Who Are You When You Stop Becoming?

Who are you when you stop becoming?

It is common in social groups to give a role to a given person.

A role is a box. A safe, bounded, predictable box.

The mind is a sophisticated categorizing, perimeter and box constructing machine.

It draws divisions on the continuous to create order, logic and reason.

Once a box is drawn around something or someone, the mind is set at ease.

It no longer says: “What is this?”

Instead it says: “I know”.

But the drawing of a box creates an image: a static picture of a dynamic object.

You look at a tree and say: “Tree”.

But when I ask you, how do you define “Tree”, you list many sense experiences about the object.

You say: “It has leaves, they are green. It is upright, it has bark”.

But when I ask you about the bush, and why it is not a “Tree”, the mind jumps into action.

It creates smaller abstract categorizes an lines to draw division.

You say: “The bush has leaves but doesn’t grow as tall as the tree”.

But when I point out the molecular structure of the tree and bush being the same: Oxygen, Nitrogen, Carbon, Hydrogen, the mind jumps to a lower level of analysis.

You say: “Yes but the DNA of the two and their development are different”.

We have moved from the physical concrete characteristics to the abstract, observed and modeled characteristics.

Models built upon model.

Static images on top of static images.

Imperfect, static and hierarchal boxes to model a dynamic world.

That is what we are really doing if we are honest with ourselves, isn’t it?

Turning the irrational into domesticated, predictable and orderly.

Useful — certainly, but dangerous if not careful.

Returning to an identity.

When someone asks: “Who are you?”

You identify with all the relationships to things you have:

Your work, your spouse, your hobbies;

But these are all just boxes you create or are created for you.

To remain predicable, available and static.

So that the mind can say: “I know”, therefore “I am safe”.

It is a very different thing to say: “I don’t know”.

There is a tremendous urgency and awareness in a state of the unknown.

The mind is fixed upon that contemplation of turning the unknown into the known.

The truth is that you don’t know who you are.

When you lack these identity props to hold in front of you and stand on, you are lost.

If you are enormously ignorant, you have great confidence in these playthings.

You double your wager on these boxes.

You asserting that, indeed, you are the thing at the center, commanding all things, firmly in control.

But you aren’t, are you?

Who are you when you stop trying to be anyone in particular?

Do you know?

Can you find out?

It is a practice; not something to intellectualize.

“Self knowledge is the beginning of wisdom”, says Krishnamurti.

Self knowledge is a residue of experience.

Experience of Self.

What happens to your sand castles when you stop piling on the sand and tides lap on?

Do you have the courage to find out?