Who the hell do you think you are?

I received an interesting email recently from a listener of the podcast I produce. In the email, they stated that they listened to my podcast episode on “Will a spiritual life make me happy” and how they enjoyed the insight. They then went on to listen to the episode on “The end of war” to which the email goes on to say, quite angrily, that I did not know what I was talking about and demanded to ask me who the “hell” I was giving out all this false information and advice.

First of all, I have never claimed to be an authority on anything. I am not a guru. Nor have a written any best-sellers, or qualified to speak about anything. I am not giving advice or false information. In fact, I did not give any advice whatsoever. The only thing I do is question myself throughout the entire podcast to see if anything is uncovered or to put an end to habitual robotic ways of thinking.

Now, the question is a fair one to ask: “Who are you?”. But isn’t it more important for each of us to ask this question of ourselves? Do you often ask “who am I”? It’s a much more important question to be asking yourself not who I (the writer) is. If I tell you who I am, I think it is really an unnecessary conversation. It just helps you build an image of me, for which you will label, store information about me, what I say and do. You will judge me worthy or not of listening or reading to based on your own lenses. If you happen to like something I say, or agree with it, then you might follow me. If you don’t, you will say sayonara. There is a danger of asking someone else this question because it could also mean you are interested in how that person does things, and want to copy or imitate them for their own learning. Perhaps they say they have found the secret to being happy. Therefore, you copy them to become happy yourself. Perhaps they shared their 10 ways to get rich. And, so you copy their ways. Most of us have been doing this for years and so, we’ve become a living copy - an accumulation of copies of other people. A kind of “fragmented” clone.

You see, this is what most of us are doing more or less. We follow a celebrity. We like what they wear, or how they talk. We may like the products they use. Or we may like the politician, or the leader of a certain country. Same thing. We may like a famous sports person or painter and we basically learn as much as we can about them, watch endless videos about them, and imitate them. It’s the same with anyone you label a hero. Or the one who is enlightened. Or perhaps you want to join one of those programs that empower you to be the greatest you that ever lived - to create a legacy to be remembered.

When one looks at their life, you might realize you are made up of many “copy-pastes” in life, from the time you were born, to the indoctrinations at school, where we study our favorite heroes that have changed or conquered the world, and they become our role models to copy-paste. So learning, or should I say “recording knowledge” is a form of imitation as well isn’t it? You study your favorite historians, or even CEOs and try to imitate their success, and their values. We’ve been copy-pasting since probably the beginning of time. And all of this is what you are.

We also imitate others when it comes to getting the latest phone. Technology is always a trend setter for many. Fashion is another one. We copy-paste beliefs from traditions and faiths, rituals, and so forth and many of these become part of who we think we are. Interestingly enough, many of these come without our ability to question why we carry-over previous generation’s ways of behaving and doing things.

Find out who you are; what you are!

So to find out who you are, you will need to ask questions, serious questions. And you will need to ask them with an open mind and heart. If you come to it with all of your expert wisdom and knowledge, you will fail. But if you come to them with an open mind and heart, you will see…

You will see that you are the representation of the entire humanity. And with this comes an incredible passion for every single human being on earth and a tremendous sense of love and compassion! But most of us either can’t see it because we don’t take the time to observe ourselves, or won’t see it because we are too caught-up in our own small worlds, taking care of only ourselves. We have our own petty problems to deal with, such as making enough money to pay the bills, getting promotions, and our own stress and anxieties to deal with. We are so pre-occupied with ourselves when our own children ask for attention, we slap them a phone to keep them quiet.

To make this realization one needs to step out of this small bubble which is going to seem very difficult to many. If you re-read what I wrote earlier, you will see that we really are “made-up” human beings. Now our conditioning will probably have us reacting to this as, “I am not”; “How rude”; “You don’t know what you are talking about”. Can you silence those opinions for just a few moments and stay with me. I said, we are basically “made-up” human beings. Meaning that our knowledge, accumulated from the past, which is what we use at this very moment to think and decide our actions, is copied mostly from text-books; beliefs - whether handed-down or otherwise; copied from what people have told us; from TV shows; from books; from so-called leaders and experts; etc. And, we have trained ourselves so well to live in an “automatic” world that even our very behaviors are stuck inside this “programming” and we don’t even see it. We have in this life, conformed, obeyed, followed it seems for who knows how many years!

There are many who say “I can help you”. Coaches, guides, mentors, so forth. But most of them just change the pattern of your thinking. They “reprogram” which is nothing but endless mind games. Or they promise to change the system when they get elected. Or there is physical backlash and people protest or start riots, and all of that ugliness, which is also meaningless.

As I said, it is much more important to ask this of yourself. Who am I? What am I? And if you understand that a mind in total freedom from its own “self”, is a mind that does not know how to copy and paste, that does not know how to conform, that accepts they don’t know anything or follow anyone.

Such a mind is free - full of passion, full of vitality, full of life.

So, to answer the original question about me is rather simple. I am basically just no-one. Done.

Love and light,

GC