Who Are You, Really? (Hint: It's Not Who You "Think")

Andrew,

There's a lot going on in this book.

It's full of insight,

Thought,

And it's very thought-provoking,

That's for sure.

So some of the interesting details you've already touched on a lot of it.

In the introduction,

You already outlined your take on spiritually conscious.

I found that very unique.

And I'd like to touch a little more on that,

Using the term spiritually conscious to refer to an awareness beyond the conceptual mind,

Beyond thinking.

What I do find a lot more in my life now,

Ed,

Is that feelings will pop up about things that I should or perhaps shouldn't do.

And when I say should or shouldn't,

I want to be careful here.

I'm not saying this would be good and that would be bad in the usual way that the conceptual mind grabs hold of those concepts and really tortures us with them.

No,

I'm saying more often now I feel like bubbling up from within me is a feeling of go in this direction or don't go in that direction.

This is what's more real over this way.

So I would put it more in that sense that my life feels somehow more guided by an inner guidance system that's deeper than my conceptual mind.

And thanks for emphasising this issue of the conceptual mind.

Many,

Many people confuse spirituality or the spiritual dimension of life with looking into concepts about spirituality or concepts about an inner life and so forth.

But as you say in the introduction,

I point out to people this book's definitely not primarily about spiritual concepts.

Many,

Many people who spend their lives investigating and exploring and writing about and talking about and discussing spiritual concepts are quite unconscious spiritually speaking.

But many people who hardly ever think about it,

You know,

They hear the word yoga or meditation or retreat and they say,

What are they?

But there are many people like that who are actually very,

Very spiritually awake.

So being spiritually awake has nothing to do with the conceptual mind.

And I want to give you listeners now just a little taste of something simple they can do,

Experience right this very moment to get a sense of what I'm talking about.

And you'll remember that I talk about this in the early part of chapter one.

If you listeners think about when they were a little child,

Eight or 10 years old,

Did they feel like they were them at that time?

And most people are going to nod and say,

Well,

Yeah,

Sure,

I did feel like I was me.

And did you feel like you were you when you were 15,

16?

Yeah,

I did.

Yeah.

What about when you were 20?

Of course,

When you were 30,

40,

50,

Did you feel like you were you?

Yeah,

I did.

And even though of course,

You know,

You're in very different circumstances,

Maybe at those different stages,

Your roles in life were very different.

One time you're a grade school student and next time you may be a college student or you were working in a store as a checkout person,

Or you were working as a carpenter or,

You know,

Whatever job there might be.

And your jobs have changed,

Your roles have changed.

Yeah,

They sure have.

But all this while you felt like you were you,

Right?

Well,

Yeah.

So that means that,

You know,

Shop assistant can't be who you are.

Doctor is not who you are.

Motor mechanic is not who you are.

It's just something that you happen to be doing.

And next year,

If you happen to take a different job,

Feel like a change or you're made redundant and you're forced into a change,

You're still like,

Oh,

Yeah,

I am.

That's true.

And your body's changed over all those years.

Sure.

Yeah.

In big ways it's changed.

Yeah.

You know,

And some of the things that you believe about yourself in life,

They're different from when you were 10,

From when you were 20 to 30.

Yeah.

A lot of those beliefs have changed.

So none of those things are who we are.

And yet we tend to have this self image that says these concepts of who I am are who I am.

But no,

They're not.

That sense that you had all your life.

Yeah,

I was me when I was 10.

I was me.

I felt like I was me when I was 20,

When I was 30.

That is you.

That's this formless awareness that's been mostly in the background.

The witness,

The observer,

The notice of all of what you have been experiencing,

The notice of your physical sensations,

Your sensory input,

The notice of the thoughts that have been coming again,

The notice of emotions that have come and gone,

The notice of roles and occupations that you have.

That's this inverted commas,

Spiritual aspect,

Formless awareness,

Formless consciousness.

It is the essence of who we are.

And you refer to that as the mist of the mind.

Is that correct?

Well,

The mist of the mind is all the things that we get tricked into thinking are us.

All the thoughts,

All the ideas,

All the perceptions.

