself….who is aware of the thoughts? Who was watching them as they moved through the movie screen of my mind? Who was thinking them?
That’s the real you. The one behind the thoughts. The one that watches and hears the thoughts. That’s the real you.
I know this can be a tough concept to grasp at first. Many of us have become so identified with our thoughts, that we believe we are our thoughts. You are not your thoughts, you are the thinker of your thoughts. As you just witnessed, thoughts change rapidly and are influenced by what we experience with the five sense - the real you does not and is not. It is the steady, still, silent and loving- an unchangeable witness to it all.
The Gap
You can find the real you, in the silent space between the thoughts - what we call in yoga - the gap. The real you is always in the spaces.
Here is another helpful way of accessing the quiet stillness that is you. Take a moment to observe your breath. You are not your breath, you are the observer of your breath. The real you is in the spaces between the breaths. The breath provides a natural gap. With every breath there is a pause at the top of the inhale and a pause at the bottom of the exhale. In those pauses, the mind gets quieter, softer and more open. That is where you find yourself. Allow yourself to linger in those pauses - to get a felt sense of the real you.
The Real You Is Only A Breath Away
Regardless of how distracted, rushed, angry, confused, or sad you are, you can always come back to the silent witness. You can always find the real you and connect to Source just by tapping into the breath and the pauses between breaths.
When you return to the real you, you connect into the powerful energy of Source or Consciousness-where all answers lie, where fear is dissolved, where peace and wellbeing reside.
You are only a breath away my friend. Only a breath away.
Feeling the pull to go deeper? I work privately with clients who want to regulate their nervous system, reconnect to their inner compass, and create lives that feel aligned and meaningful.