Who are you?
A short meditation for when you're feeling ground to bits
Last week, a friend (we’ll call her Mary) was telling me how she was going to a Halloween party and her friend insisted she get dressed up. When Mary’s daughter found out she was dressing up, she screamed at Mary in protest for an entire car ride. Mary looked so very tired telling me this story. She was visibly upset.
I mean, Mary was just minding her own business, feeling the teeniest bit excited to enjoy Halloween at a friend’s house, when she suddenly found herself trapped in a moving vehicle with a possibly overtired, probably low blood sugar gremlin-like creature.
After getting an earful from the gremlin, Mary had to steadfastly shuttle her to the next activity, then homework, then provide some kind of nutrients in the form of dinner.
Before I had a child of my own, I had no sense of just how much parenting is an act of service. As the adult in the room, you don’t get to stomp your feet and tantrum when it’s all too much. You keep going, and on your good days, you remain emotionally regulated, steadfast.
Any kind of caregiving is like this — whether you are caring for children, an elderly parent, or a loved one who has the man flu (and shall remain nameless). You might be a caregiver at work or at home or even for yourself if you have a short or long-term disability. You keep going, even when it feels like a grind, even when some small thing illuminates just how exhausted you are, like Mary was that day.
I walked away from that conversation wondering to myself if maybe I’m trying way too hard to make everything work smoothly or even make sense these days, when what I really need is to remember radical acceptance. I then went to my local Gelson’s and bought a nice bottle of Sancerre. (I rarely drink and have not opened it yet, but radical acceptance + a little treat felt like the right decision in that moment.)
Next morning in the shower I remembered a self-inquiry practice that helps me when I feel like I’m being pulled in a million directions.
It’s a self-inquiry practice and you can do it with a partner if you’d like or you can inquire on your own. It’s a classic and it goes like this:
The Practice
Find a comfortable, quiet spot where you can sit for 5-10 minutes. The intention here is to allow yourself to soften and relax into this short span of time. Trust that when you soften and relax, you can feel a sense of peacefulness underneath the grinding current of life.
Start to slow down your breathing and anchor your attention to the area around your heart. When you feel ready, ask yourself, “Who are you?”
You might list some things that define who you are. When I did this inquiry the first time I ticked off: I’m a woman, a friend, a writer, a sister.
After your inner narrator answers, set the intention to sink more deeply into your essence. Bring your attention back to deep, slow breathing.
Ask again: ‘Who are you?’ Then pause and listen for the inner answers.
Keep repeating and, with time, see if any answers bubble up that are beneath the day to day roles of life.
Are you essence? Are you a seed? Are you a group of cells? Are you connected to nature?
No answer is the right answer. The idea is to simply inquire and go deeper, inquire and go deeper. Slow down the breath. Give yourself time to be.
Lemme know if you try it and what you find.
Love,
A
I find it superficially easy to get deep for a vibe or two or three, before the egoistic thoughts flood back in. I amuse myself trying to get deeper than that, truly beyond the ephemeral identity. How low can you go?
To me this “Who am I?” question is a grapple with the most essential “spiritual” question. Who are we beyond these frail identities?
One thing I recalled during this practice today was a quip that was in a jokey email years ago entitled “The Wisdom of the Jewish Buddha”: “If there is no self, whose rheumatism is this?” This has always stuck with me and, because last week I had shoulder replacement surgery due to arthritis, I laughed at the aptness of it. If there’s no self, whose new shoulder is this, and who’s paying for it?
Anyway good luck to all of us on this quest where we have to engage with this question, because from what I’ve seen it requires so much courage, there’s no two ways about it.
I did this meditation on a Sunday night, which historically can be rough for me. Something about the repetition of life makes me feel agitated. When I asked the question "who am I?" initially the answers were feelings. "I'm a person who feels afraid that..." Followed by so many things! With the state of the world currently, I feel an undercurrent of fear, deep sadness, and powerlessness, like a swelling river within that sometimes rises so much that it breaks through the surface. I know I can be doing more and need to take a step in that direction for the purely selfish reason that it'll make me feel better, but it also requires interface with the very things that terrify me. The two most important things I've learned from meditation is that I am not my feelings and also that I can hold all my feelings. I only sat for 5 minutes and it was all I needed. By the end I had landed in neutrality (another recent discovery of meditation, that I don't need to feel good or bad but that there's a middle feeling of neutral- thanks, Andrea!) I guess I got there not by answering the question "who am I?" but answering the question "who am I not?" (Is this cheating? I feel like I'm good at cheating in meditation sometimes. But I also think there's probably no such thing as cheating in meditation.) I ended up at the conclusion that if the feelings aren't me and also aren't helping me take active steps towards becoming more me, then perhaps I can hold them without identifying with them and choose neutral while I take baby steps towards what's right. I'll be returning to this meditation. Thanks!!