Who are we?

Posted on October 16, 2012 by Manuel

Part of our homework for the yoga teaching course is to meditate. Every day.

The theme I have been meditating on is “Who am I?”. Simple question but perhaps the most difficult one too.

I always had a hard time introducing me myself, I feel like walking on a line between pretentiousness and boring normality… But what does come to mind when I try to define who I am and I’m the listener?

First, it’s usually what I do and what I am to others. I’m a application developer, a husband, a son, a nice guy, a good friend, etc… What I am not too… But this is just superficial. It’s perhaps a good idea to put this on a CV or on an about page but that is not really who I am. All these things are just definitions but we are made of actions more than of definitions.

Who am I when I meditate? How am I linked to the world? A bag of water pressured down a mat towards the ground?

What is me in now?

What am I doing today? Do I act? Do I observe?

Do I create new links with the world around me? And what are the qualities of these links? Emotional, practical, physical?

Am I insignificant? or do I have the power to change the world? Maybe both?

In fact, in this case, questions are better than answers. Words, thoughts, nothing can really define who we are. Our definitions surpass all that but we can feel it. We know who we are.

It’s almost like reaching the answer without being able to touch it.

I believe that is the point.

Did you ever try to honestly meditate about who you are?

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Andrew__C

Not to go down that fight club path of 'not being our khakis', I'm not too sure what we are. Are we our choices? Our values? Do the clothes we wear/buy or the decisions that we made along the way define who we are? Career paths, what we choose to eat, where we choose to live.

It's like some sort of crazy black hole that once we start asking it's a spiral out of control! :) Good thoughts though.

On the meditating front and what @TheChaseNight was on about, I can't meditate without someone else running me through it, ones available to listen to where someone else takes you through exercises works for me, if it's quiet, it's just me and myself, and that's where things tend to get out of hand.

Interested on the progress of the yoga course?

mloigeret moderator

@Andrew__C It's definitely not easy to meditate and I really understand your feeling of things getting out of hand. Working with somebody guiding is a good idea. But like everything practice leads to progress. I start to see meditation as a physical exercise like push-ups. You know you can do 20 push-ups if someone is motivating you but if you are alone you give-up after 3. it's kind of the same thing with mediation. The thing is to find how you can put yourself in the right condition. It takes some time and I'm really just at the beginning of this path.

Regarding Fight Club, as much as I think everybody likes it because it's "cool", there is still some important message in "you are not your Ikea furniture". This movie pushes it too far and makes it trendy and I think it's really enjoyable to analyse where/when it's going too far. That's the point of the movie according to me: when did this guy started to go too far? beyond him?

On the yoga course. I'm having too much fun. I would sleep at the yoga center if I could :)

6 comments

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letssitoutside

Who am I? ... Such a beautifully frustrating question, especially once I peel back layers of what I do, what I look like, my favorites, my dislikes... Who am I, what is there in meditation under all of that stuff? I feel like I dive deeper into that question daily. I learn over and over to be satisfied with seeking an answer instead of waiting for satisfaction upon selecting an answer. Falling off a roof forced me to seek into myself for a deeper understanding of who I am. Aside from physical changes, my brain changed along with my personality and preferences. Meditating connects me to my deepest self, the self that would be there if I lost all of my abilities. I don't know who/what/where/when/why that deepest self is, especially not in words, but I know I enjoy connecting to it. Are we a collection of dust? A flowing aqueous form? A vibration bouncing off all around us? I don't know but I enjoy asking these questions and reaching towards an answer :)

@letssitoutside Thank you for your comment Jackie. I see we are on the same wavelength. You are right, the point is not the goal of "knowing who we are" but the path towards it.

TheChaseNight

It's funny because it feels like we're thinking about "who we are" almost non-stop. We pick out clothes for the day and we base it on "who we are", the music we listen to, everything we do we're checking against the idea we have of "who we are". But meditating on it ... Well, I try to meditate now and then, but I'm not very good at it. If my brain finds itself with free time, it defaults to thinking about fictional characters, but now that I think about that might just be another means of meditating on the question because I'm deciding what parts of "who I am" to put into each character. Hmmm, Thanks for provoking a thought for the day!

@TheChaseNight thank you for your comment Chase. It's true we are always trying. I surprised myself thinking "is this iphone case really defining me?" the other day. I can't even believe how stupid this is when we don't really know who we are deep inside. Happy to have provoked you :)

How to meditate and what are the benefits? | Manuel Loigeret says:

October 31, 2012 at 7:48 am

[...] triangle in a circle in a square appear in front of you. Also asking a simple question (like “who am I?“, “what is my core value?”, “who do I care about today?” for example) [...]

Who are we?

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