You Are Not Who You Think You Are: Identity, Attention, and the Truth That Waits
We live our lives repeating the phrase “I am…”
“I am this way.”
“I am not that kind of person.”
“I’m someone who needs...”
“I can’t help it—this is just who I am.”
We speak these words as if they're gospel, but underneath them is something far more tender, far more frightening, and far more real: we don't actually know who we are.
Red Hawk, in Self Remembering, reminds us that most of what we call “identity” is simply memory. It is the mind recalling and recycling personal history. When I say “I,” I am usually speaking from one of many “i’s”—a passing mood, a habit, a reaction, a conditioned survival strategy that’s momentarily taken the wheel. Each of these “i’s” speaks with authority, as if it alone were the whole truth. But it isn’t.
“The thinker and the thought are the same,” Krishnamurti said.
Red Hawk adds, “The mind is a liar—not by intention, but by its very nature and structure.”
That’s not an indictment. It’s a liberation.
Because if what I call “me” is not fixed, if it’s not a solid self defending its corner of the world, then something else becomes possible. Something quieter. Truer.
You Are Attention
Red Hawk names this something else: Attention.
Not attention as in “focus” or “concentration,” but Attention as your true nature.
Not what you think. Not even what you feel.
But that which is aware—that which is able to witness thought and feeling as they rise and fall.
“The Being is Presence and Attention, nothing more nor less.”
“What I place my attention on, I become.”
This is the sacred pivot. Where identity is usually rooted in form—my story, my preferences, my personality—Attention is formless. It is the living stillness that watches without grasping. The deeper “I” that doesn’t rush to speak, fix, or explain.
From Fragmentation to Wholeness
When we are identified, we are scattered.
We are a collection of likes and dislikes, reactions and narratives.
We are trying to become someone.
And this effort, sincere as it may be, keeps us bound to the past.
But when we begin to observe ourselves with sensation, when we root Attention in the body, something astonishing happens. We stop being so fascinated with the “I” of the moment, and start sensing the field in which all “i’s” arise. That field is Presence. It is Awareness. It is Love.
“Mature Attention observes without speaking, naming, or judging.
Mature Attention is witness consciousness—consciousness aware of itself.”
This is where healing begins—not with striving to become someone better, but by letting go of the effort to be someone at all.
Invitation: A Simple Practice
Try this the next time you’re caught in self-definition:
Pause.
Breathe.
Notice: What part of you is speaking?
Where is your Attention?
Can you return to the sensation of your feet, your breath, your spine?
Then ask:
Who am I without this story? Who am I when I am simply aware?
Let the question linger. Let it not resolve.
Because the more we stay with the unknown, the more we come to know that we are not the “i” we assumed—but something far more enduring, far more free.
You are not who you think you are.
You are that which witnesses thought.
You are Presence. You are Attention. You are Becoming.