You are more than just your flesh and bones. More than what you call your beauty, more than the belly you keep self criticising, more than the jokes you make to fit in, more than the mask you wear to keep up appearances, more than the brave face you put on, more than the fear you hide, more than the attitude you don, more than your thoughts, more than your happiness and loneliness, more than your tears and laughter. For most people, their ‘I Am’ is buried beneath all these things.
When we stop to ask ourselves, ‘Who Am I?’, we tie ourselves up in what we do, who our family are, our kids, our dreams, the future we plan or our past. But we are none of those things. They are experiences we have, but none of them have to define us unless we allow them the power to do so.
That you could right this second leave everything that you have and start a new life shows that who you are is not bound with what you have. That you could decide to no longer play the part that characterised you in the past shows that you are not your past. Or similarly, you could map out a completely different future, showing that not even your future plans are who you are.
Who we are goes far deeper than any experience or role we play in life. It goes deeper beyond the flesh and bones we move around in. Deeper than our cells, deeper through those cells into the atoms. Right through the atoms into a nothingness so vast it resembles space itself. Right through the nothingness until we penetrate raw energy, vibrating at our chosen frequency. Right past that until we finally begin to understand who we are.
Inscribed at the entrance to the Temple of Apollo in Greece were the words, ‘Know Thyself’. And knowing yourself is where you begin in esoteric language, to ‘pierce the veil’. To go beyond the seen into the unseen. For some, it is akin to the Christian concept of the ‘dark night of the soul’, that difficult time in our lives when our searching leads us to despair only to emerge in the morning with a new realization and faith in ourselves. This is the Hermit in the Tarot, that solitary figure that finally understands it is he who holds the light.
That light is our deepest sense of self. Our soul. It is that bundle of energy that we went diving through our atoms for. That infinite bundle of energy that ties us to the universe, that is inextricably bound up with the universe and the universe it. It is both divine in nature and at the same time, uniquely ours. It is infinite in its capacity because of this quality of connection to the universe and the divine. To be divine is to be part of something greater, something infinite, something that cannot be extinguished.
Upon that very core of ourselves, that part that we call our soul and yet are lost for words when asked to describe it, we build layer after layer of energy as we go through life. Just like music, our words are a vibrational form of energy. Our thoughts are energy. Our diet, what we eat, drink, see, hear and experience are vibrational energy. Who we think we are then, is the cumulative effect of all these things affecting our energetic pattern. And we believe this to be us because we begin to vibrate at a pattern that encompasses all the things we do on an ongoing basis.
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It is like the pianist playing ‘C’ for most of a song with small notes of E, F and G being played. What we associate with the song is C because that is the predominant energetic pattern we feel. Extending this analogy to our lives, we begin to vibrate at C in our lives because we mistakenly assume that this is what our pattern is. That which predominates in our lives becomes our energetic pattern and we therefore associate that with who we are. We see, hear and experience the note of C, so we start acting as if we are always going to live according to the note of C. We start living the story we are telling ourselves, vibrating at a pattern that attracts more of the same.
Instead, we need to realise that it is not the song who we are, but the pianist. Not only could we change our song to an entirely new pattern, but we have a deeper level of energy (the pianist itself) that is untouched by whatever song we observe playing. To know this, is to know thyself.
The question of ‘I Am’ then is only half the truth. What we put after I Am, changes our song. It changes our experiences, beliefs and habits. It changes our life. But we must remember that beyond the I Am that we think about, is the pianist, this deeper divine energy upon which your words of I Am sit. This soul of ours is the I Am that I Am. It exists out of necessity. You exist out of necessity. The song that you play on top of that is just that, a song. But it is not you.