WHO ARE YOU, REALLY?

By Aruna Byers

When we use the word “I” we are referring to a concept about our self, that most of us have never really examined? If I ask you “Who are you, really?” your first reaction will probably be “I am me, or I am this body, or I am this name.” Have you ever stopped to think about what you really mean when you say “I”?

My first response to this question was “I am this body,” but then I remembered that I have experienced looking down at my body from the ceiling and without the body I was still “Me.” So I had to ask myself, who is this “Me” that can be in the body or out of the body, and does this “me” continue to exist if the body dies?

Upon further exploration I realized that the me I was referring to was not really the body, or the personal identity that had been constructed from all the input I had received from my senses, my parents, teachers, friends, etc throughout this body’s life. This concept of “me” was just a construct of perceptions and memories that were collectively represented by my name.

My mother taught me I was her daughter, and to her that meant a form of ownership with the right to mold me into an image of who she wanted me to be. I knew at an early age that her image of me was not who I was, but for the sake of survival I had to go along with her program. So in a way I lost “me” as I did my best to gain her approval. But that lost “me” was still there, resisting with anxiety many of the ways of being in the world that were being applauded and longing for the courage to express myself differently.

My teachers taught me that I would be a loser if I didn’t study hard and get good grades in their classes. I didn’t want to disappoint them or my mother, so I studied hard and became the “good student.” Their grades and praise encouraged me to believe that what they were teaching me was the “truth” and by learning it I was smart and wise. But the other “me” questioned some of the things they taught and in order to survive I ignored those questions and the discomfort they were causing.

By the time I married and had a family of my own, the anxiety created by having two “me’s” made life very stressful. I did my best to fulfill societies (and mother’s) acceptable values as wife, mother, daughter, friend, etc. but deep inside the “other me” was suffering. It wasn’t the life my true self wanted. It wasn’t the “truth” of how “I” was meant to be. The two “I’s” were at war in my body and this expressed itself as dis-ease.

After many years of suffering with allergies, asthma and depression, a search for better health and inner peace eventually led me to the question, “Who Am I, really?”

I didn’t know who I was, but I did know who I was NOT. I knew I was not the body that I could observe from the ceiling or the “person” I was perceived by others to be. I was not the “good girl” or the “smart and wise student.” I was not the mother or career woman I was pretending to be. These were all just roles I was playing to meet other people’s agendas. And I also realized that most of the thoughts about “my” behavior in those roles were not mine either – they were merely repetitions of the things others had told me or my mind had accepted to be true based on its perceptions of the body’s life experiences and the conclusions it had formulated about them.

I concluded that I was definitely not the body or the “person” the mind believed me to be, because if I was, I would not be able to observe them like they were separate from me. The more I observe the body’s behavior and the thoughts that run through the mind I can see that they are operating on a different level of awareness and understanding than the “I” that is observing them.

Who is this “I”? It is the “I” of the true me. The one who observes everything. It has no name and no form. The name that best describes it is “awareness.”

Have you ever thought there could be a true you that is different from who you have always believed yourself to be? Do you have a feeling that there’s an observer in you? Do you know where your intuition and inspiration come from? Could an observer in you be trying to guide you to a different way of being?