“If you want to grasp the intangible, you exhaust yourself without achieving anything.” As soon as you relax this grasping, space arises – Open, inviting, comfortable. Take advantage of it. It's all given to you. Search no longer… There's nothing to do Nothing to force, Nothing to want, - everything happens by itself.”
- Lama Gendun Rinpoche
Throughout our lives we all seek answers to the question: Who am I really? But will you be able to get a full answer to that? What if you don't have to? Is it possible to live without really knowing? How do you find out who you really are and is this even possible to know? You can read that in this blog!
A few years ago I would say, "I'm a personal trainer and I've done sports training, I'm doing bodybuilding and I'm preparing for a competition that will take place 6 months later and oh yes I'm blonde". Well, if you have this information then you must know who i am right. In today's society, we are praised for our achievements and not for who we actually are. People like Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are only praised for what they deliver, people are not interested in them as a person. But who are they and we really as a person? For the sake of simplicity, let's rule out a few things:
What you are not
- You are not your performance, what you do for work or your sports performance. As I described at the beginning of this blog, we live in a society where it is not about you as a person, but about the performance you deliver. Because yes, without these achievements our society falls and we cannot hold up the money system. We used to trade hundreds of years ago, then it was important that you could supply something in your village that people needed, otherwise you didn't have much competition and therefore no high pressure. Nowadays there is competition from all over the world and the bar seems to be set higher and higher, performance pressure? You will be rewarded with extra money, appreciation and especially honor if you work better than Harry. Yet you are not what you achieve, even if society gives you that feeling that you are! On the contrary, YOU ARE MUCH MORE THAN THAT. Why do we have to prove ourselves in order to be good enough? At our core, we are always good enough.
- You are not what you think, feel or do... What you think, feel or do are all consequences of all the information you have taken in throughout your life. We all know that moment when someone beeps for you while shopping. A lot of frustration and irritation is already bubbling up, because you feel like you've been walked all over you again, just like before. This often happens completely unconsciously. Through traumas or unpleasant experiences from the past, you link them to this new situation. Our brain is again afraid of pain, the pain of rejection, the pain of being bullied. As a result, there will often be doubts about should I say something about it or not? Because if you don't say anything about it, you don't get a confrontation, but you do have your irritated self that keeps coming through. If you do say something about it, the other person can get angry, because the person thinks he is better than you and you will feel rejected by the other person. These thoughts, feelings and behaviors are not us, but they arise to protect us.
- You are not your body. Your body is just your means of transportation during the time you spend on this earth. Think of it as your car, it takes you from A to B and if you don't have it inspected regularly or give it a service, it will eventually stop functioning. Your body works the same: it needs nutrition, sufficient exercise and a listening ear, so that it can be used optimally. But what your body tells you says nothing about you as an individual, it does say something about what your inner world looks like. For example, you may experience a lot of stress from your work, which causes your body to signal that it is tired or experiencing pain in the joints. In that respect, your body is the perfect alarm.
- And what you are definitely not is what others think of you. I run into it every day: "What will they think of me?" Yet we can deal with this more consciously and try to see that these are just thoughts. These thoughts try to warn us of danger. In the past (a few hundred years ago) we lived in tribes, it was important what others thought of us otherwise we could be thrown out of the tribe. That is why our minds are set on what others think and we often take this too seriously. Nowadays we don't live in tribes anymore and if you live in the city hardly anyone knows you. As a result, this mechanism is no longer necessary. Unfortunately, our brain can't update like an iPhone, so we wouldn't be bothered by this. To make it better for ourselves, it is important to see our thoughts as thoughts and not take them too seriously. This can be done, for example, by visualizing them as clouds and letting them pass or giving the voice in your head a name such as oh there you have Julia again.
Now I hear you thinking: yes but who am I?
You are the one who sees what those thoughts, feelings and behaviors are. Who sees why his or her body hurts or is overweight. And that sees how toxic the motives of society are. You are consciousness itself. Most of us (including myself back in the day) thinks the answer lies in our identity, in the situations that have shaped us into who we are today, and that we think we're the average of the five people we care about the most. to handle. And it is completely logical that we look for it there, because that gives certainty and stability 'we think'. But also makes it more difficult, because it is not the truth, we should not be determined by others/authorities. The only answers are hidden within ourselves and these answers are also constantly changing. That's why my question to you is: What if you never find the answer to the question 'who am I'? Is that so bad? Me myself has largely been able to let go of the 'who am I' question. Many times I labeled myself: asexual, autistic and ADHD. I did this largely to fit in out of fear. Because I have become more aware by reading books and loving myself more, I have been able to let go of these labels and made more room for the real me. As a result, every day I learn more and more about myself and everything that lives on this planet. It gives inner peace and brings wisdom. You don't have to know who you are, it's about feeling it! Let it go.
3 tips
Here are three tips to get closer to yourself:
