Who Am I…and You?

I’ve been thinking about this all day. It’s a question all of us ask at least once in our lifetime. I think I got a little closer to the answer from listening to a story Oprah told on her webcast last night with Eckhart Tolle.

She said she remembered being in Hawaii and going for a walk with a friend late in the day. They walked to a top of the mountain and the clouds came down and were all around them. Up in the sky they could see the sliver of the moon but at ground level were the clouds. As she told it, there was such a presence of stillness. It was so still and quiet that she held her breath because the sound of breathing would break the silence.

I could picture that. It’s as if in this place all time and all thought stops. Tolle says it’s at this place where everything is connected and one and it’s the place of the essence of who I am…who you are.

I guess you could say there really are no words that could describe who we are without putting labels on it. The who I am is not of form. Form is for labels or for the roles we play and conditioned thoughts we think but the who we are is not touched by any of that.

Have you ever been that still or experienced that type of silence? What does it feel like to you? If you’re meditating and you’re in that stillness before you know it an hour has slipped by or if something breaks that silence you feel as if you’ve just awakened from a deep sleep.

Feeling our Beingness as we do in this space is what Tolle is talking about in this webcast and his book. If we can learn to go about our daily lives aware of our essence doing the things we need to do and going places we need to go, we would find solutions beyond our imagination and energies flowing into the work we do.

Because we would be putting our focus on our essence, who we are, the challenges we face would still be there but not attaching itself and creating drama and stress. When we’re aware of our essence in the midst of these problems and difficulties we detach and step back and observe them. The physical and mental part does what it needs to do to address the situation but it’s not running the show. Through the awareness is where the answers come and when we allow that to flow into the situation a divine energy joins with us with encouragement and love.

I have listened to words like this and read many books over the years teaching many things on this topic and told myself I understood but I don’t think I really knew. I learned the spiritual concept of these words but am now beginning to know who I am. You start by discovering who you are NOT and in the midst of that the real you appears. It’s not something you can express with thoughts or words – it’s the stillness, the silence and essence of our existence.

“The gift you offer another person is just your being.” — Ram Dass

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4 thoughts on “Who Am I…and You?

  1. Hi Pat,

    What a well written post.

    Isn’t nature grand?

    Since I haven’t had time to finish reading Eckhart Tolle’s book or watch the Oprah archives, I come here to follow what’s happening.

    Thanks for sharing.

  2. Great article, Pat. Perhaps we can answer the question “Who are you?” with just “I AM” without our mind creating those labels!

    Blessings,
    Andrea

  3. Barbara – thank you for the compliment on the post and I’m glad you stopped by to follow what’s happening and to share.

    Yes, nature has a way of showing us what we’re missing if we’ll listen.

    I’m fortunate to live in the mountains and it’s oozing everywhere I turn. You can’t help but see essence all around and it doesn’t take much to get caught up in it.

    I’m learning alot from these teachings and nature and enjoy sharing it with everyone.

    I don’t get it right away at times. It’s a process. I enjoy hearing what you and others are learning. It’s encouraging to me just knowing I’m not alone in this and we can help each other.

  4. Andrea – so good to see you back and thank you for the comment.

    I agree. It’s so true that it appears we don’t seem to understand anything unless we attach a label to it.

    Even by saying I Am is still a label. It’s not something our minds can get a handle on. It just is. Who we are is not limited by our thoughts or labels.

    Always enjoy your feedback. So happy you stopped by.

I would love to hear from you. . .thank you for stopping by.

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