Take a moment to consider how or on what exactly you base your self identity. Do you define yourself by your actions? Your emotions? Your thoughts? The “I am” that lives inside your core self simply is. It exists through everything - emotions, thoughts, actions, beliefs. It is the qualities about you that do not change even when you experience suffering, loss, stress, trauma, or problems in life. The self that exists in spite of all that you have endured is the self that you need to seek to have a life that is strong and aligned. A strong “I am" creates a life of purpose.
My first ever substack post was entitled “Who am I?” Looking back, I can reflect on how essential this question is to be pursued again and again in life. The way most of us question the self is through the source point of thought, emotions, and ego. We idealize the answer because we are impatient or incapable of slowing down. We avoid receiving ourself. It can be terrifying to allow a quest into the “I am” to be an act of spiritual discovery. Religious norms externalize religion in a way that does not condition us towards finding our internal divine. We are not encouraged by society, religion, or education to seek the “I am.” Only through our suffering, dis-ease, or trauma do we find the impetus to quest into our self.
“Who Am I?” is the most sacred question we can ask ourselves. Once asked, we have to be willing to listen for the answer that comes from deep inside.
Life is the gauntlet that teaches us to seek the self. “Who am I?” is a quest that requires stillness and listening. The answer comes through a relaxation of self, a coming in, an internal epiphany that gives permission to be and creates an opening into the self. In our high speed world, this core question is not treated as a sacred quest that takes a lifetime to answer. As we discover and rediscover the multifaceted nature of our own “I am”, we become.
Since my trip back to the states a few months ago, I’ve been mulling over the ego a lot. When I got off the plane in NYC, my first impression was that I felt like an alien. The sensation was one of being hit (literally) by people’s large and harsh energy way before I got close to them physically. I wondered what I was sensing.
At first I thought it was the energetic outcome of too much phone time because, let’s face it, americans use their phones a lot! As time has gone by and I have continued to sit with the sensations I experienced, I’ve allowed what I was feeling to, shall I say, multidimensionally simmer. My conclusions have spiraled into the feeling that I was sensing the energy of projected “I am”s all over the place. It has led me to contemplate the amount of insecure “I am”s that exist today. These intense “I am”s push the self onto others and do not metabolize other people’s energy.
A projected “I am” is a closed system that doesn’t understand how to relate. The sensation of a pushy “I am” is very different than a centered and grounded “I am.” Without push, the “I am” is open to others experiencing the self and the self experiencing others. A secure “I am” is open to every way of being received. Secure people know that the core self cannot be changed by another person’s rejection, judgement, or negativity.
Your Comfortable “I am” Is Probably TOO Comfrotable.
Societally acceptable versions of the “I am” tend to be defended, rigid, idealized, or harsh. A core version of an “I am” is soft, flexible, imperfect, malleable and capable of vulnerability. The “I am” that we need to utilize as a basis for our true identity and self expression is hidden. It is not an “I am” that we will feel comfortable sharing with the world. Yet our “I am” is what we are alive to express. It is very important to not get lost in our comfortable “I am.”
All of our defenses have been built to protect our core “I am.” It is life’s work to unwind all of our disconnect from our core “I am.” Life is about self discovery.
If an “I am” is built out of defense, its ground is unstable. We will be insecure, suffer from low self esteem and feel out of place. An “I am” that is built push destabilizies our ground or first chakra leading to health problems, distrust, a lack of belonging and all the problems that go with a lack of relationship to our body and the earth. Defended “I am” creates a need to prove ourselves and protect ourselves rather than BE ourselves. Feeling overly secure and confident, proud, and puffed up without humility and vulnerability is the opposite side of the “I am” coin. The defensive “I am” at it’s core is not stable. This means that we will need to bolster it with fake needs to fulfill its demands.
Our insecure “I am” begets narcissism. Ah that lovely accusation we love to throw out at others and not actually acknowledge in ourself. Narcissism is rooted in an inability to tolerate the feeling of insecurity. Narcissism refuses to feel vulnerable or individuated. It boggles my mind to think about how many people right now are culturally adored with this rotten infrastructure. Our inability to heal ourself and willingly face the insecure structures within our own “I am” propogates f the social disease that surrounds us. It is important to note that our comfortable “I am” is causing problems, not solving them.
