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We all ask ourselves the questions at times, “Who am I? How do I distinguish myself from my negative self-talk? Is it true what it is telling me? How do I silence the voice of self-diminishment? Are these the right questions to ask myself? How do I really find out who I am?”

“How do I know who I am in the face of all the thoughts that I am having that tell me who I am? Who am I really?”

You may be asking yourself the questions, “Am I my name? Am I what other people think of me? Am I how other people describe who I am? Am I other people’s opinions? Am I my profession? Am I my reputation?”

“How do I really find out who I am?”

Conventional wisdom may tell you that asking yourself these questions does not lead you anywhere, and it is a road that you have probably much travelled, and you had better “get on with life.” But is this true? Are you that easily defeated? Would it not be fantastic to know who you really are? What would become available if you really were to know who you are?

In my opinion, it is time for a new approach, a new way of talking about your life that makes sense; an approach that lets you recognize your true nature, not an approach that defineswho you are and labels your predicament.

In this article I share with you my own struggle regarding how I came to the awareness of mytrue nature, and what difference this has made in my life. I share with you how knowing myself gave me an incredible sense of the possible and energized me beyond description.

Trying to Get out of the Trap Is Part of Being in the Trap

I currently work as a medical doctor in the emergency room of a rural hospital in New South Wales, Australia. Part of my job is to contact other specialists to discuss patients when they present with a complicated problem and I choose to seek advice.

Since I was a child I have had a stutter. Most people don’t notice it, since it is hardly detectable. When I am about to pick up the phone to make a call to a collegue to ask for advice all kinds of thoughts run through my mind. I often feel my heart thumping in my chest:

“Suppose I stutter?”

“Will the doctor find me stupid?”

“Will I be articulate enough to formulate the problem?”

“Will he or she get irritated with me?”

The random voice often is speculative in nature, often judgmental, casting doubt ordiminishment. The inclination in the moment of its occurrence is to interact with these random thoughts, to ask myself the questions whether they are true or not. I notice to my annoyance that when I engage with these thoughts, I am no longer present, and chances are that I stumble in my interaction with the person I am about to talk with. I bring myself into a self-feeding frenzy the moment I interact with the stuff the random voice throws at me. It sometimes feels like holding a stick paper and each time I try to shake it off, it sticks to another finger. It occurs to me in these situations that trying to get out of the trap is part of being in the trap.

The Random Voice often Is Arbitrary and Unconnected to What Is Happening

The moments the random voice is the loudest for me is early in the morning when I have just got up, usually when I am taking a shower. When I am in my private “scream room” I hear the voice of my mother, diminishing, accusatory, judgmental, trashing the totality of my being, repeating itself as a scratched record over and over again. My natural tendency is to resist, to rebel, to emote against it. The random voice often is arbitrary and unconnected to what is happening at that moment in my life. It is often triggered by something trivial. Giving it free range, the random voice in these instances occurs as an unwelcome visitor whose sole purpose is to undermine and challenge me at all levels. These are the moments I really get desperate. I often feel compelled to react. Telling myself in these moments that these are just lies is not sufficient to dispel the hold the random voice has on me and the space it occupies in my awareness.
The questions I ask myself in these moments are, “Where am I in the occurrence of my daily life? How can I get in touch with my true nature? What am I not discerning here? Who am I? How much of this is of my own making? What would set me free from my demons? How do I unwind myself from the random voice? What would allow me to act freely“?

Allowing Breaks the Cycle of Infusing Constant Doubt into Your Sense of Presence

Having tried so many different ways to set myself free from my demons, and realizing that I can’t change my occurring reality, and neither can I separate myself from my occurring reality, I decided to stay with it. My compass, and what gives me direction in allowing and letting be what is occurring for me, is my commitment to existence: Knowing that I can’t impact the existence of what is already occurring in my awareness. I decided to accept this as a fundamental truth, the only truth I knew in that moment when there was nothing else to hang on to – except for the walls in the shower.

I noticed that when I am not reacting to the random voice, but let be totally what is occurring for me – however diminishing or unsettling the language may be – I am no longer assuming the occuring reality that this language evokes as an I am presence, and in doing so I am allowing for the totality of my being. When I let be, and allow for the totality of my being, there is a sense of my true nature shining through. There is a new light emerging that clears my vision. Now I gain in perspective. Now I can see through the situation and see it for what it is. I am now in a place where I can respond freely and in keeping with my true nature. My breathing becomes more relaxed. I can take a deep breath.

Allowing breaks the cycle of infusing constant doubt into your sense of presence. Knowing that you are the totality of your occurring reality, interrupts any tendency to identify yourself with the occurring world the random language evokes.

Reclaiming the totality of your being is where you set yourself free from your demons and from the spell of the random voice. Doubt is when you do not allow yourself to be present as the totality of your being in life’s daily unfolding.

Unity of Consciousness

When I now enter into a phone call at my work, or any unknown situation for that matter,knowing that who I am is the totality of my being, everything changes. I can now distinguish for myself, I am presence given by the totality of my being, and I am presence evoked by the random language that enters my awareness. Realizing that I am not what the random voice spits out to me and draws me to assume the presence of, I am free to express myself as the totality of my being.

