Who Are You?

At the heart of this question is the famous quote from the Shakespearian play Hamlet:

“To be or not to be, that is the question.”

In the play, Hamlet is inwardly debating whether to end his life or not.

However, this quote can also speak to the question, Who are you?

Most often when someone asks us this question

We list off a number of external observations such as,

What we do, how we are identified by labels,

our physical appearance and what we have accomplished etc.

Personally, from a young age, I have been driven to observe,

question everything, and look beneath the surface of things.

This hunger to see the essence behind experience

always made me ask, who are you? Who is it that is seeing?

Who is it that is remembering?

And when I have been free enough to look without attachment

it brought me to this experience of simply being.

To go deeper, what I realized is that the seer is not the seen.

To look without attachment is to sit in the seat of the observer

where you ultimately have to ask, who is observing?

All that I observe outside of myself is transient,

a temporary manifestation of experience, whether it be emotional, physical, or my thoughts.

Who I said I was at 20 years old is not who I would say I am now,

And who I say I am now will not be who I say I am 5 years from now.

But the observer, that which is looking at me looking, is always present.

How can I apply this to my life in a practical way?

For me, it deepens my ability to let go…of everything

while also appreciating the ebb and flow of experience

and how I can cultivate my best choices about how to respond

to the slings and arrows of life.

Instead of being in constant reaction to the circumstances driving me,

I, through sitting in conscious awareness, become the driver

taking in the view while not identifying with it.

To Be is to always live the question, Who Am I in any given moment, and come into the full presence of being the seer observing the seer, seeing.

Consciousness and awareness are actually who I am…immutable and eternal.

Imagine, from this perspective, how much different the quality of your experiences would Be-Come?

-Starhorse

October 5th, 2022