Beyond labels

I am a human being who writes. This insight flashed within me one day while I was in the shower. Aaahhh! Warm water on bare body, great source of inspiration :))) But I decided to follow the thought further. I am a human being who sings in the shower, who has a job, parents, siblings, friends, who cooks and gardens, got a surgery scar on the back, black hair and black eyes. And then it dawned on me that these are all external appellations. That is, even if all these details change, 'I' remain essentially the same. Eg, if I were to lose my job, my experience of life might alter slightly, I might be hard up for money and might get a bit stressed, but the core of me, my essence will not change. Neither will it change if I stopped going to church and started visiting temples or doing the namaaz. Or if I lost my old set of friends and got myself another. These labels that the world puts upon us adheres to us so much and we start identifying ourselves with them so totally that we lose sight of our real selves almost completely.

But how do we free ourselves of these labels? I thought let me play around with the language a bit. Instead of saying, I am a wife, sister, friend, Indian, employee, kind-hearted, passionate - I could say, I am married, I have brothers and friends, I was born in India of Indian parents, I have a job, I show kind-heartedness sometimes, mostly I do things with passion. But these and all the other labels that are stuck on me do not even begin describe who I am. Undoubtedly, these lables are useful for practical purposes and are useful for defining the roles that we are required to play. But I can change all or some of these around and still remain quintessentially Me, free of labels and free of the strings and connotations attached to those labels.

So then, who is this Me? Where do I find myself? When I have done away with all appellations, what is left?

I find myself in stillness, when the mind is totally silent, an awareness arises, alert and dynamic, loving and pulsating with life. Sometimes this awareness expands to fill the whole universe, sometimes it is aware of another loving presence, a laughing, rollickingly jolly presence. A comforting, healing awareness whose presence brings Bliss. Then I realise that there is no Me, just the Divine.To be quintessentially me all the time, to be free of the mind's attachment to labels, to be that awareness every moment, now that is the challenge!