Who am I?
I am my body. I am fat. I am thin. I am short. I am tall. I am athletic. I am attractive. I am ugly. I am clumsy. Is this who I am?
I am my thoughts. I am analytical. I am methodical. I am spontaneous. I am stupid. I am artistic. I am a deep thinker. I am musical. I am a writer. I am a planner. I am an administrator. I am mechanical. I am technical. I am not confident. I am my nationality. I am my community. I am a leader. I am a follower. Is this who I am?
I am my experience of life up to this point. I am a parent. I am my job. I am a mess. I am single. I am married. I am divorced. I wish my life was different. I am not happy. I love my life. I am bored.
I am. What do I mean I am? I am more than my body, more than my thoughts, more than my experiences. I am alive. I am. That is it. God said I am who I am. Jesus said I am.
Why can’t I be just I am? I am a human being. I express my humanity when I love God, myself and others. I express my humanity when I be all that I can be and live my life to the full.
Why can’t I just enjoy being a human BEING. I don’t need to define myself as my body or my thoughts or my experiences. I just am I am and I am going to enjoy and relish this existence of BEING that God has given me.
Jesus said we need to lose ourselves to find ourselves. I choose to lose all of these other identities and just be I am.
Go Further:
Intimacy with God by Thomas Keating
Christopher Heuertz, The Sacred Enneagram: Finding Your Unique Path to Spiritual Growth
Paul R Smith, Is Your God Big Enough? Close Enough? You Enough?: Jesus and the Three Faces of God
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Contemplative Discernment by Fr. Carl Arico, Pamela Begeman, Gail Fitzpatrick-Hopler: A contemplative practice of discernment is not about decision-making, although this may be an eventual outcome. Rather, contemplative discernment is receptive in nature, a process of opening to receive clues about who we are in God. We focus on ever-deepening levels of relationship and trust in God’s will for us. We learn how to listen deeply to our motivations and sort through and purify any mixed motivations. As this relationship deepens, we learn to allow the love of God to motivate our actions and manifest through us. We discover what it means to truly pray “not my will, but Thy will.”
Embracing Living: The Welcoming Prayer by Contemplative Outreach, Mary Dwyer, Therese Saulnier, Cherry Haisten, Jim McElroy: The Welcoming Prayer is a method of consenting to God’s presence and action in our physical and emotional reactions to events and situations in daily life. If Centering Prayer (or another daily prayer) is practiced for one hour of the day, the Welcoming Prayer is for the other 23 hours. It is a “letting go” in the present moment, in the midst of the activity of ordinary life.
Practicing the Presence of God by Pamela Begeman, Mary Ann Brussat, Gail Fitzpatrick-Hopler, David Frenette: We live in a world of complexity, fragmentation, noise, and haste. We sometimes find ourselves overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of tasks, appointments, and commitments facing us. How can we experience God in the midst of the busyness, responsibilities, and activities of our daily lives? By practice. By living more in the present moment. By practicing the presence of God in the present moment.
Contemplative Light offers courses on contemplative practices (Christian Meditation, Centering Prayer, The Examen, Lectio Divina, The Jesus Prayer), the Christian mystics (ancient and current) and spiritual writing. Peruse their wonderful offerings.