„Who am I really?!“ A question that many people ask themselves more than once in the course of their lives. A question that – as it then turns out – cannot be answered so quickly. Why not? Because the answer to this question is not conceivable or sayable. Because the answer to this question can only be experienced. If it is only experiential, then we don’t know who we really are until we really are who we really are. And since we cannot think it, we have no conception of this „real being.“ But since our mind needs an idea, we evade. And since these evasions remain just in the thinkable, they are not so different from our previous being – which somehow appears to us as not real. We notice this, of course. And we pull our hair out at the following question: „How do I get there? To my real being. Whatever that is.“
Since we cannot think it, we cannot consciously achieve it. That is also good so. Our mind would only be tempted again to form this being according to its (old known) ideas and drawers and thus to distort it. We can only let this being come. By itself. Let it come into being. By itself. Prepare the way for it and see who comes to us on this way. Our real being is not related to the man-made social, moral, family or religious norms that apply to us. These norms are a thick layer around us that determine our actions. Which determine our thinking. And that determine our perceptions. They determine: This works. This is not possible (for you). This is allowed (for you). This is not. To think this is right. It is not. – Our being is standardized. Standardized according to the permitted and not permitted views that happen to be valid here and now. A hundred years earlier or later or 1000 kilometers more to the east or west these views already look completely different again. They are ultimately zeitgeist and arbitrary. They are man-made opinion and nothing eternal.
In order to recognize our true self (and this is only possible by becoming this true self), we must be prepared to give up everything that keeps us in this normative envelope. We must be ready to give up everything that makes us a recognized or at least tolerated being, because we function according to valid norms.
This readiness means in the end that I am ready to endure for my actions and for my existence also social contempt, if my true existence, which has come to me on the way, which I have prepared. I must be ready in the extreme to renounce everything that is desired and positively sanctioned according to man-made (local, arbitrary) norms. I must be ready to let my existence breathe freely without the social directing and enveloping layers. – – I wrote „in the extreme“ very deliberately. It does not have to be that on arrival of the true self the development occurs in this extreme. Only: The very general readiness for it must be present. That belongs to the preparation of the way.
How do I prepare the way further? How do I let the real me come to me? When we were children, we knew who we were. We knew it because there was nothing else for us to „know“ yet. The world was not yet divided into many views and opinions for us. And since the development of the whole mankind is amazingly obviously like the development of the individual human being, I come back to our ancestors who lived in the childhood of mankind.
Our exemplary ancestor lived in a family group or clan of perhaps five to ten people. The views of these five to ten people, were the only views that exerted influence on him outside of himself. We can assume that these views were almost completely known to him after a certain life span. Since our exemplary ancestor lived in the same environment as the five to ten persons of his clan and was exposed to the same external impressions, it can be assumed that his and their views differed from each other only in a very small percentage anyway and were also not particularly extensive due to the few distractions. So they had very few and then very similar views. Added to these personal views was a factual knowledge conditioned by everyday interaction with the surrounding creation. Something like, „Wet stones with leaves on them are slippery. – This root is edible. – If this animal looks like this, run as fast as you can!“
Our ancestor was thus influenced by a consensus valid among six to 11 people, based predominantly on experience with the uninfluenced environment, and perhaps another two dozen individual opinions with whose pros or cons he could argue. That was it. The rest of his existence was himself. And since with the above aspects acting on him everything what would have been to discuss for him was covered, this his remaining – true – existence was beyond the discussable material being. He was simply this existence. Not discussable. Not judgeable. Not divisible into for and against.
– Now we look at our existence. Our interaction with the flow of the natural environment is as good as zero. Except perhaps for walking, hiking or carving where the focus is on clothes, fitness, boredom, etc. Nature is predominantly a backdrop for fruitless attempts to realize the complicated artificial self of the lonely human being separated from it. There is no direct and simple kind of experience for us in the quality that our in flux ancestor had. Instead, our ability to make decisions and our power to judge the world is based on norms which often already have a global character and which neither spatially, nor by their dimensions, nor by the reasons for their establishment can be brought by us into any manageable connection with our personal existence. In addition, we are still overloaded with the opinions and views of thousands and thousands of restless spirits who offer us their views via the Internet, television, radio, music and books as aspects of our existence to be considered – I must unfortunately count myself among them – and which we in our helplessness also still include in the construct of our existence. For sure is for sure. One does not want to overlook anything. There is not much space and time left for anything else.
How then do I prepare the way? How do I let the real me come to me? I think the answer can be guessed. By creating space and time for myself. By getting the restless spirits out of my life – at least for a certain time. Or even permanently. – By banishing them. By reducing myself again to the consensus of my clan, my closest environment, as the smallest unit. By reducing the rules that apply to me to a minimum. To a minimum that enables me to live as a socially interacting being in my environment, but that remains manageable and comprehensible for me. Then capacities are free again, which allow me to receive my true self. And just as this receiving is a purely inner process, so too is the reduction an inner process. Reduction does not mean resistance or conflict. It does not mean detachment and confrontation. This would only mean that one insists on one’s outer ego and thus remains only in the struggle with the circumstances – with the things. In this way, one cannot receive anything true.
„Preparing the way“ is done gently and with love. Discarding the superfluous confusing norms, reducing the outside influences means liberation. Liberation means tranquility. Calmness means serenity. Serenity means generosity. So we certainly walk the path with our fellow human beings. But we do it differently and above all always with love.
And in this quiet stride, there it is all at once. At first we don’t even notice it, but then something emerges from the blind spot next to us. We look to the side. And then we see it: our true self. It has been with us for a long time. Always one step behind us and unnoticed. Now that we are walking and no longer running, it catches up. And it now walks beside us. In the same step. In the same rhythm we now stride through our being. Brothers and sisters who have finally found each other again. Powerful and with our heads held high, we gently walk together – as one – through time.