Who am I?

What if for a moment I could wedge out of my identity, stepping back from it and leaving it behind like a coat of flesh? Each step back I hold one of the attributes that define me as "me" and let it flow back to the flesh coat that was my body.

The second step back, I take my belief system, look at it from different angles and see that it is made of acquired ideas, my expectations, my experiences and my speculations on what the world is supposed to look like. Core beliefs are examined one by one down to their roots, their truth thoroughly investigated and ultimately released to flow back to the body.

I take a third step back and hold out my memories, from the earliest on to the last one. They all join into a ball of light and shadows, snapshots of my life fading in and out of existence. Slowly I detach from the ball and as before, I let it flow back to the body coat. What is left?

I take the fourth step back and imagine another ball of light. This ball contains my qualities, all those conditions that I feel belong to me: trustworthiness, honesty, kindness, creativity, a sense of adventure and joy, but also intolerance, fear, sadness, judgement, indifference and cynicism. I hold this ball in my hands in front of me and look at it. There are spikes of different colors dashing out from the ball, some have soothing colors, some others look more agitated and uneasy. But I stroke them all, giving them my love and forgiveness. Those qualities, the good ones and bad ones are no longer mine, so I let them free to flow back to the flesh coat.

What is left now? There is still something left, isn’t there? But what is it? I can’t define it? I can’t give it a name nor a definition. I can’t, yet I, as the observer of the flesh coat and the light balls, I’m still here observing. But who is really observing?

If my friend were to do the same experiment, he would be another identity-less observer. If I as the observer, have let go of my identity, where do I start and where do I finish? The same goes for my friend. We are 2 unlimited, identity-less dots of consciousness floating in nothingness. But then, if there is no limit to my consciousness, that means that my friend's dot and my own dot of consciousness are not really separated, which in other words means we are ONE.

The implications of this train of thought are truly profound and left me wondering about the nature of the ultimate reality, which for me is the One Divine Consciousness that generates and includes all there is.