Who Am I ?

I know who I am.

I am me.

I am this body.

I am the thoughts that I think

and the things that I do

and the needs that I have 

the desires that I fulfill

and the suffering I experience.

I am real and separate from everything

I perceive in this universe.

I can exert my free will to alter circumstances

that do not conform to a way

I think they should be.

I know who I am.

Or so it would seem.

Until the flies begin to appear

in the ointment.

My free will is not always sufficient

to eliminate the suffering I am experiencing.

I can only experience moments of happiness

in a sea of ordinary and uninspired and

I cannot fathom the end of my existence

when this body ceases to exist.

And then there are the moments when

I find myself

through no intent of my own

in a place of indescribable beauty and bliss

where there is no separation between me

and everything not me.

A place that should not exist given the model

of how it all works that I believed was true.

My happiness is not somehow dependent

on things outside of myself.

And so the question arises …

If it is not how I thought it was then

what is actually happening in this place

I thought I understood so well ?

A journey is set in motion whose purpose is

to find an answer to this question

and it will take precedence over

everything else in this life.

And so we create within us

the place of the witness and begin to notice

from an unattached perspective

the events that fill our lives and

the forces that are at work in determining

how these events unfold.

Until we eventually come to a realization

that changes everything.

We come to realize that

we are not the doer we thought we were.

Life is unfolding in the only way

it can unfold given the

forces at work and

we can’t change any of this.

We can’t even change who we are because

these changes only happen through our perception

of what we encounter in our lives.

To our amazement

we discover that the only power we have

is to be present in the moment and to

notice how it all is.

And now the question becomes real.

If I am not the doer I thought I was

then who am I ?

And another journey begins.

One that will consume us to the end

where we will come to know

who we really are

and finally be done with the

illusion of separateness.