Who are you really? What defines you? (It's nothing like you currently believe)

This post is going to be perhaps a weird one, one that might not be grasped immediately. I will be sharing with you an insight I learned about from a book called "Awake: It's your turn". It's a book about awakening in simple and practical terms.

I myself haven't experienced awakening yet, so I am just copying this "awakened insight" from this book — I haven't experienced this reality yet, meaning that a lot of this will be paraphrasing and/or directly copied from the book.

Warning: this might seem like just some mental gymnastics or perception jargon, but it is not. This is something that comes from "waking up" from reality. Awakening is something so profound that it is indescribable and unexplainable through language and concepts.

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A Shift in Identity

A practical way to describe what occurs during an awakening is to say that it’s a shift in identity. It is a shift in what you take yourself to be. Specifically, it is a shift from continuously referencing concepts and beliefs about who you are for a sense of identity, consistency, meaning, and fulfillment to resting in and as consciousness. Until awakening occurs, we continuously and without noticing it, take ourselves and our experience to be defined by thoughts and concepts. This means that our identity is intimately tied into thoughts and beliefs, whether we know it or not.

Once identity shifts from thoughts to the source of thoughts, a dramatic transformation in the way you relate to reality has taken place. This doesn’t mean there will be no thoughts. What it means is that your identity isn’t threatened and fractured by fluctuating and inconsistent beliefs about yourself and the world on an ongoing basis.

Imagine you are standing in a meadow at night. You’re looking out onto a clearing. In that clearing is a large pond. The sky is cloudless and there is a full moon shining brightly on the pond from directly overhead. There is a brisk breeze sweeping across the meadow. Because of the wind, the surface of the pond is turbulent. Due to this turbulence, there is no complete reflection of the moon appearing on the surface. There are only tiny dancing shards of light shimmering here and there. You could say the moon appears “fractured” into many pieces on the surface of the water. As you stare at the surface of the pond, you are mesmerized by the dazzling display. Let’s further assume that since you’ve been standing in the meadow, you haven’t averted your gaze away from the surface. You have no knowledge of anything but the surface of the pond. For all you know, there is no meadow, no wind, no sky, and no moon. Furthermore, the water hasn’t calmed enough to see the full lunar reflection as a single whole. You fail to recognize the moon in the sky as the source of the reflection on the pond surface.

In this analogy, thoughts and beliefs are represented by the dancing shards of light, which are, in essence, fractured pieces of the moon. Whether they know it or not, everyone derives their identity from thoughts and beliefs until an awakening occurs.

What then are the ramifications of deriving identity from thoughts and beliefs? Well, returning to the analogy can help to answer this question. What if the only source from which we recall deriving our identity, our sense of self, is that unpredictable, fractured display of short-lived shards of light? Take a moment to consider this question.

You will a shard, isolated within a small box.

Fleeting because it's just a matter of time until the shard fades away.

Your identity is easily threatened by local conditions (e.g. the waves and the wind).

What if we adopt an entirely new approach? What if instead of clinging to various thoughts and concepts, struggling to maintain a network of beliefs about ourselves, we step back and radically readdress our approach? What if we find an entirely different way to go about solving this problem? What if we suddenly saw this whole thing from a vastly different perspective? What if we found a way to experientially realize that we were never contained in any one of those shards of light? Instead, what if we “woke up” from the dream that we are one tiny, isolated shard of light, to the living truth that we are the entirety of the radiant moon?

When identity shifts out of concept and belief and into consciousness itself, you realize in a deeply instinctual way that you are and have always been the magnificent wholeness of the lunar reflection. You are also every single shard of light dancing on the surface. Just as no single shard of light could ever be other than their natural identity as the lunar reflection, you will know beyond doubt that no thought or belief could ever move you one inch away from your ever-present, oceanic nature.

You are the movement.

You are the stilness.

You are the particular, and you are the wholeness.

ou are the light and the darkness.

You are the reflective surface, and you are the unfathomable depths.

Perhaps one of the most bizarre and unexpected features of awakening is that once it occurs, you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it had always been like this.

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I also wanted to get into the "Timeline of You" which is a crucial addition which will really drive this point home (if you let it). But this post is already quite long. So if you would like to, can stop here for now. Reflect on what you've learned so far and take a short break before returning.

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Timeline of You

Who are you? When we answer the question of "Who am I?" You usually end up pointing out a bunch of facts, memories, beliefs about either your future or your past. But what really is the past? and the future?.. Both are imagination within your own thoughts.

One thing is consistent when we talk about ourselves and that is we have to refer to the timeline of our lives. But when we are referring to either the past or future, we never actually refer to this present moment; we refer to thought. So these facts that define our life are never derived from this exact present experience. Isn’t that sort of bizarre? This is quite mysterious indeed.

If you persist in inquiring in this way, “Who am I?” not settling for any memory (past) or referring to your imagination (future), you might find that you actually have no idea who or what you are. You find yourself in a space with no past and no future. This space does not rely on any concepts to define who you are, and yet here you remain.

You can start thinking again and just forget this little exercise, or you can decide you really want to find the answer and so you keep asking and keep investigating directly in this moment, “What am I without referencing the past and future?” If you do proceed in this way and find yourself in a thoughtless space, it’s okay to just remain there. You don’t need to continue to ask the question unless you get lost in thought.

If you do this in the right way and with some persistence, something might happen—something surprising, something life-altering, something radical. It’s as if a hole has been blown in the side of that timeline, and you are able to stick your head out the side and see what’s really going on. What’s “out there” is wholly indescribable, but let me just say that it’s unimaginably vast and radically intimate.

"It feels like an intuitively obvious, pure “I” that is undeniable and free from subjugation to thought. It has the feel of “everything is already I,” so there is nothing to threaten your existence anymore. This often comes with a massive release of tension and doubt. It usually brings with it an unshakable sense of peace and freedom. You feel lighter than you’ve ever felt. There is a pervasive feeling of simplicity and okayness. You instinctually know what you are but cannot define it. It is a pure sense of oceanic Being. There may be thoughts, but they are of no concern. They are mere waves on the infinite ocean of your cosmic Self. Struggle is nowhere to be found. Effortless flow is seen to simply be the nature of what you always were."

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