One more name.
After my Sadashan Kriya and my meditation.
A few words arose within me.
Effortlessly.
I hadn't planned them.
They simply appeared.
The words were.
I am who I am.
I am who I'm meant to be.
I am.
And I'm not.
And when I am not.
That's when I feel free.
As those words.
A rose right in front of me.
I just sat there.
Simply relax.
Became an observer of those facts.
There was no effort to hold on to them.
And no effort to understand them either.
The next morning.
The same words came again.
Then the morning after that.
And days turned into weeks.
And almost every morning.
After my meditation.
Those same words would arise effortlessly.
Until something interesting began to happen.
Without even realizing it.
Those words started changing the way I looked at life.
Of course not overnight,
Neither dramatically.
Just quietly.
And then one day I realized.
They had been pointing me towards a question I'd never really asked myself before.
Entity.
I'd like to ask you that same question.
What does freedom really mean to you?
As I sat with that question,
I began to notice something.
Every single one of us in one way or another.
Is searching for freedom.
We may not always call it that.
Bye.
Isn't that really what we are looking for?
Freedom from stress,
Freedom from fear.
From expectations.
From responsibilities.
Freedom from financial worries and from suffering.
If you're honest.
Almost every decision we make.
Is because we believe it will bring us a little closer to that feeling of being free.
Don't we tell ourselves?
That once the situation changes or once I find the right relationship,
Or once I own a little more.
I'll be free.
But as I reflected on those words that kept coming to me every morning,
I realized something.
Freedom.
Was never waiting for my circumstances to change.
The greatest prison I'd ever lived in.
Wasn't actually outside of me.
It was created by my own mind.
And it was only after those words continued to arise morning after morning.
That I began to understand what they were trying to show me.
I began to see the bigger picture.
I began to notice.
That they weren't asking me to become someone new.
Were in fact inviting me.
To let go.
To let go of who I thought I was.
And as I slowly began working on myself.
As I began loosening my attachment.
To every role,
Every expectation.
Every emotion.
Every story I'd built about myself.
I caught my very first glimpse.
Of what freedom is.
Actually feels like.
Not because my life had changed.
But because item.
And before I tell you what I discovered.
I'd like to ask you one more question.
Who are you really?
Don't answer too quickly.
In fact,
Just take a slow breath.
Deep breath in.
And gently breathe out.
And ask yourself again.
Who are you really?
You know,
Over the years,
Both in my own journey and in working with so many people I've noticed something.
That very few of us actually answer that question.
Instead.
We answer a completely different one.
We tell people what we do,
The roles we play,
The responsibilities we carry,
The experiences that have shaped us.
Because somewhere along the way,
We start defining ourselves through everything we've accumulated.
Instead.
Of simply being.
And I can't help but wonder.
Isn't that where we begin losing our own freedom?
You know,
Being free doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the roles we play or the emotions we experience.
The problem begins when we stop experiencing them and start identifying with them.
And I say this because I have lived it.
There was a time when I believed I was my roles,
I was my emotions,
I was every story my mind kept repeating.
And the moment I believed that,
My peace became dependent on them.
But as those words became part of the silence I experienced every morning.
I began to realize something.
The mind doesn't imprison us because it thinks.
It imprisons us because we believe everything it says.
And once I saw that,
I couldn't unsee it.
I started noticing how often my mind would tell me stories.
Stories about who I was,
About what other people thought of me,
About what my future would look like,
About why I wasn't enough.
We all do that,
Don't we?
You know for years I believed every single one of them until I realized They were just thoughts.
Not the truth.
Just thoughts.
And in that realization.
I experienced a freedom I had been searching for all my life.
And that's when those words I repeated every morning finally began to make sense.
I am.
Yes,
I am,
I exist,
I experience,
I love,
I feel,
I laugh,
I cry.
I get to experience this beautiful human life.
But then comes the second part.
And I'm not.
For a long time.
I thought those words meant I had to detach from life.
But today,
I know they mean something entirely different.
They remind me that I am not every thought my mind produces.
And not every fear it creates or every story it repeats,
Neither every judgment it makes or every emotion that comes and goes.
Those experiences are real.
But they are not who I am.
And neither are you.
They visit us.
But they certainly don't define us.
The moment I stopped believing.
That every thought deserved my attention.
And instead.
When I started to simply observe.
I watched the thoughts come and go.
And that is when I discovered something so beautiful.
That the thoughts change.
The emotions change.
The circumstances change.
But the one.
Who is aware of them?
Remains.
And act.
Is where I found my freedom.
So today.
If you take only one thing away from this conversation.
Let it be this.
The next time your mind tells you.
That you're not enough.
Bonus.
The next time it tells you that your happiness depends on someone else.
Pause.
The next time it tells you.
That your future is already decided.
Pause.
And gently ask yourself.
Is this the truth?
Is this simply a thought?
Because the moment you stop believing everything your mind tells you,
You create a little space and in that space There is peace.
There is clarity.
And there is a choice.
And that's what freedom truly is.
Not freedom from life or pain.
In fact not even from the mind.
But freedom from believing.
That I am my mind.
And that's fine.
Every morning.
I still smile and those same words arise within me.
I am who I am.
I am who I'm meant to be.
I am.
And I'm not.
And when I am not.
That's when I feel free.
