How Meditation Taught Me Who I Am

I’ve always been a thinker.

As a kid, I actively tried to cultivate a constant voice in my head. It was comforting. It kept me company when I felt lonely and it helped me escape when I felt scared or bored. And it was useful too. It could speak for me when I didn’t know what to say. It helped me make people laugh and I started to get praise for my “vivid imagination”. The voice was way more interesting than I was.

And over time this voice: my ego, became my best friend. I could always rely on it. The more time we spent together, the more I forgot the bored, lonely, scared kid that I used to be. But forgetting who I was, meant I needed my ego more and more because without it I was scared I would evaporate into the void.

It wasn’t until much later that I realised this friend also had some very questionable qualities. I’d wandered off into the darkness with a paranoid, insecure, egomaniac with an insatiable appetite for sensations, and I had no idea how to find my way home.

I had no connection to myself which made me rush from seeking one sensation to another, trying to avoid confronting the fear of being alone with this madman on a cosmic scale. I could see and hear the world carrying on around me, but felt totally disconnected from it.

And that’s something I struggled with until I started to Meditate.

Meditation has taught me how to stop, and drop into the present moment. Here when I focus my attention on the voice, it evaporates. I see it for the illusion that it is. And in the space left by its absence, my true self rushes in. For a moment I’m not lost and alone in the dark anymore. I remember who I am. In the present moment is everything I need and I’m one with the universe. This is what I cultivate now.

I still find it difficult to stay connected to this and not get caught up in the constant stream of thoughts and ideas in my head. Like a weak TV signal, coming in and out of reception. But I know that when I stop and take the time to notice, it’s all there. I’m still here.

For years I resented the voice, but now I can see that it can be useful. It’s given me a career I love and it’s helping me write this for a start. But now I know, it’s not who I am.