Labels and Keys

Tuesday, May 20, 2008.

My niece, Rebecca Hengstenberg, received her J.D. degree this past weekend. I drove to D.C. to attend her graduation commencement at Georgetown Law Center. Relieved that I had found a parking space right at the Law Center, I hurriedly got out of the car to catch up with my daughter and her Dad whom I had spotted entering the front gate. The sound of a car running near me caught my attention. I turned around to realize the hum was coming from my car. Holy Smokes! I tried to open the door. It was locked. I peered inside. There in the ignition were the keys. How had I been so completely unconscious! Why had I no memory of locking the car or leaving the keys in the ignition? Where did my mind go when it left me for an unexpected vacation? According to Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, I am not my mind so if it decides to go on vacation without me, apparently I'm still me which brings me to the age-old question of "who am I anyway." Tolle's answer is simply that I am the watcher of my mind and my thoughts. I am just pure consciousness. All the labels that I have used to describe myself are only labels. They are not who I am. Thus, I am not Judith, I am not my past, I am not this body I live in nor am I what I do or where I live. I simply am. I exist and when my body is no more, Tolle says the essence (consciousness) that I am will continue to exist in eternity. I guess I will just return to the collective consciousness out of which I came when I was born.