A masked, faked, or defended “I am” has to eventually crumble. The whole reason we are alive is to express our truest self, not our defended self. We are here to share our core self with others. This process for some personal reason is terrifying. There is something essential about us that we refuse to face. Somehow we believe that our core “I am” is vulnerable to change when, in fact, it is the strongest thing about us. It’s mind boggling to track how much we avoid finding our truest self and all we will do to protect it. Our collective reality thrives through developing an intimate communion of core selves.
The Connected “I am.”
A connected “I am” creates roots and stabilization. It heals. A undefended “I am” gives us something to return to when lost. By truly knowing who we are, we can allow for a deeper unfolding of self and accept the ever evolving nature of self knowing. Once we have created a bridge between the self we think we are and the self we know ourselves to be, we have a clear pathway to a meaningful life. When someone criticizes us or our actions hurt someone, a healthy “I am” generates self assessment coupled with an inner authority check in. We are able to take self responsibility and not resort to blame, avoidance, or gaslighting as a method to push back unwelcome feelings.
No one can take our “I am” away from ourself …aside from ourself that is. We can hold ourselves accountable to our own internal compass as a means to authenticate who we are to others and to ourself. With a connected “I am,” we can live a life in service to the world.
An “I am” that is rooted in the core of ourself is a gift to the world.
Having a sense of “I am” does not prevent life from happening. Risk is an inevitable reality. You can still lose yourself and your purpose. You can still be led away from yourself through the suffering you experience. As an adult, if you can create an internal compass to return to, you will eventually choose to return to it. If you don’t have that internal compass that points to your true “I am,” it is inevitable to feel lost, overwhelmed, taken over, and empty. This emptiness that so many of us fill with things, money, status, and stuff is really just a sign that our own “I am” is screaming at us for attention.
A core sense of “I am” is a motivating factor that speaks to who you want to be and what you need to create. It speaks to fulfillment and nourishment through being alive. An “I am” that is grounded in the self does not need to live in fear or anger. It can live in connection and expression. A true “I am” has purpose.
The Discovery of “I am.”
Thinking the “I am” is not the same as feeling it. When a lot of us seek the answer of “Who am I?”, we think the answer. We may feel the answer in an emotion in the moment, but that emotion often turns too quickly into a thought. The thought is an escape from what we are avoiding within ourself. The thought is not a coming home. The thought of self may lead to an action, a conclusion, a decision that is made through pushing away from the self instead of surrendering into it.
Thinking our “I am” makes us push the self onto others. It is not the vulnerable awakening that occurs when we allow our “I am” to bubble up from our core. The actions we engage in from our thinking “I am” are not fulfilling. They only temporarily appease. They do not heal because they are not the actions of the complete self.
The process of discovering your “I am” is a gift you can choose to give yourself throughout your entire life.
You can always uncover more of yourself. You can call yourself out of yourself through your fears, your masks, your defenses, your negative emotions. You can also recognize yourself in the way you feel connection, eros, community, flow, positive embodiment, pleasure. Everything you experience in life can be taken up as an invitation to ask yourself how what you are going through is an expression of your core self or an invitation towards your core self. It’s simply about paying attention instead of getting lost in the mundane.
Symptoms of an undiscovered “I am.”
Overly inflated or too rigid self expression.
An intense idealized self image that is portrayed through what you do instead of who you are.
Overly caring what people think of you.
Feeling like the other shoe is going to drop or expecting life to ruin you.
Consistent need to defend or mask.
A sense of too great of a boundary between you and others.
Feeling like no one actually knows you.
Engaging in hiding, avoiding, or being confused.
An inability to accept imperfection in the self.
Not having trust in your self.
Pretending to be you but not knowing how to feel you.
Not being interested in who you truly are.
Inability to risk being vulnerable, weak, different, or self expressive.
The “I am” simply is.
Your “I am” always exists and nothing (and I mean absolutely nothing) can change it. The core “I am” has no need to fear dissolution. You may lose our connection to your “I am” but you never ever lose it. You always have an “I am” inside you. It is divine. It is light. It is the substance by which you are made. That means all of you goes back to it. Your lowest self and most separate self is somehow expressing your “I am.” Your most connected, highest self is doing the same. And your everyday ordinary good enough self is another version of it.
There is no need to idealize your true “I am” because “I am” exists outside duality.
