There are two essential questions critical to each of us: Who am I? What do I really want?

Let us take the question, Who am I?

In its power and simplicity, this question throws the mind back to the root of personal identification. It throws the mind back before the basic assumption, “I am somebody.” Rather than automatically accepting that assumption to be the truth, you can investigate deeper.

Ask yourself the question, Who am I? … perhaps an image of your face or your body

appears ... But who is aware of that image? … Are you the object? … or are you the

awareness of the object? … The object comes and goes ... The parent … the child …

the lover … the abandoned one … the enlightened one … the victorious one … the

defeated one ... these identifications all come and go ...

The awareness of those identifications is always present. The misidentification of

yourself as some object in awareness leads to extreme pleasure or extreme pain and

endless cycles of suffering.

When you are willing to stop the misidentification;, when you are willing to see and

to discover directly, completely, that you are the awareness itself and not these

impermanent definitions, the search for yourself in thoughts finishes.

When the question, Who? is followed innocently, purely, all the way back to its

source, there is a huge, astounding realization. There is only the indefinable,

boundless, recognition of oneself as the fullness of being.

VISUALISATION

Imagine that you are like the ocean … full … whole … endless ... There is no bottom to

you … no boundary to you … Any idea about yourself appears in this fullness … and

will disappear back into it ... You are awareness … and awareness is consciousness …

full beyond measure ... Let all self-definitions die in this moment ... Let them all go …

and see what remains ... See what is never born … and see what does not die ... Feel

the relief of laying down the burden of defining yourself ... Experience the actual

non-reality of the burden ... Experience the joy that is here ... Rest in the endless

peace of your true nature before any thought of I arises...

Now for the question, What do I really want?

Most people live their entire lives without ever questioning what it is they really and

finally want. Most make do with whatever shows up. They are content to settle for

some version of what their parents had or wanted. Others may rebel and want

something totally different from what their parents had.

Most people’s lives are dedicated to getting what they think they want. They live in

the conditioned wants of family, and in the manufactured wants of society, with their

subconscious fantasies projected out onto the world. They spend their lives invested

in second-hand desires.

When you answer this question on the deepest level, you can turn your life toward

something of real consequence. Be willing to stay true to your deepest longing for

truth. Stay true in the face of every wave of thought that arises from the ocean of

mind and tries to wash you back into subconscious desires.