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A Question That Reveals the Real You Hidden Underneath Your Story
We are more than the masks of our stories.
I was cruising around social media the other day and I came across a question that’s been nagging at me.
“Who are you when you stop thinking thoughts about yourself?”
At first glance, I answered with something like, “I’m raw consciousness having a human experience,” or “I’m the awareness of the mind and its thoughts,” and moved on.
But the question lingered in the front of my mind, enticing me like bait on a hook. So I chomped down to see if there was any more insight to pull from this, and it turns out there was.
Here is what I found.
It’s just a story
Since my previous answers weren’t enough, I wondered if I was asking this question incorrectly.
Instead of focusing on “who am I”, maybe I should be asking “what am I”.
So I changed the question to, “What am I when I stop thinking thoughts about myself?”
Here’s where things got interesting for me.
If I stop thinking thoughts of myself, and I still exist, then I must not be those thoughts. I get that. Thoughts come and go.
