Who Is Experiencing This?

Who are you when angry? In love? Afraid? Calm? Alone? Around others?

In this session, we explore the possibility that the self is not fixed, but constantly changing moment to moment. Through reflection and guided practice, we investigate consciousness, embodiment, identity, and the strange experience of being human.

Together, we experiment with “shifting the seat of consciousness” throughout the body and mind, exploring how awareness, emotional states, biology, and perception shape our lived experience of self.

Transcript

Okay, So I want to postulate that who you are is constantly changing. There is no solid stealth. And I've got a few thought experiments, I guess, Ways of thinking, Ways to conceptualize this that will show it to you. First of all, Who you are in this moment is different to who you were an hour ago, Which is different to the person you were when you woke up, Right? When you go to work, When you're with your family, When you're with friends, When you're doing a hobby, The face that you present to the world is slightly different. It's not contextually appropriate to be all of you in all moments. Now, This is different to masking where we're pretending, Where we're keeping our safe, Where we're blocking off aspects of ourself to fit in, Perhaps due to trauma or neurodivergence or other things. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm saying is that no matter what, You will change who you are depending on the moment and the context and where you're at. If you're driving your car, You might be singing in one moment, The sirens flash and the cops have pulled you over and they're walking in. You're going to change who you are in that moment to respond to that. As you pull into a place to buy yourself a coffee, How you speak to the barista there will be different to how you will be speaking to your boss, Which is different to how you're speaking to your child and so on and so forth. If you are sick, If you are overwhelmed, If you are inebriated, Who you are is different, Right? Moment to moment, Day by day, This is forever changing, Small and big. You are not the person you were when you were seven, Right? You have changed and you continue to change. Imagine if you asked your seven-year-old, What should I be doing, Who am I? Imagine if you're 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years into the future, You were still holding on to that same identity, Right? If you were still seven, Seven-year-old mind, Seven-year-old focus, Seven-year-old goals, Seven-year-old capacity. You haven't grown. There's something going on there, Right? So, We actually do want to change and we are changing. It's just almost like we're flipping a book and each page looks the same, Each page looks the same, But if we went from the start to the end, We would see the massive transformation. This isn't like a profound thought, But the implications of it are. We have this desire to be a solid sense of self, I, I am me now, This is what I value. But if we're constantly changing, Moment to moment, Day by day, State to state, Why are we so stuck in this identity role? Something to consider. And the other thing to consider, And this is what we're going to look at as a little bit of a meditation practice, Is where are you, Me, Located, Right? Right now, I feel like I, Whatever I am, Whoever I am, Is located somewhere behind my eyes, Somewhere sort of back of the head in here somewhere, Right? But I can't quite pin it exactly down and I'm certain you can't either. Where are you located? All right, I'll ask you it in a different way, Are you your big toe or are you the thing that has a big toe, Right? We'll explore the idea of shifting your state of consciousness where you feel you are located down. You could put your consciousness in your throat, In your heart, In your belly, In your groin, In your feet. You can shift that space with practice. And it's kind of interesting to explore because you always perceive the world differently from those different perspectives. That's a far more in-depth practice than what we're going to go into in this session. But we'll explore that. But the final thing I want to suggest before we go into that space is that even your thoughts, I'm giving you things now, I'm changing you. You read a bunch of books, Right? You listen to a talk, You do something and it changes you. And in fact, We do it to be changed. How many times have you read a book that before you were one person and then after you were someone else, Someone more? Interestingly enough, You didn't know who you were going to become, But the person, Like you didn't consent to become this person, You didn't know who you were going to become. You read the book, You went through something and now you're someone new. I'll give it even simpler. I'm going to add a thought to your brain that you won't be able to unthink. Imagine a giraffe wearing this hat, A cartoon giraffe wearing my hat, A hat. It's in your mind, Isn't it, Right? That's changed you. And throughout the day, Maybe tomorrow, You're going to remember a giraffe with a hat. You've changed. We always change. Change is the point. I like to look at the idea of myself now, Not as a one thing, But as a process. And I am just in this process, In this flow, More like a dance. Now, Yeah, There's a range of who I am and what I am. But once again, If you introduce enough stress, Enough stimulus, Enough substances, Enough different circumstances, That range really shifts. I am in teaching mode right now. Later, I'll be in parenting mode. Later than that, I will be in friendship mode. But I'm still me. I am the process. I am the thing changing. I am the entity. You look on a biological level, The cells die and fall away. You know, Something like that seven years thing and you've replaced all your cells. You are not even a whole entity, Right? If you kill all the gut biomes, All of the microbes, All of that sort of stuff, We don't function that well. We are a bunch of individual cells all working together for an overall whole. We can't live very easily, Most of us at all, Most of us at all, If we don't have a community around us. We are interreliant on the world and everyone else in deep and profound and unseen ways. So who we are is constantly changing, Undefinable and shifting. I say all that to say this, If you get stuck in an ego trap of I must, I should, I need, I can't, Whatever it is, Overwhelmed. Step back. I've said it before, I am here now, This moment, The observer of this moment. That's the I that is here now. Other than that, That's all that we know, Right? But for this practice, I want you to feel where you are sitting in this moment. Where are you located? Right? Place your hand, Let's go for the belly. Place your hand upon your belly. And with your breath, Imagine your consciousness entering the belly. You could imagine a flame or an energy or a light emanating from the belly. And with the breath, That flame or light or energy grows stronger and brighter as we embody, Embrace and become the belly space. For the next minute, Let's try and shift our consciousness down. Viewing the world from the belly. Let's give it a try. Okay, So how did you go? Now, Don't go so hard on yourself. Don't worry if you didn't move that state of consciousness. But note that you're observing where you are located and it wasn't quite specific. If there was a place that was you, That was like locked in, It'd be obvious. It'd be immediately apparent, Right? I have a hand. It's there. But where am I, The thing that has the hand? There are many different experiments, Psychological responses and internal practices you can do to explore and express this space. Practice shifting your state of consciousness down, Moving it around. And also, Throughout the day, Become aware of the fact that you, Who you are, Shifts and changes over time in response to different contexts and states. Indeed, When you go to sleep, You'll dream. Where are you in that state? If you become lucid, Where are you? It's an interesting response to turn the lens of attention or awareness upon itself. Thank you for joining me. I'll see you in the next one.