Set Aside the Question: “Who Am I?”

People talk about wanting to know who they are. “I wanna know who I am. I wanna know why I’m in the world. What am I here to do?” But these things can only be answered by taking a journey such as this. You find out by taking a journey that goes beyond your thoughts and beliefs, the norms of society, the expectations of others. You leave the paved highway of life and you enter a simple path that leads into the woods.

And there are not many people there on this path. And there are not big signs telling you where to go and what’s up ahead. It’s where the pavement ends and the mystery begins.

So set aside the question about “Who am I?” Set aside the question of “Why am I in the world?” Those are questions that must be answered by reaching a certain place in life where these things can be experienced more directly. They are not simply an identification or a definition. They’re a moving experience. They’re a moving reality. And even then, to know who you are, well, eventually you have to be beyond the world to know that fully.

But who you are in the world is very important and cannot be defined by social creeds or human philosophies, things of this nature. Even the wisdom of the ancients can only point in a certain direction, and you will have to follow that direction to find out.

The New Message emphasizes the fundamental shift that has to happen in order for us to take a real journey into who we are and why we’re here. And that is a shift from the authority of our ideas, beliefs and assumptions to the authority of the Knowledge that God has put within us to guide us and direct us and to raise us up for a higher purpose.

That’s a monumental thing when you think about how much of your thinking and activity and perception are based upon your ideas, your beliefs and your assumptions, or the ideas, beliefs and assumptions of those who you admire or to whom you’ve given authority in your life. It’s an all inclusive reality. How will you break out of that?

Your mind, which is meant to be a vehicle of communication for Knowledge, has become like a prison house. And there’s a little window up there where you can see blue sky and peer out into the world.

It’s going to take a powerful force to break the chains of the past and of social conditioning and even of the current influences in the world, so many of which seek to dominate all who can respond to them.

So you’re set on a journey, not only to take you to where you need to be in life, to the life you know you must live, but you’re also beginning to undo the chains and the knots and the conundrums of your life that would otherwise prevent you from going forward, and have in the past prevented you from going forward.

So it’s more of an undoing in the beginning, particularly, than it is the acquisition of new ideas, new insights, a new philosophy of life. It’s more of an unravelling to put you into the clear to free you up—a free mind that can now begin to think original thoughts and foresee upon its own rather than simply see as it has been taught to see, or what it’s been shown to see.

This is a big thing. Let us not pretend that a makeover of our life represents a new life because there’s no new life there. You can change your circumstances. You can have a new set of clothes. You can change your talk and your walk. But the unexamined life is still within you; nothing has really changed. The things that really need to change have not yet changed.

So without Knowledge there is no real life, new life. People spend a lot of time and energy trying to build a new life if they have the ability to do that, but they haven’t gone off the super freeway yet into the simple path into the woods.