Who am I?
Who am I? I am, and we all are, conscious. We are aware. And we are aware that we are aware. We are aware that we are alive, and we are aware of our thoughts, choices, emotions, physical body, and the world around us.
So, who am I? Who are you? I think to answer that question in a way that truly satisfies you, you need to look deep within. And what does that mean, to look deep within? It means becoming more aware of the choices you’re making in each moment, becoming more aware of your emotions, your thoughts, the beliefs you carry — beliefs about yourself and the world around you. It means becoming more aware of your mental images of who you are — the images that arise in your mind when you ask yourself, “Who am I?”
One of the most common images people have of who they are is that of a purely material, physical being born out of a purely material, physical world. That over a long period of time, inanimate matter, like atoms, naturally interacted in ways that produced all of the orderly formation we see around us: planets balanced in orbits around stars, oceans and air and seasons, and even living organisms that grow and interact with their environment.
And in this worldview, there is nothing beyond the material world. Even your consciousness, your sense of being alive, arises from the interactions of inanimate matter. Because, as the common thinking goes, matter is the only ingredient we know of. That is what we can see around us with our physical senses and measure with our tools. We see cells, which are made up of molecules, which are made up of atoms, which are made up of subatomic particles. And so, how else could we have come into existence other than by a combination of the elements we see around us? What other proof do we have?
And yet, it’s unclear how this process from the non-living to the living took place — how something like atoms, which we do not consider to be alive, transformed into living, breathing, thinking, experiencing, conscious human beings, like you and me. There are many theories, but nobody has actually solved the puzzle. Every theory seems to only produce more mysteries.
Supposedly there was a big bang, a primordial soup, chemical reactions, and energy, which produced simple self-replicating organisms, which evolved into more complex organisms, which evolved into plants and animals and humans. In terms of the details, I guess it’s up for debate. Some might say that it was random chance that led to this moment — a highly improbable “happy accident” of molecules colliding. Others, that natural forces — like the chemical bonds that allow atoms to combine in unique ways — encouraged the growth of life. That perhaps it was an inevitable outcome given the nature of the universe and enough time. Perhaps it was like mixing a bowl of ingredients together and baking it in the oven at 350 °F.
This is the worldview I grew up with and one that many children who live in modern, western nations are ingrained with as young children. And for me at least, it all seemed as if it was presented like settled fact. And if you don’t really think about it, then you may just accept it and move on with your life. In which case, these words aren’t for you. But the moment you begin to ponder it and question it, it just leads to more questions.
“How can a combination of non-living parts produce life?”
If it was random chance that led to this moment, then how do you explain that life is inherently structured? Self-replication isn’t random — it’s a pattern, a repetition. Interacting with your environment and finding food isn’t random. It requires a drive to find food, the ability to interpret food from non-food and the ability to move a body. Even for a single-celled organism, this requires careful coordination.
So did random chemical interactions eventually lead to ordered, orchestrated chemical interactions? Definitely not. If it was truly random, then there would be no order.
Alternatively, what if it’s not random chance? Perhaps the building blocks of life have always existed in abundance and they just needed the opportunity to interact with each other. Perhaps you can mix hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and a handful of other atoms, and given enough energy and other material inputs, you can eventually produce a living organism. And perhaps this is a reliable, scientifically repeatable process.
I guess the first thing that comes to mind is that this all sounds pretty deterministic. If a cell is just the sum of its physical and chemical parts, then it’s like any physical machine. And yet, apparently cells are capable of replacing their parts and healing themselves, just as all life is.
When we observe that cells can interact with their environment, reproduce, and heal themselves, then it’s not difficult to see how collections of cells, and other living organisms like plants and animals, can do the same things. But atoms and molecules don’t have these properties. Cells and living organisms are categorically different. They are a quantum leap above inanimate matter - not just the sum of molecular parts.
The common answer to the question of “How?” is usually, “It’s a mystery. Nobody knows.”
Likewise, when you ask, “Why are we here? Why is anything here? What is the point of all this?”, the materialistic worldview doesn’t have answers to these questions either.
If consciousness arises from chemical interactions and electrical signals in your brain, then you are reduced to a byproduct of material circumstances. If that’s the case, then there isn’t much point at all.
