I Am Not Me

It was one of those quintessential California experiences that abound in the small town closest to where I’m living.

Just as I was digesting the idea of not being me, with all of its ramifications, I looked up and through the window that was behind the informant of my non-identity, I saw two llamas being led down the sidewalk outside the bookstore where my enlightenment was taking place. Somehow they seemed to fit. No one was acting oddly at seeing llamas being led as if they were Great Danes. Must be another form of California normal.

So, if I am not me, who am I? I suggest that you give this some thought because in addition to my not being me, you are not you either. According to the speaker of last night, none of us is who we thought we were–that is, ourselves. We all are, he said, ‘awareness.’ Now that’s a bit vague for me–I think there must be more to it.

But let’s go along with this premise. If I am not me, but just an amorphous blob of awareness (this body to which my awareness is attached is irrelevant), what can I then do with that? Or maybe I’m not supposed to do anything but just ‘be.’ I think that was part of the deal being outlined last night.

So, I am a blob of awareness that just is. I’m sorry, but what good is that? I think the doing of anything is precluded from any possibility, so all I can do is be aware? Of what exactly? Sounds like Paris Hilton’s prison sentence.

More of last night’s message was to be “in the flow”…but how can I do that if I’m only supposed to be aware? Maybe the ‘awareness’ that was formerly known as ‘me,’ is supposed to just be carried along with the current or tide–and by being aware I’ll be able to tell which of those it is that is propelling me along. Is that useful? Is any of this useful? It sounds dangerous.

Maybe you have to be born Californian to really get any of this. But, no, the one offering up this identity crisis was not even born in the US, so we can’t blame it all on California. After moving to this particular corner of the northern wine country, I discovered that it is a hotspot for many of my era, if not of my type.

One of the first things I noticed about my new community is that many of the inhabitants looked very familiar…long flowing skirts on the women, and long flowing hair on both women and men. Only thing looking unfamiliar was the color of the flowing hair–all shades of gray. If you ever wondered where all the hippies went, I have your answer.

So, lots of things here fit in with that 60s’ hippie culture. If someone dropped you–or rather, your awareness–onto the main street of this town where tie dye, incense, and apparently llamas, have never gone out of style, you would likely think you had been spirited back to the glory days of flower children and free love. And that makes me think, maybe all that free love is the old way of ‘being in the flow’…maybe I’m beginning to catch on, however slowly, after all.

Now, if only the flowing haired hippies would just use some hair color and camouflage all that gray, maybe I could delude my awareness into thinking (if it were able to think, which I think I learned last night was not the case) that it’s a whole lot younger than it thought it was–at least back when my awareness was known as me.