I am not my body. I am not my thoughts. I am something more than this.

This may not seem intuitive. But I'd like to unpack this and describe how this has been valuable for me over the last few years.

To start, let's investigate what I mean when I say "I". This is a critical element to understanding the phrase. Can you answer this question easily? "Who am I?" In some ways, this phrase is a nudge of an answer towards a certain direction.

I am not my body.

My physical body apparently has some physical limit. A boundary between atoms I claim are "mine" and atoms I claim are not mine. This is generally how people consider their body. It should be no surprise however, that who/what I am is not only my body, my cells, my atoms. I have thoughts, a consciousness, feelings. Maybe my body is a vessel.

I am not my thoughts.

It is rather easy to see your stream of thoughts as who you are, the answer to "Who am I?". It is the space we live in most of the time, consciously, I mean. Do you have control over your thoughts? Can you stop your thoughts? Spend time in silence?

For many years my thoughts told me I am an ugly asshole who didn't deserve anything in life. Do those thoughts make it true? Do you pull back on layer and say who I am is the kind of person who harbors self-loathing? What about underneath that self-loathing? What lives there?

I am something more than this.

A lot of us readily accept that there may be something deeper. A soul, spirit, energy, what have you. There appears to be some things we can change, and some things we cannot. As we are all part of this universe, we are all bound in some ways to the space, time, era we are born into. And some of those things we cannot change.

Should we be able to accept we are more than our body, more than the thoughts we have, we may be able to connect with the universe in different ways.

Our actions, our presence, our existence, ripples through the universe. My one kind deed for the day may play a game of telephone with fifty people before the day is out. If I am bigger than this body, bigger than the thoughts I carry, what more could I do?