Everything you do, feel, think and are is expressing an aspect of your “I am.” It is up to you to identify the essence of your “I am” and compost it into the essential qualities of self. When you get lost too much in any direction of self - perhaps too absorbed with your disconnected self or overly connected in fantasy towards your connected self - you are forgetting to learn the human lesson of peeling the next layer back of your “I am.”
Seeking the “I am.”
Defenses point you towards yourself. Seek the softer emotions underneath. They are there if you don’t let yourself get too caught up in the hard emotions. Remember that you survived your childhood through hiding your “I am.” That surviving occured when you were reliant on the adults around you to keep you safe. As an adult, you no longer need the same protection. Your “I am” has a right to thrive and come alive. The old childhood surivival mechanisms are stories you need to break free from.
What you want to give to others shows what you need to give yourself. The ease with which you serve others comes from your internal “I am.” What you need to find in yourself is what you feel most compelled to give to others. You lose yourself in your service to others. This can be a place to process the self that will consistently uncover shadow to open you to deeper levels of your own presence. The way you caretake is what you give to others that you cannot give yourself.
The way that you habitually see yourself is also a way into your “I am.” For those of you who have a more negative view of the self, it may be through your self judgements or the things you fight about yourself. For those of you who have a positive outlook, it may be through what you pride yourself in or feel you do well but resist doing in a way that is more connected or intimate. The words you use to self identify can point you in the direction of a clearer “I am” that is not charged but simply present.
Throughout your entire life, your “I am” has been your most steady companion.
Exploring internally, asking yourself what has never changed about you, and allowing yourself the freedom to trust in who you are reveals your “I am” to you. Simply remember that the core “I am” is not dual. It just is. The words that come to you are just words and words can have a charge to them. Words are used to express energy. Feel both the word and the energy in your core self to connect the attribute you are defining for yourself to your “I am.”
It’s good to recognize how you habitually get in your own way. You separate from yourself to survive what you have to live through. It’s painful, actually, to see so many amazing humans pretending, defending, and fighting rather than embracing their true nature. You know what? YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL. I see this as truth. Your core is beautiful to me and to anyone who slows down enough to be interested in it. Why is it that you want to let others love you more than you love yourself? Why is it that you become hyper focused on faults instead of truths? Why can’t you soften into who you are?
Your “I am” is the ultimate gift you have to share with everyone you encounter in life.
My Desire
I envision living in a world where more people let their light shine. I yearn to be with groups of people in embodied joy and happiness, awakening through ordinariness. I dream of more and more people letting themselves be seen and felt for their beauty and light. I see a world where people can let themselves go and soften into the truest expression of self. I read this and wonder to myself…am I too naive? Is this even possible? Then I have to laugh at my own reflexive refusal to allow my own core self shine.
Here I am. This is my core “I am.” I am naive. I am innocent. I am compassionate and loving. I care. While I can absolutely understand and hold anyone in their deepest pain, I know that the strongest nourishment comes from witnessing a birthing “I am.”
Healing comes through anchoring into the “I am.” Suffering comes from being unable to feel your “I am.”
I want to FEEL more light in the world and I will not feel done with my life until I bring more light into it.
The reality of my work is that I often get put into a role. When people call themselves therapists, we work in the medium of problems. This means that most (not all) people hyperfocus on what’s wrong with little interest in not repeating patterns. Being with the struggles, the problems, the issues, is the purpose of therapy, right? Um….not really. Or at least, not only.
Whatever someone is most scared of having happen with others is their path into the potential of finding themselves.
I can and need to be able to build trust, hold pain, and compassionately give space for the struggles we all live with. Yet if I am only allowed to hold the pain, I don’t feel like I am being true to myself. Of course there’s a paradigm to my work. I chose my career path to witness people into becoming, not suffering. People prefer to pay me to be witnessed in their suffering while they fight allowing me to release them into their light. The balance between the two is not valued.
This is what led me years ago to run retreats and workshops. Perhaps my lack of running those now is what has caused me to write this post. Somehow when we set enough time aside to be, to go from wound into healing, we allow the “I am” to happen to us. The short times I have with people regularly seems to be filled more with the cyclical aspects of life’s pain rather than evolving into embracing the “I am." There is little desire to slow down and look within.
My time is nourishing to me when a person processes through issues into embodied light. I want to see people find value in sharing their happiness, pleasure, and joy. I want people to understand that being witnessed in THAT can be more terrifying and effective than any known recycling of pain and wounds. We need to be able to go into what we don’t know ourselves to be in order to be found.
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