Ozan Varol said, "we don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."
Let that sink for a moment and even re-read it a few times.
I guess the questions I have are, WHAT are we? How does this WHAT thread itself into how we perceive the world around us? Why is it important to realize WHAT we are is not WHO we are.
The world around us is seen through the lens of our experiences. “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are”. If we were in a distrusting relationship, we may perceive other partners as distrusting. If we had a bad encounter with a dog, we might think all dogs are bad and live in accordance with this and buy a cat instead. You see, our experiences determine how we perceive life and act in an autopilot way. If we were to take control of our life and explore why we are perceiving things the way we are, we open ourselves up to experience more of what we are…conscious awareness. These experiences are just that, experiences, we are not an experience, we are not even the culmination of our experiences as some mainstream philosophers argue; we are beyond all form and time. It is hard to grasp, I understand. It is also uneasy to contemplate that we are not all the things we have self proclaimed.
The thing to remember here is that life is a dance. We are meant to dance with our personality, not be like a clingy partner. The same is true for what we do in life! Our work is merely an extension of consciousness and what we do is not who we are. It is what we do, obviously.
Living detached from all we have thought to be true about ourselves frees us from the bondage of being attached. Our ego cannot live if it has no identity to hold onto. Having an identity is fun! It’s like the Soul gets a chance to try on this fun outfit and we can always change it up.
Shifting gears…
If someone were to ask you, "what are you", it might take you some time to consider that answer because usually it is framed as, "who are you?" which then is followed up by us describing ourselves in the context of "what" we are through adjectives, verbs, and even nouns.
Exercise: write out two lists, one answering the question, "who are you" and the other, "what are you?". If there is overlap, thats okay. See what overlapped and then create a list based off that data.
Dissemination of data: When you see what has overlapped, take a look at it and then wean out emotions such as, positive, happy, sad, angry, etc. After removing that, remove anything related to your work, i.e., I am an engineer. Then remove anything related to family, i.e., I am an older sibling. Then remove personal characteristics like how old or tall you are, etc. See what is left. If anything is left, view it critically. Is that really who you are or is it more of a temporary experience or something that you constructed as part of your identity?
You see, we are beyond all form, we are not what we do, we are not the labels that have been put on us, we are not our emotions. We are the silent observer within. We are the listener. We are pure consciousness embodying this physical vessel to experience personality, identity, and action. Remember, we are not THAT, we are the EXPERIENCER of that.