Please Tell Me Who I Am

The logical song by Supertramp (1979) asked some very important existential questions.

When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful
A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical
And all the birds in the trees, well they'd be singing so happily
Oh joyfully, playfully watching me

1. What's The True Self?

You understand what change is but what your mind can't comprehend is changelessness.

The True Self doesn't share the ego's false presence of guilt, fear, sin, and separation.

The True Self share's the Holy Spirit's(being in your right mind) presence of peace and love.

You'll know when you meet your True Self because the tension, defensiveness, obsessiveness, fear, judgment, criticism, specialness, and anxiety about your miserable past disappear.

The True Self finds itself choosing love more and fear less.

The True Self becomes oblivious to all of the attack thoughts that appear to be coming from the world.

The True Self perceives everything (this is a world of perception, not of knowledge) as an expression of love or a call for love.

The way I am towards you, the way that I feel towards you, and the way I behave towards you are not changed by what you do. This is the manner in which the True Self shows up in the world.

Whether you're expressing love or calling for love by being hateful, mean, angry, or particularly cruel makes no difference to the True Self.

The True Self sees any attack as a disguised form of fear and a call for love. There's no change in the True Self because it has chosen to dwell in the reflection of love, not fear.

The True Self may still respond to attack thoughts or behavior but they do so with love.

The True Self's oneness is unaffected by any silly little thoughts that may occur in the world of form.

You have the melody of the True Self within your mind and you can spin the record anytime you wish.

2. From childhood innocence to adult cynicism.

Before an egg and sperm unite to form a human being they are already imprinted with the attitudes of the mother and father.

As the sperm travels through the male's reproductive system they drop off their loads and acquire non-genetic cargo that fundamentally alters their sperm even before ejaculation.

Eat poorly, and your body will remember and possibly pass the consequences onto your kids according to science.

As egg and sperm unite to form an embryo is formed and everything is being downloaded.

At birth, the average baby's brain is about a quarter of the size of the average adult brain.

Incredibly, it doubles in size in the first year. It keeps growing to about 80% of adult size by age 3 and 90% – nearly full-grown – by age 5.

If a baby's brain had the ability to think in the way that an adult thinks, it would have identical thought patterns to its parents because its brain is wired just like its parents. The fruit doesn't fall far from the tree.

When a baby is born it isn't born with a blank slate but the baby's brain is much like a computer that you buy at Best Buy that comes preloaded with utilities, firewalls, applications, multimedia, Internet, security, and productivity software.

You probably haven't heard of anyone purchasing a computer that is completely empty.

Some of the preloaded programming that resides in the subconscious mind of a baby you're probably glad it's already there. Functions like breathing, salivation, swallowing, defecation, urination, and a beating heart.

Once the baby arrives in the world a lot of bad programming, unfortunately, starts to make its way into the undeveloped mind of the child. This is the human condition and no one escapes this unfortunate programming.

The development and maturation of the prefrontal cortex occur primarily during adolescence and is fully accomplished at the age of 25 years.

The frontal lobe of the brain is primarily responsible for voluntary movement, expressive language, and managing higher-level executive functions. This is the decision-making, creative, insightful, executive, and filtering part of the brain.

Everything in the baby's environment is being downloaded into the subconscious mind at a rate that boggles the mind, 20 million units of information per second according to neuroscientists. However, the child's conscious mind can only process about 40 units of information per second.

Can you imagine all the stuff (that you're not even aware of) that resides in your subconscious mind?

I'm a year old and I've just exhibited behavior that my mother doesn't approve of and she says to me, "you're a bad boy and I'm going to leave you here when I go to the store if you don't behave."

My undeveloped brain doesn't know how to distinguish between the behavior and who I am. I'm not able to figure out that my mom just had a tough day and I'm not a bad boy.

What is in fact a lie (bad boy) is accepted as the truth. The filtering part of the brain is not operative and if my mother tells me I'm a bad boy everything that's associated with that concept is laid down as part of my fundamental programming. It's no longer just a belief but the truth about me.

All I see is the boy and the behavior as being one and the same.

5-year old: 20,000,000 bits of information per second x 5 years

Can you imagine all the stuff that is driving this kid's behavior that is unhelpful and untrue?

It's not whether the information the child received during those formative years is right/wrong, good/bad - the only thing that matters is if the information is true or untrue. Is what the child believes helpful or unhelpful? Is the information accurate or inaccurate?

Is it true? That you're a bad boy. The rants of a frustrated parent have nothing to do with the truth of you or the truth of me.

Is it true? That you have book sense but no common sense.

Is it true? That you're a sinner.

By the time you're 5 years old, you've developed a rat's nest of beliefs about yourself that are simply not true.

This is how you transform from an innocent child to adult cynicism by believing a bunch of lies.

The 5-year-old will undoubtedly create a world that reflects these untruths back to him in the world of form.

There isn't one person reading this who, under the proper circumstances, would not admit they feel inadequate, unloved, unworthy, they're not good enough, and they don't quite measure up regardless of how hard they try. They just can't seem to make it.

The Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use but even though we have a lot of words to choose from there are a few words that appear quite often in our conversations.

Unworthy, undeserving, inadequate, not good enough, not deserving, and no good.

Once the programming is in place, the coping strategies must now be developed. The unfortunate part about it all is that most people don't even know what the underlying cause is.

They don't realize all the anger and rage is based on a lie.

How can you expect to solve a problem when you don't even know what the real problem is?

Fear, attack, envy, guilt, and hatred aren't effective coping strategies but the majority of the world would argue this point. Go figure.




3. Please tell me what I am.

You are complete, healed, and whole.

You are a reflection of love.

You are without sin and pure innocence.

You are brilliant beyond your wildest imagination.

You have eternal life.

You are a shining reflection of God's love

You are whole, holy, healthy, and healed.

4. You know how to function outwardly but do you know how to function inwardly?

If fear, hatred, and anger reside in your heart you will see a reflection of an angry and fearful world.

You look outwardly to see what the world can give but you don't look inwardly to see the treasures you already have that money cannot buy.

You have zero control over what the world does but you have total control over how you think. It's an even playing field.

You erroneously see the world as being the cause and what occurs in your life as being the effect.

Until you go within, you'll go without. - Without any peace of mind. To you, the world will appear to be just one damn thing after another.