If your consciousness can be explained by a combination of material inputs, a linear progression of causes and effects, then where is the room for personal responsibility and agency? Where is the opportunity for free will? How could deterministic chemical processes that interact in specific ways create a consciousness that is capable of freely choosing? Perhaps it could create an AI machine — which is what some people think we are reduced to — but free choice? It’s not possible. A machine can never go beyond the confines of its own programming.
And yet, you have the ability to change your mind — to freely choose — and be aware of it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this.
In this materialistic worldview, you believe that you die when your body dies — that you are a victim of circumstances beyond your control. You believe that your entire personality and sense of who you are is a result of your physical makeup, genetics and how you were raised. That in order to change your perspective, you have to change the material causes by altering your brain chemistry with drugs or changing jobs to avoid encountering certain people. And you reason that this is necessary because you can only react to the world in the way that you are programmed to. It’s a really impersonal and disempowering way to look at things.
Additionally, if you believe in a worldview like this, then there is no objective truth. How can you know anything when your entire experience is a subjective, relative phenomenon produced by electrical activity? Who is there to do the knowing? It’s just electrical signals interacting with other electrical signals, like a computer running an AI algorithm.
The only problem is that AI doesn’t know anything, and never will. No matter how complex you build it and how much energy you put into it, it will only be able to rehash and combine existing data. It may be able to do this in surprising ways. It may be able to mimic a self-aware being, but at the end of the day, it’s only taking in inputs, running them through a deterministic algorithm and spitting out results. The same inputs produce the same results, unless you throw in some randomness.
Growing up, the materialistic worldview never felt satisfying to me. And really, the whole paradigm of scientific materialism proves that you can convince yourself of anything if you only utilize the thinking, rational mind. You can produce page after page of theory and logical arguments that only make sense from a very narrow vantage point. And when you step back, it’s all nonsense.
It’s only when you involve the heart that it becomes difficult to deny that there is something more universal at play.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’”
These passages — regardless of how complicated the people who wrote them were — speak from a place beyond the linear, reasoning mind. They speak from the heart. And there is something in the energy behind the words that can resonate with your heart, and in that moment you know there is truth to what they say, beyond any rational explanation. All people, men and women, are created equal. We are one people, interconnected and interdependent — there is no other. Every action you take affects the whole. And as an aspect of the whole, every action you take affects yourself. This is intuitively obvious from the perspective of the heart.
When you look within, you can know that matter does not produce consciousness. In fact, consciousness is beyond matter — it’s foundational — not the other way around.
You are not your body. You are more than your body and you do not die when the body dies. You are not your emotions. You are more than your emotions and you do not go away as your emotions rise and fall. You are not your thoughts. You are more than your thoughts and you do not cease to exist when you do not think. You are not your sense of identity. You are more than your sense of identity and you do not become physical even though you identify with your physical body. All of these things affect your conscious experience of life, like a pair of sunglasses affects your experience of the sky, but they do not change who you are. And like a pair of sunglasses, you can take them off. You are that which is experiencing your sense of identity, your beliefs, your thoughts, your emotions and physical body. You are beyond matter.
For me, these words have always resonated. I knew that I was more than what the common narrative conditions us to believe. But at the same time, these ideas were all pretty abstract. I knew there was truth to them, but I didn’t experience them to the degree that I thought I should. After all, I wake up every day in the same body that I seemingly cannot escape. Over a decade later, I now experience them to a much higher degree, to the point where it’s difficult to deny. I now understand that the process of unraveling your conditioned, physical, material sense of self and uncovering your higher, spiritual sense of self is the very essence of the spiritual path and your purpose for being here. For what is spirit? It is that which is beyond matter. And spirit is conscious.
When you begin to ponder these ideas, one question that comes to mind is: “If I am a conscious, spiritual being, then where did I come from?” And of course the answer to that question is that you were born from another spiritual being with a higher, more expansive awareness. You came from a being with a level of consciousness where it is possible for them to create another self-aware being by endowing it with a spark of their own consciousness. In fact, everything we see around us is born out of the consciousness of a higher being. And everything is constantly being maintained by that higher being. It is where the energy that maintains the structure of atoms comes from. It is the energy that allows the sun to burn and the universe to expand. It is the energy that supports all life.
