The Self You’re Carrying Isn’t You

Twelve weeks of what I call stillness.

What many would call an identity crisis is what I now realize was a transcendental awakening.

The first trimester stripped me.

My body, once strong, disciplined, and reliable, became something I could no longer command. Movement, the place I had always met myself, was suddenly unavailable. I did not have the strength to train. Some days I did not have the strength to move much at all.

And that is when the questions began.

If I am not moving

If I am not producing

If I am not performing

Who am I?

The business I had built, the one I introduced myself through, began to feel hollow. I realized something uncomfortable. I was not actually a business owner. That was an identity I had been wearing. One that fed my ego, my sense of control, my sense of worth.

When that identity loosened, the company followed.

And I sold it.

Then the athlete fell away.

Without strength. Without training. Without the body I trusted, I saw it clearly.

I am not my body.

And I am certainly not the roles I had been clinging to in order to feel real.

What remained was not a crisis.

It was something quieter.

Something honest.

Something that had never left, but had been buried beneath effort and identity.

That season showed me what nothing else could.

The self I had been carrying was not who I was.

And it was heavy.

The self can feel like a dreadful burden to live with.

Not the true Self, but the mentally constructed one. The one made of thoughts, stories, memories, roles, labels, and emotional residue. The identity we carry around and manage.

This is the little self.

The illusory self.

The self most people are referring to when they say, I.

And it is heavy.

Because anything that must be constantly defended, explained, compared, or improved becomes a burden.

But that is not who you are.

When I is used in its deepest sense, it does not point to the body. It does not point to personality, thought, or emotion.

It points beyond form.

It points to consciousness itself.

The Self has no form.

You cannot grasp it.

You cannot see it.

You cannot define it.

You can never truly say, Ah, there it is.

Because who would be saying that?

You are the perceiving consciousness.

You are that.

The Self cannot be observed as an object because it is not external to you. It is the essence by which all objects are known.

You are not what is seen.

You are the seeing.

You are not what is heard.

You are the consciousness behind the hearing.

Thoughts arise.

Emotions move.

Sensations appear.

But none of them are you.

They appear in you.

Even the thought I am aware is something arising within awareness.

This is why the Self cannot be found as a thing.

And this is why the search for it eventually exhausts the mind.

It is also why truth has always been described in metaphors rather than definitions.

Think of consciousness like a flashlight.

The flashlight does not become what it illuminates. It simply makes seeing possible.

Objects appear in the beam. The beam itself cannot be turned into an object.

In the same way, consciousness is the light by which experience is known.

Without it, there is no seeing.

No hearing.

No experience at all.

This is what is meant when it is said that the kingdom of heaven does not come with signs to be observed.

There is nothing to point to.

Nothing to grasp.

Nothing to prove.

And this is why it is said that you are the light of the world.

Not because you possess light.

Not because you generate something special.

But because you are the light of consciousness itself, illuminating the world.

When this is seen, not conceptually but directly, something softens.

The false self loosens its grip.

The burden begins to fall away.

Not because life disappears,

but because the one carrying it does.

What remains is presence.

Clarity.

A quiet aliveness.

No image to maintain.

No identity to defend.

Just being.

And I’m here to remind you, that is enough.