"I am not my shirt..."

Who
am I?

"That is a very nice
shirt," he* says,

"whose shirt is that?"

"My shirt,"
I say.

"But you take your shirt off, and
put it back on again...
without your shirt, are you still
you?"

"Without shirt
or shoes,
or car,
or job,
or house,
or i phone,"
I begin to think beyond the
veil.

"Yes," I say to
myself.

"Ahhh, yes,"
I reply with
wonder.

Then something begins to
dawn as he turns
me away from the sliver of
shadow self
and
towards the full
light of
conscious being...
the being that
is consciousness...

Well yes,
I think...
as he urges me on...
I am something more
than this shirt
that
is
"my shirt"...

yes,
even though I wear
it
almost
everyday...
and can’t
imagine
wearing anything
else tomorrow...
if its fabric
were to dissolve
beneath
my fingertips,
I would still be me

therefore,
I am not my shirt.

Hmmm,

"But what about my body?"

I am not my body...

I have a body.
I have arms,
and legs,
and eyelashes,
and tearducts...

If I were to lose
a limb,
or eyes went dim
and hair fell out,
I would still be me.

So I guess,
I am not my body.

And...I am not my thoughts.

My thoughts come and
go
and change and morph.
Thoughts I had yesterday
I cannot remember
today.
Sooo....

Yup, you guessed it...
I am not my thoughts.

I have a name
but it has changed...
I have been a first name...or two,
a maiden name and
two married names.
I have had spiritual names, titles,
prefixes, and suffixes.
Names of streets and
names of schools...but they are not
who I am.

When I walk into a coffeehouse
tucked along a quiet street,
on the outskirts of
a prairie town
right in the middle of Kansas,
no one knows my name,
but I am still me
and they don’t think
that I
am nothing...because
with,
or without,
a name to hang my
identity on,
I am still
me.
I am
sure of who I am.
I am not confused....at all.

Therefore,
I am not my name.

I am not my shirt,
my body,
my thoughts,
my name....

I am not the memories I carry,
or the regrets that I was once
burdened by.

I am not the schools I attended,
I am not the beliefs I cherish...if I were
to wake up tomorrow with no
memory of any thing I have ever
learned,
or able to
recognize even one face I have
ever known...I would still
be me.

I would be
the me
that
knows my Father’s voice
as dearly
and as nearly
as my own
heart’s
beating...

it would sound
an
eternal
rhythm:


I am
that
I AM

I am
that
I AM

I am
that
I AM

and the
I AM
that
I am

is
the love
of
Love.

And that is enough
of an
identity
for me.


" based on an exercise conducted by Sandy Wilder during an Educare Unlearning Institute gathering. For more information about the Institute, please visit their website at: www.educareunlearning.com