You Are Not Who You Think You Are

Have you ever wondered why you're so easily upset by the unexpected? It's not really you who feels shaky when situations shift without warning. It's who you think you are that feels threatened -- but you don't have to go on feeling afraid. Beginning right now, with some patient self-investigation and the aid of a few higher facts, you will discover that you are not who you think you are. This is one of the most exciting and relief filled self-findings you can make about yourself.

Living from our present life-level we are almost always nervous about what's going on around us. Why? Because we still live from the mistaken notion that who we are is somehow affected or determined by what happens to us. This is like thinking that because you have a fender-bender, you are an automobile. Obviously, you are not your car. And yet, putting aside the light humor that our inner-confusion is apt to cause, there is nothing funny about thinking that you are going to lose yourself if someone leaves you. Just ask anyone who has ever gone through the nightmare of seeing a loved one walk away. This is why we are going to leave behind us, once and for all, this threatened nature of ours. By placing ourselves in the care of Real Intelligence, we can learn to let go of whatever it may be that has frightened us up to now. That's right. The winds of this world can blow hot or cold, gentle or like gales, and it won't matter to you. You have found yourself. Let's continue to learn.

There is only one possible explanation for how who you really are could ever get confused or pained by what happens to you. Simply stated, you are suffering from a case of mistaken identity. This identity crisis is born out of believing that who you are, your essential self, is somehow tied to the events in your life. This kind of thinking tends to make you afraid of almost any change in life. By thinking that your life is determined by events, you grow afraid of losing control of yourself if you can no longer control the events. Looking for yourself outside of yourself -- whether through career, hobbies, or in the faces of people, family or strangers -- is like trying to find your reflection in a tumbling mountain brook. You might see yourself for a flash, only to disappear. And then you must look again... and again... and again. Living from this unfortunate kind of mistaken identity leaves you endlessly on edge and hopelessly searching for yourself; a search that never ends because, just as the mountain brook dances ever onward, so is constant change the true nature of life.

Remember this next helpful idea and work to learn the intelligence behind it: Events may happen to you, but you are not the event. Just as clouds are not the sky, you are not what moves through you. You are not who you think you are.

As we have discovered, thinking that you are the event, being identified with it, gives rise to a certain wrong identity -- an anxious and uncertain one. This mistaken identity is called the false self and it wears many hats. If you will dare to let go of who you think you are, you will discover what life would be like if you had wings. This lower, false nature has lived unchallenged for a long, long time. Today, right now, is the beginning of the end of it and the true beginning of who you really are.