Beyond the Body and Mind: Ready To Find Your True Self?
Imagine stepping out of the shower and catching a glimpse of your naked body in the mirror, only to see a reflection of someone with a different gender and skin color than yourself.
Shocked? Hell yeah. But — knock, knock — YOU are still there, right?
Credits to Michael Singer, in Living Untethered, for this thought experiment.
So, you’re not your body. But you are inside your body, somewhere. Maybe in your mind?
A “Stroke of Insight”
We all have that internal voice. So, it’s obvious: the “you” we’ve been searching for is the one doing the talking! Case closed.
Not so fast.
Meet Dr. Jill Taylor. Back in 1996, a massive stroke in her brain’s left hemisphere shut down her language center. Not only she was unable to say a word, but her internal voice had gone silent too. Can you imagine that?
Now, guess what: in that utter silence, she was still there. And more: she felt a profound sense of oneness with the world. She achieved, by misfortune, the meditators’ Nirvana — her talking Self was dissolved.
A “Stroke of Insight”. This is how she named the tragic event years later, after fully recovering. Free of the illusion that she was the one doing the talking -since there was no talking at all — she was the watcher, as Osho would say.
Be the watcher
Pure consciousness. This is how I see this watcher — and this is who I believe we truly are.
I’m the consciousness that inhabits my body, witnesses my thoughts, and feels my emotions.
I like to imagine this consciousness as an operator in a sort of control room. Thanks, Michael Singer, for that one.
Waking up in 3, 2, 1…
When the illusions about our true nature dissolve, we wake up.
Easier said than done? Sure. Worth the fight? Certainly. And why?
Damn, what a good question.
I could say things like “because we’ll deal better with our thoughts and emotions since we’ll stop identifying with them” or “because we will be able to better relate with other people since we’ll understand their true nature”, but I would be just scratching the surface.
These are just reverberations of a much deeper transformation.
Knowing who you are is the real thing.
