Often in the heat of living
I revisit the old question:
Who am I?

Through the beautiful and the ugly of life,
Through the joyful and the painful of life,
Through the victory and the defeat of life,
Through the probing of the cosmos,
The one question that has remained unanswered is:
Who am I?

Intuitively it seemed I should be one of the following:
A creation of God, who is passing through human form for the training for a higher state of being;
A highly evolved specimen of nature whose reach and grasp is wide and high,
Who can make a large difference in the quality of human life on earth;
A manifestation of God who has come to earth to do some specially great things;
An agglomeration of experiences, ideas, desires, physical entity, and goals,
Whose viability depends on nature and chance;
A being which transcends human understanding.

But I would not accept my intuition on its face value,
So I set myself to answer this eternal question.
I went through the innermost recesses of my being,
I went through every event of my history I could remember,
I went through every pore of my body
And the minutest sensation I could fathom.
I went through every element of science I know,
I walked through all the religions that I have explored.
I also went through all the folklore and mythology that I have come across.
I roamed over all the literature I have absorbed.

After my sweeping and penetrating quest that I made in search of myself,
I found that there was nothing like myself:
It was a vast misunderstanding.
The addiction of self is deeply pervasive.
I was shocked that the myth of self that I had been harboring
In my bosom for all my life was the greatest illusion I have had.
Who am I?
Nothing but a superficial worldly reference –
Irrelevant to inner human life, irrelevant to cosmos.

Suffern, New York, 1.15.10
Revised 1.31.10