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Who are you, really?
So, you say you know who you are? Then, who are you the moment you~whoever that is~place aside every defining label given by family, culture, and religion since the moment you were conceived, and before? Indeed, is not the you most persons define themselves as only the composite of identities adopted from others and assumed to make up a self? Does the fusion of an assortment of identities make a self? Who are you, really?
Comments
Toni Packer, in her The Wonder of Presence, tells the following experience while visiting her parents in Switzerland ...
I had always had a difficult relationship with my mother. I had been afraid of her. She was a very passionate woman with lots of anger, but also love. Once during that visit I saw her standing in the dining room facing me. She was just standing there, and for no known reason I suddenly saw her without the past. There was no image of her, and also no idea of what she saw in me. All that was gone. There was nothing left except pure love for this woman. Such beauty shone out of her. And our relationship changed; there was a new closeness. No one changed it. It just happened.
The story of the Garden of Eden shows us that the man and woman were naked and without shame before the Universal Spirit. Then, after they erred by disobeying, they hid themselves among the trees and, also, covered their nakedness. Before, they had no sense of needing to clothe themselves, for they had nothing they felt they needed to hide from the Creator.
We are a species covering over our pristine Beauty. That which was meant to be exposed gladly to the Divine Spirit, for it participates in and reflects perfectly the Divine, and one another has been clothed with false identities.
We have become fascinated with our personalities and lost to Our-Being-In-God. And, ironically, our trying to mend and improve our personalities is another move away from our true Self.
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What are these identities by which we define others and ourselves? Political. Religious. Gender. Ethnic. Economic. Age. Body size. Physical appearance. ... The moral~good person, nice person~is one of these, whereby we have become the good child to please others. Possibly, this pleaser-identity is one of the most prevalent masks of our real Self.
Meditation entails progressive denuding of all the "clothes" that we have come to identify with and, thus, hide behind. It matters not whether the identity is seen as good or bad, for it is still a false identity.
Possibly, and I suspect, this is a reason persons avoid meditation in Silence~they are afraid to take off their "clothes." That is, they are afraid to see and let others see who they really are.
To see our original beauty and grace is something we must be prepared for, accustomed as we are to our "clothes." Rarely, if ever, could one accept the Truth of that true Self without a long period of undressing, little by little, of the false identities.
However, meditation is a prayer for you to come out of hiding. You are saying, "Prepare me to see my real identity, my true being." And, though the undressing, like a purging of falseness, sometimes feels like a merciless stripping, the denuding opens one to the freedom of One's-Being-In-God.
Then, as you are unclothed of the false selves, you begin to see beyond the patchwork identity of the other. You can see them behind the projections that other persons have assigned to them. And, you see them, as yourself, shining as a glorious ray of the Good, True, and Beautiful.
Suggested Reflection
Consider who you are really, after you remove all temporal and cultural identifiers; like, gender, religion, ethnicity, economic classification, ...
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