Who Am I? (My Morning Routine)
Becoming everyone and no one in service of someone.
We don’t see the world as it is. We see the world as we are.
But who are we?
Damn, that’s a hard question.
I ask it pretty much every morning.
This is why I care so much about protecting my morning routine — it’s a time for asking hard questions.
If we don’t know who we are, we don’t really know what world we’re seeing.
To escape the consensus trance, I need to figure out who the hell I am before I go around shoving my ego into the middle of everyone’s business.
Is that person mowing the lawn at 7am really an asshole trying to annoy me, or did I just wake up with unresolved frustration from the day before that I’m now projecting onto nearby victims?
Is that email I received overnight really a veiled threat, or am I holding onto insecurities about my power and self-worth?
Are the dirty dishes in the sink really a personal affront or am I just angry at myself for not dealing with them earlier?
Do any of these things really matter? Or is the fact that I have dishes, emails, and a grassy lawn a cosmic miracle in and of themselves?
The world we see is colored by our unconscious biases, blindspots, and beliefs.
If we don’t know this, how can we act skillfully, wisely, and kindly?
This is the great value of a reflective and contemplative morning routine.
It’s an opportunity to slow down before life speeds up. It’s a way to structure my energy, ground and expand my sense of self, and purposefully color the type of thinking I will have for rest of the day.
And it all begins with the hardest questions…
Who the hell am I?
What am I doing here?
What are we doing here?
What do I want?
What do we want?
What does the day want from us?
These questions are best reserved for the previous morning hours when everything is quiet, externally and internally.
A gentle energy of possibility fills the air. I drink it in deep.
By asking myself, “Who am I at this moment?” I unlock the important question, “Who do I want to be?”
With awareness comes choice. With choice comes the freedom to act differently.
This is our source of power. We can influence the future by nudging the great unfolding.
Below I describe my process of going inward before going outward. This is a meditation on letting myself go in order to build myself up.
It’s a cosmic to concrete carpe diem.
The Arc of Becoming: No One. Everyone. Someone
It begins with decomposition. It must.
I compost my psyche back into the matrix of the universe to see what kind of new formation can take shape.
Thinking surrenders. Feeling expands.
I start with the broadest, most cosmic perspective I can take: Light, energy, matter, and vibration.
Constructive and destructive interference. Resonance and Rotation.
The big bang; the almighty source of creation.
I am no one.
From potential energy to kinetic energy, possibility is transformed into actuality. Waveforms collapse through varying degrees of probability into an ephemeral “nowness”.
The cosmic egg cracks.
Matter appears. Thoughts manifest. Being become sentient.
One turns into many. A plurality of lights, each with a unique glow and radiance.
I am everyone.
Now I’m in the land of common humanity. A bunch of skin-encapsulated egos trying to tell a story that makes them feel safe, and if not, fulfilling, at least tolerable.
Mission #1: Don’t die.
Mission #2: Tell a story about it.
Ego appears.
My basic needs are the same as yours.
My strategies to get those needs met are different.
Beyond these stories, “Who am I?”
I am a storytelling machine, constantly writing and being written.
I am my body, my breath, my memories, and my dreams. I am my history, my ancestors, my hurts, and my hopes.
I draw energy into my body with a deep breath. If I am all of this, now what?
I attempt to delineate where I begin and end.
Reflection turns outward towards the horizon of the day ahead.
What is possible?
What is likely?
What is planned?
And perhaps the most important question,
What is standing by in the unmanifest waiting to be realized?
Can I feel those parts peeking out from under the subconscious waiting to show themselves?
This is where my “PACE Practice” comes into play.
Life’s a Marathon. PACE Yourself
Present: What am I present to right now? What am I noticing in this moment? What am I not noticing?
Appreciate: How can bring gratitude into this moment? Who and what can I appreciate? If I release worry, insufficiency, and problematizing, who do I become?
Connect: Where am I feeling connected? How can I protect connections that are already here? How can I grow more connections, internally and with others?
Experience: What flavor of experiences can I co-create today? How can these experiences express my values? How can I build experiences that empower others to express their best selves?
The PACE practice begins where my cosmic journey of spiritual grounding ends: at the precipice of the day, looking out from the perspective of my thinking mind.
Doing these practices together helps me move from thinking selfishly to thinking relationally.
It’s a call to expand from me to us, ego to eco.
It ends with recomposition. It must.
I look up.
I’m still sitting at my dining table, coffee and journal in hand.
I’m still just Jeff and will go through the day with all the usual Jeff baggage.
At least now I have a sense of what else is possible? I have a sense of how to selfishly bend the day towards my intentions while empowering you to do the same?
I have no idea if any of this works, but it seems like a good way to start a day.
What do you do before 8am?
~ Jeff