Who Am I

​I was having a conversation with a friend this week, discussing the Question that has been asked for thousands of years: “Who am I?” To get us closer to the answer we might want to first ask who I am not. I know that I am not my body, my mind, or my emotions. So then, who am I?
 
To help discover who we are, we might want to explore the voice deep within us. That voice is referred to as the silent witness, the thinker of our thoughts. When we feel conflicted or feel stress coming on, we can ask this question: “Who is thinking this thought right now?” Then simply repeat, “I Am,” immediately shifting our awareness, bringing us to a higher level of consciousness. We can then come closer to finding out that we are something other than the ego self.
 
The whole of the Vedanta philosophy can be summed up in the following parable recited by Vivekananda on July 30, 1895 on Wellesley Island in NY:
Two birds of golden plumage sat on the same tree the one above, serene, majestic, immersed in his own glory; the one below, restless and eating the fruits of the tree, now sweet, now bitter. Once he ate an exceptionally bitter fruit; then he paused and looked up at the majestic bird above, but he soon forgot about the other bird and went on eating the fruits of the tree as before. Again, he ate a bitter fruit, and this time he hopped up a few boughs nearer to the bird at the top. This happened many times until at last the lower bird came to the place of the upper bird and lost himself. He found all at once that there have never been two birds, but that all the time he was that upper bird, serene, majestic, and immersed in his own glory.
 
Namaste