"Who am I?"

I actually started this blog post several weeks ago.  But I had other blog posts I wanted to write more, so this was saved as a draft.  And I think it fits perfectly following my post yesterday, and the past few about "The Untethered Soul" and everything I'm learning from that. 

I read Hillary Pike's blog entry on The Daily Love about an experience she had while traveling in India and climbing a mountain.  She was hours up this hill/mountain in India and gets bitten by some insect.  Her knee is very swollen and not knowing what bit her, she's scared.  "What if it's something poisonous?  What if I die?" 

But then she surrendered.  She saw clearly (or remembered) that she was not her physical body, and if she was meant to die right there on the mountain in India, it would be so.  She didn't die, but I found her "letting go" and surrendering to the Universe's plan so beautiful.  How many of us would have been so graceful and peaceful in the face of such a scary experience?     

                                                          

What Hillary learned, or perhaps already knew, and what I'm learning is not to attach to the fear.  Fearful thoughts will run through our minds.  "Will he/she leave me?"  "What if they laugh at me?"  "What if I fail?"  "What if I make a fool of myself?"  "What if I die?"  But these thoughts are not us. 

"Go behind your thoughts" is something Michael Singer says in "The Untethered Soul."  I've been practicing that myself, telling myself to go "behind" my thoughts when I'm feeling anxious or fearful of something.  And it works!  I'm able to step back, in a sense, and observe my fear-based thoughts, instead of sitting in them.

That's the goal, I think.  To observe our ego nature and our fear-based selves.  And recognize that that is not us.  That we can feel those feelings, let them pass through us, and not let them create drama or upset us.

 Back to Hillary surrendering on the mountain and remembering that she is not her physical body.  I had an experience (not a near-death one) myself growing up, where I knew in an instant that I was not my physical body.      

I remember looking in a mirror after using the bathroom or something.  I was a young kid...middle school maybe, even older elementary... I really don't remember when it actually happened.  But I remember looking in the mirror into my own eyes and asking, "Who am I?"  And it was the weirdest feeling -- I suddenly felt separate from my body.  Like I knew right then that I was some Spirit inside the body I was looking at.  I was not the body itself. 

                                                 

I remember feeling a little freaked out at the time.  And I remember telling my best friend about it and she seemed to get what I was talking about.  After that initial experience I could "do it" any time. All I had to do was look in the mirror and into my eyes.  I got used to it over time and it didn't freak me out so much.  But I still thought it was a little weird and didn't quite understand what was going on.

"Is this ME?"  "THIS is ME?"  "Who is "me?"     

I asked a variety of questions to myself in the mirror over the years.  It was quite a profound experience, obviously, as it's stuck with me all this time.  Now, of course, I don't need to look into a mirror to feel that I am the Spirit inside my body and not my body itself.  And all the reading I've done over the past decade or so have just affirmed what I experienced, which was great!  Affirmed, and taken it to the next level!