Most perceptions are very selective and sort of distorted,

Interpretive.

All our emotions,

All of our beliefs.

This is all the mist of the mind.

We think it's real.

We think it's who we are.

That's why I say it's the mist of the mind,

Because it's actually a distortion of what's real.

The truth of who we are and the truth of life is this formless,

Peace-filled presence or life,

Life energy or life essence,

The intelligence of life that's in the background.

So let's touch on that idea then of seeing through the mist of the mind.

And let's go to really the core of the main benefits that people will get out of exploring this awakening of the deeper truth of who they are.

An interesting thing that I discovered along the way is that the things that seem to disappoint us or trouble us or make us feel like we're not satisfied or that we're frustrated in some way,

Either subtly or perhaps glaringly obviously with our lives,

The things that trouble us are not what we experience or even they're not what we don't experience that we wish we could.

What troubles us is not what we're experiencing.

It's having a thought and believing a thought that says what I'm experiencing is bad or it's not what it should be or it's not good enough.

So it's not what we experience but what we think and believe about what we are experiencing.

And this is a huge breakthrough of discovery and I want to just let you all listeners come back to what we were just saying a minute ago about who the essence of them is.

They've always felt like they were them and that's this observing awareness that's kind of been in the background.

Now it's not what I'm experiencing.

There's a thought that's popping up that says what I'm experiencing isn't what I want or it's not what it should be or it's bad.

That's a thought that's popped up and your listener is noticing that thought.

They're not the thought that's causing,

That's triggering the turbulent emotions maybe or the general dissatisfaction.

They're the awareness,

The peace filled awareness that's noticing the thought.

So that in itself helps to dissolve the potency of the thought and the emotion that it's triggering.

If when your listeners have a particular emotion pop up,

A really helpful thing to do is to first of all acknowledge the emotion of course rather than just immediately trying to bury it but say no I'm feeling a bit anxious or I'm feeling jealous or I'm feeling angry at the moment about something and then look at okay yes I'm having that feeling but then shift from thinking I'm angry or I'm jealous or I'm anxious to saying to themselves I'm the awareness noticing a feeling of anger or I'm the awareness noticing a feeling of frustration.

And this brings a space between who you really are and the feeling or emotion that's been triggered by a thought.

And I describe in the book step by step in lots of examples how people can do this very simple process.

Once you've noticed that you're the one noticing the emotion,

You're not actually the emotion,

You're noticing the emotion,

Then they can begin to look at what's the thought that's triggered this emotion.

So say it's anger and so then they realize oh I'm feeling angry because such and such a person said they would do something for me yesterday and they still haven't done it and that's bad.

So there's the thought that's triggering the anger.

Even not just that this person hasn't done what they said but the thought that it's bad that they haven't done what they said they would do and that's what's triggering my anger.

And then people can ask themselves oh now okay do I know for sure that this thought that it's bad that such and such a person hasn't done yet what they said they would do?

Do I know for sure that that's bad?

Oh well no there's no way I suppose that I can prove for certain that it's bad that they haven't done what they said they would do.

Then you can ask yourself is it possible it could lead to something good?

Well yes I suppose there are several ways in which it could actually lead to something good the fact that they haven't done what they said they would do.

Maybe it's going to prompt me to take some action that I otherwise wouldn't have bothered to do and that's going to in some way benefit me.

I'm going to learn to do something that I otherwise wouldn't have been bothered to learn to do or it might you know have a better result because I've done it myself rather than having them do it.

There's all sorts of possibilities that will pop into people's mind about how it could possibly lead to some good outcome.

So then you begin to realise there's no way that I can know for certain that this thought that's popped up that triggered my troubling emotions the thought that popped up I can't know for sure that it's true.

It could just as easily turn out to be false.

So what remains?

This observing awareness that you truly are remains.

You just are there present.

The thought has kind of crumbled into dust because you've seen that there's no way you can know it's true.

The emotion that was triggered by the false thought dissolves once you realise gee there's no way that I can know that that thought that that situation is bad is true then the emotion falls into nothingness and you're left with peaceful presence.