When I now speak on the phone with other specialists or other health experts, my speech is fluent, and there no longer is hesitancy. To the contrary, my speaking seems to coincide with what is occurring for the other person, and is coming from a different place. In the moment of speech, there now is a unity of occurrence, and communication no longer occurs from “over here” to “over there,” but as a simultaneous occurrence in the moment it is spoken. Coming from this place of unity, there is just the unfolding of the conversation and I have hardly any awareness of my own speaking.

Knowing Yourself as the Totality of Your Being

If you were to ask me “who are you?” I could say, “I am a medical doctor. I am a husband, a father of our young daughter. I am a humanitarian. I am a writer.” But does the way I define myself speak to the essence of who I am? Do the qualities I assign to myself capture all aspects of my being?

It is language that allows me to define myself inside of an experience. Language assigns qualities to my being in the way it is laid out in the fundamentals of grammar. In grammar the subject of a sentence is defined by the predicate. Predicate is Latin for “before it was spoken.” However, before it was spoken and language defined me inside of an experience, there was unity of both occurrence as well as the simultaneous awareness of what was occurring. There was no separation between “myself” and the occurring world. The idea of the “I” only exists in language.

The truth of the matter is that I am the experience. In the moment of an occurrence, there is no separation between myself and what is occurring. The awareness of myself as my true nature is obscured the moment I bring an experience to language. I am the totality of my being. I am both the awareness of what is occurring as well as the occurrence itself – simultaneously. I am what gives rise to the occurrence. I am not all the things that define me in language. The presence language evokes is not where I find my true nature. I am not what is occurring as I erroneously came to believe for so many years when I assumed the presence the random voice evoked in me. I am the occurrence.

The True Nature of Occurrence Is that It Passes

The nature of occurring is that it passes. The moment you engage with what is occurring, you keep it in existence. The mind does not comprehend that by allowing for something, it will no longer persist as existing in your awareness. When you no longer identify yourself with the presence language evokes, but let be what is occurring, it sets you free from the spell the random voice has over you. It is the way the fly finds its way out of the bottle.

You have become so used to the sense of diminishment that you carry around, which informs your actions, that it has become your second nature. It has become the skin you wear, since you do not know how to shed it. To reject the skin of diminishment, you have to allow for it. This sounds paradoxical to the mind, since the mind only works in linear terms and does not grasp the true nature of your occurring reality. The mind does not comprehend that allowing for something lets it pass in your awareness. The mind does not comprehend that allowing lets the occurrence return to its true nature, which is a passing reality. Allowing is the only way that is in keeping with the true nature of occurrence. The tendency to intervene, to work on what bothers you, to figure it out, only keeps it in existence.

When you have the courage to let be, and stop treating your occurring reality as an alien that has invaded your space, what shines through at some point as a ray of light is a true sense of who you are. What shines through is a sense of your infinite and timeless nature that can only be experienced as such by your true nature, but never grasped as such by the linear mind. Once you realize that you are a vast and infinite, timeless agent of awareness, nothing will be the same.

In this realm of awareness, you no longer live the illusion that there is something outside of yourself that you experience. You recognize yourself as the sole governing agency of your occurring world. You recognize the fundamental truth that you are that you are.

Awakening to Your True Nature

This incredible new way of knowing yourself shifts the complete panorama of your life. You recognize suffering as your own inability to let be and align with your true nature. You recognize peace and happiness as your natural state when you are true to yourself.

This realm of awareness beyond comprehension of the mind is available for each and everyone of us, and becomes available to you when you engage in the practice of allowing and letting be. In this new realm of awareness, there is no blame, there is no guilt; and there is no cause and effect. In this realm of awareness, love is the connecting force and you affect reality by intention.

Knowing yourself is knowing your true nature. What you may discover is that your true nature is fundamentally good. It has an infinite nature and a timeless presence. Your true nature is love and expresses an inexhaustible longing to be connected and be kind to life. Your true nature is abundant. Your true nature is welcoming towards life. Your true nature is embracing of all of life. Your true nature is pure possibility. Your true nature is generous and giving. Your true nature is accepting and expresses a reverence for life.

When you awaken to your true nature, everything changes. No longer is the random voice the ruling force in your life, but your true nature is the guiding agency. You start listening to your own truth. You start trusting yourself. You know what is the right action. You know your strength. You will still have moments in which the random voice shows its hydra head, and old habits seem to take over, but you are now developing a new capacity to just let be, and allow for your true nature to shine through.

When I was touched by this realm of awareness and I found myself in this other reality, I was present to an incredible sense of the possible, and was energized beyond any description. I noticed that:

– My productivity at my work dramatically increased
– I was no longer preoccupied with other people’s opinions of me
– I realized that death was the least of my concerns
– I realized that there was nothing that I had to do, or needed to say, except for expressing
what is true for me
– I was present to an overwhelming sense of peace
– I was present to the incredible privilege to be alive as a human being
– I realized that everything is perfect and that all is well
– I became present to the beautiful souls that are part of my life
– I was no longer present to any blame or resentment
– I had raised my level of vibrational energy
– I felt energized beyond any description.