“And where did that higher being come from?” They were born out of an even higher being, who was born out of a higher being and so on until you reach the Creator, who created this world of form.
“Sort of like God?” Yes, but not like the God of the Christian/Catholic worldview that we are all intimately aware of.
The other very common image people have of who they are is an image based on the Judeo-Christian worldview, which is in direct opposition to the scientific-materialist worldview. This is an image of a human being who was created by God and who is living in a world that was created, as is, by God.
This God is all-knowing and all-powerful but also quite vengeful, and frankly, cruel. He is a remote God, way up there somewhere far away in a land called Heaven, only visiting every so often to check up on his creation, and potentially, if he doesn’t like what he sees, to release flood waters and wipe out the population of the Earth.
This is a God who has enemies and apparently revels in people worshiping him. If you are in his good graces, you are blessed and saved, otherwise you’d better be careful. Or as the Old Testament says, “The hand of the Lord will be made known to his servants, but his fury will be shown to his foes.”
In this worldview, people often see themselves as separate from God. They see themselves as mere mortals — as creations of God — who are sinful and impure by their very nature and categorically different from their Creator. They do not see themselves as being sons and daughters of God, as being one with the Creator, as Jesus did. For Jesus was special — he was God’s only son, who was sent to Earth to save us because we cannot save ourselves. Or so the story goes.
In this worldview, salvation is something that is obtained from without — it is something that is granted or bestowed upon you, not something you achieve, or even seek, by your own free will. As an inherent sinner, it is only by the grace of God that you can be saved. You do not have the natural ability to save yourself or do anything good at all.
And yet, somehow, the grace of God isn’t sufficient to be saved. You also have to join the church, declare your faith in the Christian religion, perform rituals and follow God’s commandments. And then at the end of your singular life, you may be granted access through the pearly gates of heaven to forever lounge in the clouds and perhaps watch TV. And if you fail to do this, well then, let’s not talk about that.
But the question that comes mind is: why? Why would God create us as sinners only to then save us? What would be the point of that?
The common answer from the church is: “God works in mysterious ways. You must have faith my child.”
Faith and belief are cornerstones of the Judeo-Christian worldview. You must have faith in God, Jesus, the Bible and the church. You must have faith that you will be saved and go to heaven.
But faith alone will not get you anywhere. We know from experience that you can believe all you want in something and it won’t make it true. It is through experience that we come to know. And when you experience God directly, what do you need belief for? Furthermore, why would you need a church to interpret the word of God for you?
The answer, of course, is that you wouldn’t. And the possibility that followers of the Christian religion could suddenly realize their potential to experience God directly is one of the greatest threats to the power of the church. It is this situation that they have spent so much effort to avoid over the past two thousand years. It is why they have sold people on the idea of original sin.
If people believe they are inherently sinful, if they believe they are lowly human beings, separate from God, needing an external savior, needing the church to be saved, then people are powerless. And if the church is ordained by God, the interpreter of the word of God and keeper of the path to salvation, then that puts them in a position of power. If people want to be saved, they reason that they have no choice but to submit to the authority of the church.
This is how people end up killing their brothers and sisters in the name of God, as they did in the Crusades only nine hundred years ago. Do you really think it was God’s desire to see people kill each other? Of course not. It was the desire of the leaders of the church.
And these leaders, in order to protect their power and position of privilege, want you to believe in the idea of a fearsome, vengeful, wish-fulfilling God. They want you to believe that you do not have the power to save yourself and that if you just believe and have faith and do all the correct outer things, then you will eventually impress God enough that he will let you into heaven. But this will never happen.
Why? Well for starters, the image of God portrayed in the Judeo-Christian worldview is a man-made image. It is an image, created by people, of how they want God to be. And naturally, the image reflects their own internal psychology. They could only imagine a fearsome, vengeful, wish-fulfilling God.
But why would an all-powerful, all-knowing God, who created everything you see around you, ever be angry and vengeful? He wouldn’t. Anger is a human emotion — an emotion that people express when they are afraid. And what would an all-powerful, all-knowing, immortal God have to fear? Do you think he is afraid that his creation isn’t living up to his expectation? That sounds like something you or I might experience, but not a spiritual being that is beyond space and time.
