Hi,
This is Brooks and thank you for joining me.
Today we're going to talk about discovering who you are.
So who am I?
It's a very profound question.
Usually we think of ourselves as what we're currently doing.
Like if we're a parent,
We say I'm a parent.
Or if we're going to school,
We say I'm a student.
If we have a particular job in a particular area,
We say I am that job,
I'm that profession.
Like I would say I'm a writer.
But whatever we define ourselves by what we're currently doing in the moment,
It's very temporary.
It changes.
What we do for a little while changes into something else and over time that changes into something else.
We tend to have many identities over a lifetime.
And because they're constantly changing,
We could never truly say that that's what we are.
That particular thing in that moment.
Because it is momentary.
So perhaps there's something deeper.
Maybe what we are is deeper than what we're doing.
That's a good place to begin.
To begin to take a look.
So from the moment of our birth to this moment right now,
Is there anything that's been consistent?
You know,
When you look at your life,
What's been consistent?
What's always been there?
We can start to pick some real basic things that have been there as far back as we can remember.
First is that we breathe.
We're always breathing.
Even when we don't think about it,
We're breathing.
Breathing is happening.
We don't have to do it.
It's not done.
I mean,
We don't do it.
It's done for us.
The breathing happens naturally.
Spontaneously.
You can see that this breath is given to us.
So this breathing is happening as far back as we can remember.
So maybe on some level we're the breath.
But yet the has been consistent.
Let's go a little deeper than that.
The result of breathing,
The result of being given this breath,
The result of being bestowed this life giving oxygen,
The result is we're alive.
We're here.
We exist.
That hasn't changed.
It's been constant.
Regardless of the multitudes of changes that have gone on in our lives,
The one consistent thing has been that we're alive.
There's aliveness.
There's vitality.
There's awareness.
All these different names.
I'm here.
I exist.
And it hasn't changed.
Even though our bodies have changed,
The people in our lives have come and gone,
What we do during the day has changed radically.
Our bodies have changed,
The way we think about the world has changed,
The things we've learned,
So many new things that we've learned over time.
Amidst all of that,
We're alive.
There's livingness here.
There's aliveness here in you.
If there wasn't,
You wouldn't be able to hear these words.
You wouldn't be here.
We tend not to think about what it means to be alive because we're always alive.
We really don't notice the things that come and go.
We don't notice the things that are constant that don't change.
We don't notice this aliveness unless our life is at risk or we get really sick and get close to dying but don't die.
We usually don't think about what it means to be alive.
But it's worth taking this look.
I'm here because I'm alive.
So maybe what we are is this life,
This livingness,
This life force.
We're brimming with life from the top of our head to the tip of our toes.
We're filled with life.
Again,
It's very simple.
But maybe you get a sense of it as we're considering it.
Maybe what I am is life,
Aliveness.
I'm here.
I'm present.
I exist.
It's a different way of thinking.
Maybe it might seem odd at first because we're so used to thinking of,
Oh,
I'm this job or I'm married or I'm single or I'm a parent or I'm a student.
People are always asking us what we do.
I mean,
We ask people what they do to find out,
That's how we find out who they are,
Right?
What do you do?
Where do you live?
So it's habituated for us to consider ourselves and others as what they or we are currently doing in the moment.
But as we soften,
Take a deeper look,
That changes.
That's constantly changing.
So maybe what we are is this life,
This living,
That energy,
That flow of life.
It certainly makes things much simpler.
It takes the pressure off of being defined by what we do.
By being defined by what we identify ourselves as.
It takes that pressure off of having to feel good about that particular definition,
That particular identity.
And it takes away that odd circumstance of trying to describe who we are by what we're currently doing.
When we start to understand that we're this life,
This life itself,
It makes it much easier for us to connect with others because they are that life themselves.
That's a profound thing to have in common with another person.
It's what you and I have in common.
We're both alive.
We share that same circumstance.
That's where true connection happens.
That's where love exists.
So I encourage you to consider this,
To think about it.
Think about what we talked about today.
This isn't about just,
Okay I'm alive,
That's what I am.
But it's taking a deeper look and noticing that aliveness,
That current.
It's always been there.
Become curious about it.
When we're curious about things,
We're open.
And when we're open,
We discover.
And that's what makes life beautiful and fascinating is when we're discovering.
So I wish you the best and take care.
Bye.
