who do you think you are?

well?

Who do you THINK you are?

What we see of our Selves as we go about our lives, is a screwy combination of a lot of assumptions about things that have happened to us, or are going to happen to us, or are happening to us.

We perceive ourselves through a rather faulty lens most of the time. It's really hard for most people to be completely honest about who they think they really are inside.

We generally fall into one of the following categories:

a) We believe we are so utterly beneath most people, we consistently believe and sell ourselves short of our talents, gifts, value and purpose.

b) We believe ourselves so utterly above most other people, we consistently alienate others and yet blame them for "disappointing" us all the time.

c) We waver between these two poles and consistently over-compensate when engaged in either a) or b) swinging wildly between them and losing all sense of security in our identity at all.

Much of the time we can blame our upbringing, our genetics, our environment for all the cumulative "failures" we believe we endure. Thing is, we sometimes forget that what we THINK in any given moment - whether as a reaction to our emotions or as an impetus to emotion - will trigger a slew of things we can never quite believe or accept or understand or aspire to or we underestimate them or overestimate them and so on.

Thoughts beget new thoughts and our emotional re-activeness can lead to thinking that is at best, mildly wise and at worse, a completely irrational and gross over-assumption of the real.

Many of the self-help gurus' would lead us to believe that thinking positive thoughts and having a much more optimistic 'glass-half-full' bravado, will generally lead us to a better life because we'll begin to "manifest" a better life as a result of thinking better.

I still think this is pretty much BS for the most part. It's hard to argue against it though. If we THINK something is bad then it can't be anything BUT bad because that's what we think and assume it to be! It's hard to think of having a brain tumour as something positive isn't it? It's hard to think that missing your flight for a very important job interview is going to lead to new amazing opportunities isn't it? We're led to believe that we either brought these things on ourselves through our thought processes and that we actually wanted them or that somehow, there is a positive outcome that an arbitrary universe bestows on individuals further along the time-line just because of our predicament in the here and now! It's a cruel thing to believe. I'm not saying it's not entirely untrue even so.

I have no idea! For the most part, I'm still very much of the opinion that despite man's insistence on bending truth to suit, there is such a thing as Absolute Truth that cannot be bent by either Science, religion or man's equivocal and super quixotic tendencies to try. There is "something" that exists in the world, in nature and inherent within Life itself that is exactly what it is and can be nothing else. We keep looking for it and we probably ignore it for the most part because we assume that something like that is probably really hard to find but just as likely, it's probably easy as all hec to see - we just consistently expect it to be other than what it actually is!

If our thoughts do indeed create the world and our environment in which we react so vociferously and willfully, then seeing ourselves for what we actually are is mind-blowingly difficult. At least it probably is for many people not the least of which is me! It's like we live with this spectre of intense Self love and even more intense Self loathing, battling inside our deeper psyche, warring it out over which one will get the upper hand; our 'Terrified-I-don't-fit-in' little selves or our 'Super-ego-inflated-over-the-top-of-everyone-else' big selves.

Finding the spot where we're exactly who we are and KNOW that to be True - Absolutely True - is a massive test of character, wisdom, humility, patience, acceptance, Love and of pure objective compassion.

Strange isn't it? That we can probably only see what we truly are when when we are at once brutally honest and utterly, completely and unsentimentally compassionate with ourselves at the same time. Nothing in our past, our future, even around us in our present world is the mirror into which we can look with any accuracy as to our Absolute Truth of the Self. Our eyes are like a carnival hall of mirrors that distort and refract what is presented to them and from those weird and grotesque deformations, we construct a view of our Selves and how we fit into this world that is most likely largely inaccurate and silly.

Neither abject self debasement, nor total self aggrandizement, of our person hood, in this life, will help us see ourselves clearly as we truly are.

The truest form that Nakedness takes is to stand utterly stripped of the mirrors that are our eyes and the thoughts we contrive from the evidence of our eyes, our ears, our nostrils, our tongue and our fingers and without thought, allow our Self to feel this moment.

No scanning, no judging, no assuming, no forecasting, no musing, no alluding, no naming, no wondering, no acknowledgment, no hindering, no moralising, no debasement, no aggrandizement, no fretting, no pride, no smug assuredness, and nothing else that causes or reacts to human thought: just THIS moment and - without naming it or giving it labels to rationalise it away - what you feel within and without is exactly who you are. It's never what you think.

Celebrate that.