Not only does this image of God not make sense, it also prevents you from experiencing God directly. When you think of God as someone way up there, someone who is separate from you and categorically different from you, then you cannot truly experience God. You cannot experience something which you see as separate from yourself because there will always be a distance. You cannot say, “I and the Father are one.” And this is especially true when you believe in the image of an angry, judgmental God because you would never want to become one with someone who is angry and judgmental.
To say “I and the Father are one,” as Jesus did, cannot come from a belief in an image of God. It has to come from experience. And that experience will never come if you think you are separate from God, that Jesus was the only son of God, and you are somehow not a child of God. Which is exactly what the doctrines of the church are designed to make you think and what many people who are blinded by the Judeo-Christian worldview do think.
Jesus was a son of God, but he was also human, born like any other human. Just like you and me. We too are children of God — conscious, self-aware, spiritual beings inhabiting human bodies on a planet called Earth. We are born out of the body of God, as is all that we see around us, from the screen you are looking at to the invisible atoms in the air. Or, if you don’t like the word God because of the religious connotations, you can simply say that we are born out of the body of a spiritual being with a higher level of awareness, a more expansive consciousness and sense of identity. And like that greater spiritual being, you have the same potential to expand your consciousness, raise your awareness and transform your sense of who you are. Yes, you can do the works that Jesus did and more.
The truth is that you can save yourself. You have the potential of God within you and you also have free will. This means that it’s up to you how you use that potential. You can use it to raise your consciousness, come more into oneness with all that is, and help raise the whole, or you can use it to lower your consciousness and reinforce the idea that you are a being who is separate from everyone else and everything around you and that you can do whatever you please without experiencing the consequences of your actions.
The latter choice is why we have all of the mayhem and destruction we see on planet Earth. God didn’t create that — we did, through our own free-will choices. Do you think the Creator wants to see people suffer, struggle and kill each other? No, certainly not. But that is what free will allows. You cannot claim to have a truly free will if you cannot deny who you really are, if you are forced to do only helpful and wholesome acts. If you have free will, then you can also take your consciousness down to the depths of despair and develop a state of mind where you believe and experience that you are separate from spirit, where you believe that you are a God among men who is untouchable and infallible, as many of the greatest dictators of history have done.
Beyond that, you can take your consciousness back up from that state, learn from the consequences of your actions, and learn to accept and experience your oneness with spirit. This is the very essence of the spiritual path and our purpose for being here — to grow and to raise our consciousness. The Creator didn’t create this world and put us in it only for us to follow a set of commandments and be judged like you would be with a homework assignment. We are created out of the body of the Creator, with the same creative spark and potential. We are creative, spiritual beings. We are co-creators — creators in the making.
And as co-creators, how could we learn to use our creative abilities if we didn’t also have the free will to use those abilities in ways that are destructive and harmful to our growth? Of course, we could not. You must be able to take command over yourself, recognize the power within you, take responsibility for your life and learn from the results of your choices. And to do this, you are gifted with the ability to make mistakes and learn from them. God is not going to make your choices for you, nor is he going to tell you what to do. It is up to you what you do with your life.
Luckily, you are not alone. It is the illusion that you are a separate being — perpetuated by both the scientific-materialist and the Judeo-Christian worldview — that makes you believe that. And who made you accept that illusion? Nobody. Nobody can make you take on an illusion and believe something that isn’t true. They can trick you, but ultimately, it was your free-will choice to accept the illusion that you are a separate being. Granted, it may not have been a conscious choice at the time. Furthermore, it was likely not a choice that you made in this lifetime. But because it was your choice to take it on, you also have the ability to choose to let it go.
And as I said, you are not alone. Spirit is conscious. Beings in the spiritual realm have an individuality — like you and me — and you can communicate with them. They are always willing to help you. But you have to remove the blocks in your consciousness that prevent you from experiencing their presence. And one of the biggest blocks is the sense of identity as a separate being, as a human being cut off from spirit.
In truth, there is no separation. There is no space between you and spirit. You are spirit. You are an inseparable aspect of all there is, created with a purpose, with love. And you can experience that as I and many other people have. At first it may begin as an intuitive impulse, a feeling that there is something beyond what you’ve been conditioned to believe. But if you follow that feeling, nurture it, and begin to ask the question, “Who am I?” and listen in your heart, then that intuitive sense can grow into a more tangible experience and inner knowing.