The You of You

Where are you, and what are you doing when you feel most yourself?

Most yourself.

Right now, this is you considering You in the privacy of your own mind.

There is no ‘right answer’ to this question. What you’re looking for is the sense of yourself inside that feels accurate and good. For many of us, the clearest sense of yourself shows up in memory from when you were young and had some free time to follow your interest and curiosity. Out in the woods, playing around in a stream, climbing a tree or fire escape and watching the world go by. Or maybe holed up in a closet with a flashlight reading a good book. There you are, being You, enjoying yourself.

Another way to get to this feeling of the You of you is to sense the feeling tone beneath your own thoughts. Imagine you are leaving work, or leaving a party, and heading home: you’re back inside your own mind after being focused outside yourself on work or on other people. Like you’re coming home, glad to smell the familiar smell of home, you chuck your coat in a pile, and thump down into your favorite spot. You might also feel it when you’re tucked in beside your sweetheart on the couch. There’s a feeling tone to that space inside your own mind. A place where you recognize the tone of your own inner voice, so familiar, as familiar as breathing. You know yourself anywhere by this tone.

And you know your loved ones by their individual tones.

If you’ve had loved ones die, you have sensed the end of their life project, final and complete. But when you think of them, the very specific, yet indescribable flavor or tone of their being comes to mind, as alive as ever. You know and recognize them from even a tiny whiff of a thought, image or sound. Just like hearing one chord from a song you loved as a teenager, you recognize and remember the song, the whole arrangement, the phase of your life when you actively loved the song, and even how it touches you in this moment. This is an inner sensing of essence. The You of you is your essence, the part of you that senses essence, orients by essence, everywhere, anywhere.

So let’s go a step further: The You of you is who you are before you are born and after you die. A friend of mine, when he was about five years old, asked his mother where you go when you die. His mother asked him where he had been before he was born. He thought for a few moments and then said, “Oh. Okay.”

Where were you before you were born?

He doesn’t remember what it was that he understood in that moment, but he’s never been afraid of death. Some of us have an uninterrupted sense of this Self through life, some of us know it when we feel for it, and some of us notice it just once in a while, not quite trusting that it’s who you are, first and last. Doesn’t matter; the You of you is with you always, and is always alive.

So how does the You of you relate to pleasure?

What do you love and value in your life?

Why are you here on this planet anyway?

For what purpose, now?

Does your heart rate go up as you wonder? Does your breath contract with excitement? The You of you wants to be recognized; You want to be known as more than you think you are. You recognize how significant this life is, just as it is. What you love and value is here to meet you, as you are here to discover, create and enjoy it.

There’s Your purpose, and it’s a pleasure.