BootsnAll Travel Community

I've heard people say, "I know who I am" or "He knows who he is". What does that mean? I pray that someone will come along or be sent that can explain that to me and that I will understand what they mean.

Thanks,
Alan

knowing who you are is simply knowing the real you.

It is knowing the you inside...not the facade or image you project to others.

How do you get to know yourself?

By knowing what you like...what is important to you...what you stand for...what you live for...what you value...what your priorities are...you come to know yourself.

All the authority figuers in your life have expectations on you...but for a minute forget all thet...what do you think about...what is important to you!!!!

Look for a post called check this out...and take a few miniutes to create a list for the various topics.

To find out who you really are...the first step starts by answering a question...Do you truly want to know who you really are...warts and all?

If the answer is yes...then you are good to go and are already on the way to finding out!

Keep us posted on what you find!

I think nowadays the vast majority of people get washed away with the whole ´what do people (or society) expect of me´ and then trying to conform to that instead of who they want to be or what do they want to do. It´s important to establish this. Should I be married by now, where are the kids, is my job secure. Ask simple questions of yourself like ´Am I happy´? Is this the right choice for me ? is this what I want? and so on. Knowing who you are is difficult enough so start with knowing what you don´t want and work backwards. Works for me.

elv

I think Elvie makes a good point. At least in my experience, it has only been quite recently that I've stopped caring so much what other people think of me. I used to spend quite a lot of time trying to figure out what would please others the most, or make others happy, or make things easier on others (in turn making things harder on myself), and the whole time I never really addressed my own wants or needs, or asserted myself and my opinions as equally valid as anyone elses. So...it's only recently that I've really started to gain insight into the 'who am I' question, and I feel like I've learned a lot more about myself in the past year than I did the first 26 yrs of my life -- because I'm slowly going away from pleasing others, to pleasing myself. I don't think this equates to selfishness necessarily -- I think it's important to find a balance somehow, between maintaining true to yourself, and being kind and respectful to others, and meeting people halfway.

oldhippy, I understand what you are saying about knowing the difference (if there is one) between what you show others and what you are. Many times I have introspected and noticed different things about myself, so I guess I do know myself somewhat. But every now and then I have a sort of panic attack and I feel like I don't know who I am.

elvie, I like that advice about knowing what you don't like to discover what you do. I just recently read about that in a book series called Conversations With God.

eowyn218, that balancing part is very difficult (obviously) because people that are close to you see that side you've projected and the real you might be very different. If you start being the real you they might not be able to deal with it very well.

I think that may be why people feel like they were different people when they were kids. Back then they were acting like others wanted them to and as they became adults they began acting like they wanted to be.

Thank you everyone for your advice.
Alan

knowing who you are... is a tricky thing, because, how can you not? you are who you are, and that is exactly who you are. "he knows who he is" is generally told by people that dont exactly know what they are talking about, and at the same time they do. Usually what is meant is that they have confidence in themselves and what they do... "getting to know yourself" is, as said, tricky. If you are wanting to know yourself, you must look at yourself.

But then who is the one looking in?

quote:

I think that may be why people feel like they were different people when they were kids. Back then they were acting like others wanted them to and as they became adults they began acting like they wanted to be.

i am of the belief that it is the other way around. children act so freely and so without care (unless you are talking about the whole teenage thing!). as a general adult, we will have honed our "personality" down to a fine edge, where everything is decided before we even get the choice.

YOU are everything, and everything is YOU. YOU are not exclusively the body you reside in, nor the abstractions that result of that body (personality, ego). these forms are like the fingers on our own bodies to the universe. except, the fingers do not preach seperation. and just like the finger is without a doubt, part of you, your body and mind are inseperable from the universe (despite perception).

I think I know who I am more than I ever did, each and every day. I think it means knowing you have flaws and trying to work through them and when you hear criticism about yourself, you realize it is true.

A side note: I feel when I am traveling, I am more myself than ever and feel like traveling is how I truly am in touch with myself.

Here is one step:

www.truemirror.com

A Buddhist teacher I once spent a year with put it this way: "if you can lay it down, it's not you." That includes the body, all opinions, all forms of identity, all claims such as "I'm the kind of person who....". All of that is subject to change as a result of stroke, cataclysm, accident, or death. Who we are, according to that teacher, is only knowable through years of meditation and "laying down" of all illusions. There is an essence, as Gerard Manley Hopkins says, "deep down things." In years and years of meditation through many lifetimes (Joko Beck suggests 10,000 years for a start) we begin to know that essence and to know that it has no boundaries. It is the ground of awareness itself. But what IS it? That teacher I was working with later added, "If you begin the sentence with 'I' then that's not the answer." She's a Zen teacher, and Zen loves puzzles. She keeps on asking her students, "Who are you?" and whatever they say, she tells them they don't have it yet; they should meditate more. When it comes to this question, like Sinahptik, I only know that I don't know. But here near the end of this particular life of more nearly fifty years of meditation, some qualities of that essence begin to seem apparent (though this could be illusion). The seeming: it's lovable; it bumbles around doing too much, making mistakes, trying to be helpful, being a fool. That manifests, for example, when I, yes 'I', write emails to BnA when 'I' should be preparing final exams for this semester. The essence has a greed for beauty, discovery, surprises; it says yes. It is enthusiastic, in the original meaning of that: filled with divine energy, whatever divine means. It holds the Great Compassion, a great sad tenderness, at its heart. It laughs: at its fool self and at the world. It is an essence, in other words, just like yours.

Grannygold,

"I'll burn the books I carry in my bag,
but how can I forget the verses written in my gut?"
-Ikkyu

Why do you still quote Zen teachers? : )
Love. Itchysoles

Ikkyu is one of my favorites, but I had not come across this verse. Thank you! Why do I still quote Zen teachers? Why not? (A bow back.)

<<I feel when I am traveling, I am more myself than ever and feel like traveling is how I truly am in touch with myself.>>

YES-good read on yourself, grasshopper! Me, too.

Here is the complete verse:

Under the trees, among th rocks,
a thatched hut;
verses and sacred commentaries live
there together.
I'll burn the books I carry in my bag,
but how can I forget the verses written
in my gut?

From
The Little Zen Calendar, September 25, 2001 : )

I wish I'd had that poem to show to my Vietnamese Zen teacher when she instructed us to get rid of all our books, journals, and letters. I followed her instruction: 104 volumes of journals into the dumpster, bins and bins of books toted off to charities and used bookstores, all the letters (from the days when people still wrote letters) in the dumpster. For the most part, it was a great relief to be freed of the weight of possessions, but there are many, many volumes still cherished in my memory. Memory, like everything else, is transitory, but I confess to the secret pleasure of reading and re-reading the verses written in my gut. Thank you, and Ikkyu, for the reminder.

This non-Buddhist, somewhat Buddhist, bows gently to you in the breeze.
My current favorite "Zen" quote:
"cucumber unaccountably cucumbering" - Paul Reps