Who Am I?

Swami Vivekananda wrote: “Rise up, Oh lions, and know that you are not sheep. You are souls immortal, spirits free, blessed and eternal.”

What was he smoking???

Several times at the ashram we did an exercise called “Who am I?”, in which two people sat facing each other and one person repeated the question: “Who are you?” for fifteen minutes. No other words or cues. Just: “Who are you?” Their partner then wracked their brain to come up with fifteen minutes-worth of relevant answers. Normally I don’t mind talking about myself non-stop, but the first time I did this exercise the fifteen minutes, or even two or three, felt interminable. I quickly ran out of familiar identifiers: “female, wife, mother, sister, friend, seeker, writer, landscape tinkerer” (I was getting desperate) and then a kind of panic set in. My partner’s implacable expression and relentless: “Who are you?” questions were deeply disconcerting.

Ultimately I exhausted all my options and settled into a sense of simply being “conscious”, being “an observer”, “experiencing” sensations and scenes unfolding around me. Pure consciousness.

The fact is, life is full of fleeting sensations and subtle changes that mostly go unnoticed. Even the more noticeable shifts — day to night, season to season, year to year — follow such predictable patterns that I take them for granted. And their rhythms to be everlasting. With or without me, the “show” must – and does – go on. So what could Swami Vivekananda have meant by “souls immortal, spirits free, blessed and eternal”?

You’ve probably heard the expression: “We are souls (or spiritual beings) having a human experience”. I googled that expression to see to whom I should credit it, and came across many entries saying the same thing in a slightly different way. If it weren’t for the fact that I wanted to finish this blog for my self-imposed Monday deadline, I’d have gone on a tangent reading about all the ways people have interpreted this statement. But alas, Monday is only hours away and the unsolved mystery, or unanswered question remains: “Who am I, really?” Who are you?

What if I am a soul? On a soul journey? And – the kicker – what difference would it make to know that in my bones?

As you’ve probably guessed by now, I don’t have a definitive answer to the “Who am I”, or many other pressing questions. But I know that by simply asking, by writing them in my journal, exploring them with friends – or via the internet – I am expanding my awareness and enriching my life. Maybe I’ll never plumb the depths of my psyche, (if I’m even meant to) but the journey has given me a sense of purpose and meaning, and of adventure. There’s always more to explore.

Anyway, Who wants to be a sheep?