Who am I

A simple enough question but before we attempt to answer this question, it would help to commence on a personal voyage of self-discovery to find acceptable answers to the following questions.

What is the difference between "Living" and "Non-Living"?

What is the real significance behind using the words "I" and "My"?

When we refer to ourselves as "Human Beings", who is really being "Human"?

When we are alive, we are aware of our existence. We have thoughts that are based upon our unique feelings and emotions.

Each of us, even with a family, develops unique personalities and our judgments or responses to events are influenced by our different desires, experiences and memory of past events.

When we die, we stop displaying feelings, emotions or personality because we would have left the body.

The difference between the Living and Non-Living is the existence of the spiritual soul that manages the physical body from birth to death. The soul expresses itself via the five senses of the physical body. Without the soul, the physical body cannot express itself nor can it maintain itself. The body that was created from "dust" will return to "dust".

The reflection we see in a mirror is that of our physical body that gradually ages. Our soul is "seen" through our personality. We may look "Old" in a mirror but we can feel and behave like a child.

All souls are the same. Though we may inherit a male or female body, the soul is sexless. Where the soul inherits the body determines the type of body, colour, language, nationality, religion and culture because the body must suit the environment in which it is created.

The soul has to be eternal because being a tiny point of energy, it is neither created nor destroyed. Just as the owner of a car will acquire a new car when the old car become unsuitable for it's intended purpose, the soul leaves the old, diseased or injured body to repeat the birth-growth-death cycle in a new human body, with the benefit of skills and experiences acquired in the previous birth-growth-death cycle deeply ingrained in its sub-conscious mind.

The soul is our mind that is not constrained by time or distance. Within a second, our mind can race back to our youth or visit any place our thoughts may pull us towards.

Souls cannot be seen. The can only be experienced. Our understanding of the soul is limited because the souls, being spiritual, cannot be explained or understood with our knowledge of the physical laws of science.

The soul or mind is similar to the tiny microprocessor of a computer system that obtains information from input devices like the keyboard, processes the information and communicates via its output devices such as the monitor and printer. The microprocessor's, RAM and ROM memory are similar to the soul's conscious and sub-conscious memory respectively.

Like the microprocessor, the soul obtains information via the body's sense organs ( input devices ), processes them with memory of past experiences in its conscious and sub-conscious mind and communicates with the outside world via one or more of the body's organs ( output devices ).

For example, when something "Nice" is seen, heard, smelt, tasted or felt, the signals (inputs) are processed as "Pleasing and positive" to create the positive responses of a smile or laughter. The overall response is one of attraction rather than repulsion to be repeated rather than avoided.

The soul, a tiny point of energy, functions on three levels that may be broadly categorised as the Mind, Intellect and Impressions.

The function of the "Mind" is to imagine, think and form thoughts based on emotions, desires and sensations. Happiness and sadness are created and experienced by the mind but displayed by the physical organs of our body.

The function of the "Intellect" is to access the thoughts created in our minds. It has the capacity to reason, memorise, discriminate and make decisions. It is our conscience that discriminates between right and wrong actions.

The "Impressions" are the memory of actions that become ingrained in the soul. The actions, especially when repeated, become habits, tendencies, emotions, temperaments and general personality traits.

There is a cyclic pattern in that the mind's thoughts are put into action by the intellect to create impressions or "Memory" of past actions. Repeated actions, especially those of a negative nature, create habits and addictions when our mind's thoughts are acted upon without being judged by the intellect.

Smoking, consuming alcohol and indulging in sex lust are actions that we enter into in search of happiness and fulfilment. But the happiness created is just an illusion because either the senses are temporarily incapacitated or the happiness cannot be sustained. We suffer the negative consequences of addiction and dependency due to the need for increasingly more stimulants and efforts to create decreasing levels of "Temporary Happiness".

When we perform actions without thinking we, the souls, become slaves to our senses. Imagine an employer or manager losing control over their staff. This is the state of an addict or dependent when they lose control over their own senses.

Addiction and dependency are not just to smoking, consuming alcohol or indulging in sex lust. Laziness is an addiction just as overeating. Expectation from others is a dependency. Almost anything that we "Want or Desire" rather than "Need" is a form of addiction.

Now, we have the answers to the second and third questions.

The word "I" is used to refer to the experiences and wishes of the soul with statements such as "I am … ", "I love … " and "I hope … ".

The word "My" is used to by the soul to refer its physical body, processions and activities with statements such as "My hand …", "My car …" and "My job …".

When we refer to ourselves as "Human beings", we imply that we, the souls, are being "Human" whilst in the physical "Human" body.

The advantage of knowing "Who am I?" is to realise and use the powerful spiritual energy that is within our body.

With our intellect awakened:

We can focus our power of judgement to become more selective and choose only those thoughts that will lead us to experience permanent happiness and contentment. Addiction to temporary happiness can be avoided. Bad habits can be replaced with good habits we can be proud of.We can be more peaceful and deliberate rather than tense and anxious. We come to realise that happiness is a state of mind that is created by ourselves. Likewise, we can avoid unhappiness or the experience of sorrow because we do not need to experience negative feelings.

We can and should be in control over our body senses!

With the realisation that we are peaceful souls, we can begin to see others as equals to establish a relationship of pure love and harmony. We can avoid personality clashes and discriminations based on sex, type of body, colour, language, nationality, religion, culture and physical disabilities.

Most of our activities such as eating, sitting and sleeping are all done for the health of our physical bodies. What we fail to do is address the need for peace and happiness of the real us, the soul within the body.

Meditation is the technique to rest our mind and fine-tune our intellect for peace of mind.