Who you are requires no thought. We use labels from experiences we’ve had to define ourselves, but in reality, even without those experiences, we would still be here. We would still exist, and we would still be. We are more than just the summation of the things we have and haven’t done. Even if I weren’t a blogger or a woman or a sister or whatever else I use to define myself, I’d still be “me.” Now, these things are so thoroughly ingrained in me it would seem as though without them I would cease as well, but as many people can tell you, all of who you are is not something you can classify by the means of words or language or mental understanding.

You are your awareness. That’s all. You are your consciousness. You are whatever it is inside you that realizes your reality and experiences things every day. Who you are does not direct your mind with thoughts, it is who experiences those thoughts. Your mind is nothing more than a computer, processing your human experience and, indeed, providing invaluable functionality for a human body. But that’s really it. It doesn’t do much more than that, other than fill you with irrational thoughts because your mind does not know like your soul does.

If you’d humor me for a moment and just take the time to acknowledge your awareness, you’ll reach a part of you you’ve probably never touched before. At this awareness, there is a sense of peace. You realize that everything that happens is not inherently good or bad, but that we assign connotations to it based on what we were trained to believe is acceptable or not. We realize that life is no more than an unfolding of experience that our minds contort with meaning in an effort to set up a mental obstacle course that we can overcome, and grow.

Realizing this was one of the most influential things I have achieved in my life, and funnily enough, it didn’t require anything more than just the ability to sit, be, and recognize my nature for what it is. Allowing myself those few minutes of complete focus on my awareness and nothing else showed me with great contrast how deeply our lives are crafted by the hallmarks of society, and how it will drive us all to misery if we let it.