At the end of his interview, Sam Harris would ask his guest a question: “What is one experience, that you would never repeat, but are grateful happened.”
The gratitude I feel when I answer that question for myself washes over me in a lovely feeling. And I remember, this is my true nature: the okayness under even the most difficult experiences. The more I touch that place, the more real it is. Once I’ve had an experience of it as real, I remember it is real even when it doesn’t look that way. Faith, of a sort. Faith based in what is and what is self-evident when investigated, even if you can’t remember how it feels right this second.
You are not your experience.
I’m going through something right now. The feeling of the experience is painful.
There’s a story I believed/believe. And my mind, innocently, seeks to keep me safe in that story. The danger feels so real and imminent, that it must be hypervigilant to protect me. Even in sleep, it thinks it needs to protect me, so I struggle to sleep. I wake up exhausted, and it starts its narrative of vigilance to keep me safe, even from the tired feelings it created.
When I came across the understanding of life I work in, life sucked. Or so it looked to me. My anxiety was at an all time high. The 20 years of depression had started to lessen in intensity, but I was getting migraines off and on for 2 years, and I had a panic attack that week.
But life gave me a gift and I saw something. It was small and huge at the same time. It looked so true that I kept looking. I wrote it down, quoting Jack Pransky, “All we are is peace, love, and wisdom, and the power to create the illusion we are not.”
I felt okay. Like maybe my procrastination habit and ADHD symptoms didn’t make me worthless, underachieving, missing out on all my potential after all.
OH. ALL we are is PEACE, LOVE, and WISDOM. That’s me! That’s what I am!
It was nascent. A year later I saw that truth in a deeper way. OHHHH! All we are is peace, love, and wisdom, and THE POWER TO CREATE THE ILLUSION we are not. Haha! Well, that illusion gets believable REAL fast.
And then in January I came across the journal entry from the initial experience, and laughed to myself because the understanding goes much deeper still.
And today, going into my second month of some gnarly post partum anxiety, I know it’s true, because I’ve been to that place, but the illusion I create that I am not feels more real.
I am not my experience. I’m not my childhood. I’m not my thinking. I’m not how I felt yesterday, today, or what I anticipate I’ll feel tomorrow. Even when it looks like I am those things.
So what am “I”? I don’t know. And that’s good news for me. I don’t think you know what or who “you” are either.
It’s easier to explain what we’re not…
We are not:
Our childhood memories. How we felt after breakfast yesterday. What we feel right now. What other people think we are. Who we think we are. The thoughts we think about other people. Our habits. Things we’ve done in the past. The way we see the future. Our accomplishments. Our failures. What other people think are our accomplishments or failures.
Those aren’t you, because YOU experience those things. You have a moist computer, your brain, working to keep your body alive. What’s experiencing those things? What’s experiencing the me, me, me track, and the memories, and the behavior and habit algorithms? Pure, expansive consciousness.
You are not the collection of your experiences. In a moment, you may experience thinking that takes the form of those memories. But even then, you are experiencing the present moment. You experience thought about the past in the present moment. But even thinking about the past isn’t a fixed experience. It changes from moment to moment. If you tried to remember all your past experiences at once, all the ways you’ve ever remembered them, I think your head would explode.
So in my present moment, painful experience, I remember that it is not me. The stories my brain tells me because it thinks they will keep me alive are not truth. They make sense as old coping mechanisms. And as I see more deeply that they are not what make me okay, they will fall away. I am already, always okay.
Even when I can’t see it. But that’s never permanent.
But here’s the best part.
You ready?
When I come out of it, I see who I really am at a deeper level. And I’m grateful.
**If you’re skeptical, try this experiment. When you wake up tomorrow morning, see if you notice a space that exists before the thought track starts. What is that space?
Practical Wisdom 