“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”
~ Dr. Seuss
Dr. Seuss’ comment above is undoubtedly truer than true. However, a question built in to that statement is one that might look something like this, “But who is the I that is me, really?
Here is a universally human question: “Who am I?” Literally, everybody asks this question of themselves from time to time. One would think that it would be a simple enough question to answer; after all, I am I so if anyone should know who I am it would be me. Right? Well, hummmmmmm, maybe. The answer to that question seems to be forever elusive and invasive, hiding somewhere in the shadows. We tend to want to identify ourselves with the people and things that we would prefer to be descriptive of us. I am a teacher. I am a doctor. I am a mom or a dad. I am a good wife/husband. I am the captain of the soccer team. I am the CEO of Gotta-Be Me, Designer Sportswear, Ltd. As we carry on with these identifications, we discover many wonderful things that we can identify with. We are deservedly pleased with our accomplishments and so we proudly display them as badges or trophies for all the world to see.
On the other hand, with a little courageous and honest “soul-searching” we will discover that there is a “shadow world”, which is alive and strong in the mix of who we seem to be. This shadow world is a part of us that we, for obvious reasons, are not very proud of. As we travel the pathways of life, especially in our younger years, we stumble and fall with a trial and error process of learning to manage in the world around us. Well-meaning authority figures: parents, friends, clergy, teachers, etc. make certain that we are fully aware of our fumbling and bumbling. In many cases, we have even been informed that our actions were sinful, shameful, and hurtful. As we grow into adulthood all this negative input accumulates as a deeply embedded belief that we are not good enough, we do not measure up, and it can even go so far as to proclaim that we are bad. These negative “transparent beliefs” are fortified and reinforced almost daily by our true life experience of making mistakes and suffering failures.
Oh-my, oh-my, who am I? Who am I?
Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now and A New Earth sheds a brilliant light on this topic. After many years of severe depression and suicidal impulses, Tolle woke up in the darkness of an early morning, lost in yet another pit of despair. In grappling with his misery, he discovered he was thinking, “I can’t live with myself anymore!” This had no doubt happened on other occasions, but this time a second thought pattern miraculously appeared, “I can’t live with myself anymore? Who is the I that can’t live with me? There must be two of me!” He went on for a while to ponder that question, “Who is I and who is me?” Eventually he drifted back to sleep and awoke in the morning with an apparent resolution to that challenging question — on this bright morning he saw the world in a whole new and beautiful way, he had finally made peace between the I and the me, blessed be.
The book, Who Do You Think You Are?, by Rick Nichols, tells a tale of an egg being stolen from a great nest high on a cliff in the wild country and transplanted in a Turkey’s nest on a small farm. The result of this seemingly innocent “act of mischief” on the part of a farmer’s son is that a great and powerful bird finds himself born into a family of farm turkeys. Our hero, Eagerlet, immediately begins a quest for self-identity and a community that will accept him as he is without having to change him into something they feel he should be. Eagerlet goes from rejection to rejection and eventually all the way to the very bottom of the well of grief were he discovers the awesome and liberating secret of who he and every other living being really are.
