In its power and simplicity, the question Who am I? throws the mind back to the root of personal identification, the basic assumption, "I am somebody." Rather than automatically taking that assumption as the truth, you can investigate deeper.I've reached a place in my life where I am starting to question some of the most basic labels that have been attached to me (whether by myself, by others, or learned through conditioning) to define who I am. I am questioning all of my goals and dreams, wondering how I decided that these were "my" goals and "my" dreams. Who is the "I" that chose them? What if the goals and dreams were changed to something else? Would it matter? Who creates the meaning, or decides which goal or dream is better or worse than another one?
It is not difficult to see that this initial thought, "I am somebody," leads to all kinds of strategies: to be a better somebody, a more protected somebody, a somebody with more pleasure, more comfort, and more attainment. But when this very basic thought is questioned, the mind encounters the I that is assumed to be separate from what it has been seeking. This is called self-inquiry. This most basic question, Who am I? is the one that is the most overlooked. We spend most of our days telling ourselves or others we are someone important, someone unimportant, someone big, someone little, someone young, or someone old, never truly questioning this most basic assumption.
Who are you, really? How do you know that is who you are? Is that true? Really? If you say you are a person, you know that because you have been taught that. If you say you are good or bad, ignorant or enlightened, these are all just concepts in the mind.
An interesting conversation came up in my life recently about whether my comfortable, non-challenging, non-threatening, middle-class existence really boils down to a life of mediocrity. Is there such a thing as a life that is too easy, too simple, and too comfortable? Does this lead to sleep-walking through life? Can even one's spiritual life, in such a lifestyle, become a mediocrity as well; a hobby to be pursued in one's spare time like everything else? What would an extraordinary life look like, as opposed to a mediocre one?
Certainly there are examples throughout history of people who've awakened in their lives, stepping out of mediocrity into something else. The Buddha comes to mind, walking away from a carefree, sheltered existence in search of essential, naked truths. Yet for you and me, ordinary people working 9-to-5 jobs to pay the mortgage and buy groceries, it is hard to imagine dropping everything - literally everything - and running off to live in a hut on a mountainside, turning one's life upside down in order to get shocked out of complacency. Is it necessary? Is it required before one can truly, radically, evolve? What is the difference between an outer shock (radically changing one's physical life in the world) versus an inner shock (radically changing one's mind, feelings, attitudes, or beliefs)? Do we, those of us who live lives of seeming mediocrity, fool ourselves when we believe we can transform ourselves solely through internal means?
My husband, George, gave me a real Gangaji-moment last week when he asked me: What if, right now in this moment, you had attained all of the goals you had imagined for your life? What if you had a PhD, if you had written many books, composed lots of music, and so on? How would you feel right now? What would that change about you? How would you be different? -- And in all honesty I realized that nothing at all would change about me. Even if I had accomplished all of these things that I thought I had cared about, none of these things ultimately matter! My true self is not about accomplishments or goals or "my story" of what I have done or not done with my life. This was such a gigantic realization for me - how insidious our ego behaves, convincing us that there is always "one more goal" that needs to be finished before we can feel at peace or complete about our lives. We identify ourselves, our self worth, so much through what we do, but ultimately it is all illusory. Our "story," which makes us think that we are "a somebody," is yet another mask we wear to cover up our fears of emptiness and meaninglessness. We're afraid to really look inside and discover that we are not who we thought we were.
If we are not our story or our thoughts, then who are we?
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