hink about yourself for just a moment.

How would you describe yourself?

When you meet people, what do you typically tell them?

Do you start your chat by telling them what you do for a living? Do you mention your relationship status? Do you share your favorite recreational activities?

And if you were to talk longer, seriously getting to know them, what else would you say? How much deeper would you go?

How about with your friends? And the people with whom you have known the longest? Like family. Your best friend forever. How would you describe yourself to these people?

Now imagine for a moment that you’re alone in a room.

Just you by yourself.

Start filling in the blanks about what you know about yourself.

Things that no one else could possibly know.

Start to collect all of your traits and characteristics, adjectives and roles, identities and personas.

Imagine that I’m there in the room with you to the side, adding what you’re calling out to a giant whiteboard.

I’m scribing neatly at first, with columns and rows. But soon I’m adding words and phrases into any available space I can find. I’m creating half-rows and half-columns with smaller and smaller writing.

Notice me running out of room quickly!

There’s your name, your bad habits, your saving graces, your social security number, your embarrassing secrets, your proud moments, your friends, your talents, your obsessions, your fears, your insecurities, your job title, your preferred foods, your hobbies, your enemies, your favorite books, your awards, your enthusiasm for “these activities” and your dislike for “those activities”…

They’re all you!

Or are they?

Maybe some of those things are what you decided to believe, despite all provable evidence to the contrary. Perhaps you’ve held onto an idea of yourself since kindergarten when someone said something about you. Maybe you were given this identity against your will when you went for that diagnosis. Perhaps you know others who are a certain way MORE than you are (and certainly LESS than you too). Maybe you got so accustomed to these ways of being and so comfortable with them and received so much attention for them that you didn’t bother looking any further for something different.

Maybe you’re panicking a little right now as you watch me take a big ol’ whiteboard eraser to this jumbled up, tangled up mess that’s “you” and start wiping the board clean.

Are you screaming, “No! STOP! That’s ME!”?

As the last few remnants of black ink vanish and the whiteboard space regains dominance again, perhaps you’re relaxing a little. Maybe your shoulders have dropped and fallen back. Or your jaw has gotten less clenched. And the tightness in your gut has released.

Maybe you’re breathing a tiny bit easier now seeing NOTHING on the board.

“Ahhhh…”

Maybe the clean, open space is the TRUTH about you.

The truth that nothing was ever nailed down, solid, permanent, real, indelible, fixed or forever about you.

That the only REAL TRUTH right now is what you can see in front of you.

The view before you.

The step you can take directly ahead of you.

That opens up to the next view.

And then from there, more steps that open up to more views.

More steps. More views.

Infinite possibilities. No boundaries. No history.

Nothingness.

And from this nothingness, everything arises.

That’s what it’s like.

When there is no “you” in the way.