Who am I?: Mindfulness of awareness

- One of the great philosophical and spiritual questions is, who am I, really? We usually identify as a separate little self made up of wants and fears, or successes or failures. When asked this question about our true identity, a famous meditation teacher responded by holding up a large sheet of white paper, and he drew a small V shape on it. Then he asked the students what it was a picture of and most responded that it was a flying bird. "No," he said, "it's a picture of the sky with a bird flying through it." What you pay attention to about yourself and about life determines your experience. So if you're focusing on the bird, it's like paying attention to what's obvious in the foreground of your mind, the thoughts, the sensations, the feelings. Shifting to see the sky is like opening to the context that's holding these experiences. In mindfulness practice, this larger context is often referred to as the ocean of…