You are not who you think you are

Alejandro Jodorowsky posted a video that will stay forever on my mind. If you do not speak Spanish here are a few notes in english. It’s at 6 mins 20 in the video. There are so many teachings in this video I could do a whole series of newsletters but I will focus on this teaching today: you are not who you think you are.

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Begin by doing the exercise yourself. Answer this simple question just to yourself: who am I? Are you the words you say to introduce yourself in a business meeting? Are you your CV defining yourself by your achievements? Your achievements have no value if you change reality. For an artist value of achievements have nothing to do with business success, for a buddhist the only achievement that matter is to master your own mind. It's all about the referential system you choose.

Some notes from this powerful video.

“Who are you? Do you think you are your ego? No you aren't. We need to terminate our ego to access freedom.

Okay so who am I? I am “life” that enters the material inside a woman, my mother. I am the way my mother made me when I was born and how my father was when I was born. I was made of the way school treated me and what they put in my mind and my heart.I am what the Church put in my sexual energy and and my faith. 

This is who I am but it’s not who I am, it is what they did to me.

What should I seek? Consciousness. The problem is you need to understand yourself before you seek consciousness. You need to arrive to this living being that incarnated your body. 

How do you do this?

By elevating yourself spiritually? No. You HAVE TO FREE YOURSELF.

What do we have to free ourselves from? LANGUAGE. Whatever anyone tells you does not matter. Any teacher can talk to you about consciousness for hours but YOU ARE YOUR OWN MASTER nobody can teach you consciousness.

You need to find your limits and leave language. Language is only a description, it is limited, you are not that. 

You need to find “the thing” which is you. Where is it? Right here. “The thing” gets lost in language, get rid of it.

You need to reach a moment where you do not have any definition of yourself anymore. Send the definitions of yourself to *shit*. Destroy them. Don’t define yourself anymore. Basta.

First limit: your name.

You have been inculcated a name. A first name and a last name. And these names they put in your soul. You did not chose your name. They imposed it on you. 

First you were imposed to be a woman or a man. Then like a parrot your parents then entourage repeated your name until you repeated it yourself like a parrot. 

Life only has one name. Life. It does not have a name. If there is a God it has no name, it is just language. If it’s God it cannot have a name. In some religions they change your name. If you change your name you free yourself from your childhood name. The name you got from your father and mother is what you become. You can’t free yourself because you live with this name. It could be the name of someone dead. It could be the name of someone famous, an ancestor, someone in your family or it could be a name that is “trendy” or “fashionable” chosen by your parents. .

Free yourself from your name. Pick yourself a new name for yourself and call yourself this. Freedom comes. Everything can be transformed with creativity.”

This resonates in me so much. I am not my name (I was actually given another name in the jungle but I am not that either). I am not the profile photos of me that change often - I could be a serious business man, a pilot, a kite-surfer, a paraglider, a guitar player, a serious man, someone that likes to joke, a conference host, even playing with a Gandalf avatar, etc.

I am not the person who you think I am. I am not either the person who I think I am. I am indeed this “life” inside this body as “Jodo” explains trying to free myself from language and conditioning imposed on myself.

Jodo inspires us to always think about "being our own master", I might write about this next. You can also “transform everything” another great topic on my mind.