How the Who am I question helps us understand Reality
Who Am I? is a terrifying question. We really want to land an answer to that very quickly. So when we pose it in the ordinary domains of our life, we want to say, I am a dancer, I'm a writer, my mother, I'm a CEO, I'm a social worker, whatever it is, but we want to really have a definition. And usually that definition, especially in the times we live in, is by what we do in the world. What we do in the world seems to define who we are.
The question who am I, in a philosophical and spiritual inquiry is an open ended question. And I find that even in these traditions, now, we have come to finding answers for this question. We might say I am the consciousness, or I am the divine. And while these are valuable, I feel that that it then closes that question.
For me, the Divine is that question itself— Who am I is the divine. Because what that question does is truly connect us with the unknowability of reality, the greater part of reality, which is unfolding, which is mysterious, as it says, In the Indian philosophical tradition, that the cave hides three-quarters of the word. And tit is that part of reality is the who am I question space. It is about holding that openly, each day of our lives, that allows us to connect with reality as a dance and unfolding flow and a dance, rather than just a repetition of the past.
When I work with people in my programs, I find that this is particularly challenging for us as we get older, because when we are in the second half of our lives, we think that we have these decades of experience, life experience, and, and learning and it is time we think, to land somewhere to come to certain conclusions. And to really arrive to say, look, I know about life, I've lived long enough to know what's right and what's wrong. And there is nothing wrong with that in many domains. However, in a philosophical inquiry, it is really the openness of the question, Who am I, that allows us to be participating in the inquiry, and not just in a place of conclusions.
I find that what is interesting is that I find that this is congruent with what happens to our bodies, or even our approach to our bodies as we age. Of course, when we age, our bodies change we can't do and be the people that we were, nor should we be the people that we but we're in our 20s. As far as our bodies are concerned, we are very different, our bodies are different. And there is a reality about that. But I also find that to some extent as we age, we start to assume that it is inevitable that we can't do certain things with our bodies that we can't really explore movements with our body. I often work with people who will say, I just can't do that, or I can't do that because you know, I am this particular age. And this is what is expected of our bodies. This is not to say that, as I said, once again, I want to say it's not to say that there isn't a reality about what happens to bodies as we age. But I also sense that part of it is that reluctance to move into new spaces into new ways of being.
And sometimes it's easier to go into intellectual adventures. We might be quite happy to look at a philosophy or an intellectual system that we haven't explored before. But really going with our bodies into something that we may not have explored before, it's where that unknowability of reality becomes very intimate and personal. So many of these dance traditions are located in this open ended Who am I question space.
The traditions acknowledge that this Who am I question is not without its terrifying aspects and they give us archetypes that can be there to protect us to give us strength and ferocity. But it is also true there is such an incredible exhilaration and release that comes out of being in places where we can really allow that fullness of reality. That freshness and the aliveness it's so amazing to feel how reality is pulsating and alive. And not just a repetition of everything that we know and everything that we have concluded. It absolutely revitalizes life, no matter how old we are.