The CwG Reader

#16
MARCH 28
Neale Donald Walsch through the years has given hundreds of talks and written scores of articles
revolving around the messages he received in his Conversations with God. Now, every seven
days, we will present in this space a transcript or reprint of those presentations. We invite you to
Copy and Save each one of them, creating a personal a collection of contemporary and uplifting
spiritual thought which you may reference at any time. We hope you will find this a constant
source of insight and inspiration.

This week’s offering: Reflections on the question “Who am I?” in an essay written just
before Spring of 2005.

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(Who am I?
an essay
ndw
March 6, 2005)

And so, it all turns out to be very simple. Who am I? What am I doing here? When
am I going to do it? Where am I going? Why?
These are life’s Essential Questions. Who, what, when, where, and why?
In my own version I like to expand the fourth question to: Where am I going, and
who is going with me?
In the next several installments of this series, we’ll take a look at all of these
questions, and more. Let’s take a look at the first of them now.
There is scarcely a person on this planet who has not asked of him- or herself at least
once in their lifetime: Who am I? I’ve asked it over and over since I was seven. I
remember thinking about it many nights in my childhood bedroom. And I recall lying on
my back on the second-story porch off of that bedroom, gazing at the stars, wondering
about my place in All Of It.
I felt so small then. Even now I feel small when looking at the cosmos. Who
doesn’t? But now the feeling is different. I may feel small, but I don’t feel separate. I
don’t feel apart from the way I did then.
A lot of things have changed since the days of my most earnest questioning. I don’t
ask those kinds of questions anymore. Today, I ask other questions. How can I give to
others what I have been given? What would it take for all of us to experience the End of
Separation? What role can I play in bringing that about?
My questioning about much of life ended when my conversations with God began.
Now all I want to know is how I can share with others the answers I have received in a
way that they will “get” them. I would like to change the world’s ideas about Life, and
about who we are. And I would like to change the world’s ideas about God.
What a shift in my reality! Even a few years ago I would not have thought of such a
thing. Now I can hardly keep my mind off of it! I guess that’s how it is when you’re given
an enormous treasure. All you want to do is share it.
The thing is, I see suffering all over the place, and I know that hardly any of it is
necessary. None of it is necessary, in fact, but I understand that I and others would have
to reach an extraordinarily high level of consciousness to experience that. But we do not
have to reach such a level to get to the point were most of life’s sufferings become a thing
of the past. That state of being is within reach of all of us. All we have to do is step into
Who We Really Are.
So the question Who am I? is not an idle one. How you answer the question will
determine how you live the rest of your life. It will determine the quality of your life.
Here’s the answer I have found: I am not who I thought I was. I am not my body. My
body is mine, not me. The “me” that I am lives with my body, and uses my body as a
tool. The “me” that I am lives not even inside my body, but surrounds my body, encasing
it.
This allows the MeThatIAm to look with my “eyeless eyes” at my own body, at my
own self, and actually begin to detach from its experience. Or, to put this more
accurately, to have the experience, but to have a different experience of the experience.
This is what I call the Creative, rather than the Reactive, experience. In truth, I
should be able to detach from the reactive experience of my own body almost as easily as
I am able to detach from the reactive experience of yours. In actuality, I am not there yet
—but some days and some moments I feel am very close.
When your body reacts to something—say, a pain, or a feeling of sadness—my body
cannot have that same reactive experience. I can imagine the experience that you are
having, and I can create something in my body that is perhaps very similar, but I cannot
have the same reactive experience that you are having. You can tell me all you want
about how you are suffering with the headache you are having, and I cannot suffer it. You
can describe in minute detail all the sadness you are feeling, and I cannot feel it. I can feel
my own sadness at the sadness that you are feeling, but I cannot feel yours.
You do not have to feel yours, either. Neither do you have to suffer. That is the
extraordinary insight that came to me with the news of who I am. The truth is, my body’s
responses to the events it is experiencing are reactive because I allow them to be.
Sometimes, when I stand by in consciousness and “watch” my body react in certain ways
to certain circumstance or events, I step in there and literally change my mind about how
I want to experience that. In that moment I become a creator rather than a reactor. In that
moment I become Who I Really Am.
Who IS this that is changing my mind? That is the question that every thinking
person must ask. I thought I was my mind. Now here “I” am, changing it! Who is the “I”
that is changing the “me” that I am experiencing?
Asking this question gets us very close to the Prime Inquiry—and the Prime Answer.
 You are the Umoved Mover. You are the Unwatched Watcher. You are the One Who
Has Made You the Way You Are—and the One who will continue to make you the way
you are every single moment of your life—both in your present body, and beyond.
You are YOU, and your body is not YOU. Nor, for that matter, is your mind,
because it is YOU who are changing your mind! So this YOU that you are exists outside
of “you.” It exists outside of your body, and it exists outside of your mind. The
YouThatYouAre is pure consciousness. It is awareness. You are a bundle of awareness.
A gathering of energy that is aware of Itself.
So that’s the news you can take from all this. The real YOU is out of your mind!
Who You Are is not who you may have thought you were. And Who You Are is
separate from nothing.
Hugs and love….Neale.