There’s one question that, if you ask it sincerely enough, can unravel everything you think you are: Who am I? This is Part 3 of my walk through Garden of The Secret, Shabestari’s map of the inner ascent. So far we’ve explored Spirit, perception, and discernment — but here we go to the root. We’ll look at how the great sages hunted for the self by first finding everything they were not, why being certain can blind you, and how one single reality wears the mask of a million different faces.
In the last part we talked a little about the meaning of the poems in the Preface section of Garden of The Secret, and we ended with the meaning of discernment. Let’s continue now.
Once Man saw himself as an individual Questioned and thought "What am I?" From individuality, traveled he to unity And looked at the universe with a new perception He saw that this universe of diversity Is truly One that appears as many Here, Universe was created as one One became many and many became one All the division that you see is out of your illusion As a Dot may look like a circle, circulating high speed
Once you start asking yourself “Who am I?” — if you are sincere, and seeking with a pure heart — you begin the process of finding your true identity.
In fact, one of the greatest spiritual teachers of all time, Ramana Maharshi, mainly taught the practice of self-enquiry: meditating on the single question “Who am I?” as one of the most direct paths to your self-realization. His method was simple but razor-sharp. Every thought you have hangs on one root thought — the thought “I.” I want this, I feel that, I am this. So he said: don’t chase the thoughts — turn around and look for the one who is thinking them. Trace the “I” back to where it rises from. Most people have never once looked at the looker.
And you don’t need a cave in the Himalayas to try it. Sit quietly. When a thought comes, instead of following it, ask: “Who is it that is having this thought?” Don’t answer with words — that’s the trap. Just turn your attention back toward the source of the “I,” and rest there. The mind gets quiet. That quiet is the doorway.
What is your true identity?
Again — if I answered that for you, it would just become a belief. And a belief won’t get you any closer to the truth; it might even block you from seeing it. Because the moment you adopt a belief, you start thinking you already have the answer — and that is exactly when you stop looking. You destroy the very possibility of finding the real thing.
But if you keep seeking without nailing down a conclusion, you might actually get there.
I may not be able to tell you who you are. But if you look clearly, you can at least find out who you are not. You are not the identity society or your parents handed you. You are not your shape and form — your body has been changing non-stop since you were born. It was tiny once; it looks completely different now; and it’s still changing every second. And the thing that constantly changes cannot be the real You. The real You is what has been silently watching the whole change.
This “finding out what you are not” is itself an ancient method. In Vedanta it’s called neti neti — “not this, not this.” In Christian mysticism it’s called via negativa. You go through everything you take yourself to be — body, emotions, thoughts, roles, memories — and with each one you remember: “I can observe this, this is not me.” You keep peeling. And whatever is left when there is nothing left to peel — that silent awareness that can never be turned into an object — that is the one you’ve been looking for.
Rumi sang this same truth — that the Beloved you chase across the world is not far off at all, but right here, closer than the wall between you and your neighbor:
O you who have gone to Mecca — where are you? where are you? The Beloved is here — come back, come back! Your Beloved is your neighbor, wall against your wall; why roam the desert, lost — and for what?
Every authentic tradition keeps repeating this: you are not your body, and you are not your mind — which is really the same as your “identity.” You are not the borrowed identity you think you are.
So what remains is the actual work — finding out who you are. I can’t hand you that. But I can tell you it begins with seeking, and seeking, and not believing — just staying with the question through pure experience until the answer reveals itself.
Belief systems and true spirituality usually pull in opposite directions. The most popular versions of organized religion tell you to believe — believe that God exists, believe He or She looks like this, believe there’s an afterlife that looks like that, and on and on. But a true spiritual teaching doesn’t hand you conclusions. It hands you a method to find the answer yourself, by direct experience and direct perception.
And here’s the subtle part. If you believe something, you can blind yourself to the truth. And if you disbelieve something, you make the exact same mistake. Belief and disbelief are two sides of one coin — one is a positive conclusion, the other a negative one, and both slam the door on looking. There’s a lot to say on this alone, but here is the one thing to carry with you:
Don’t come to strong conclusions about anything. Don’t assume you already hold the final answer. Because if you do, you may destroy the possibility of ever finding it — even if the truth walks right up and stands in front of your face, your conclusion will be the very thing covering your eyes.
From individuality, traveled he to unity And looked at the universe with a new perception He saw that this universe of diversity Is truly One that appears as many
When it comes to seeing the truth — of your own nature, or of the universe — what you see depends entirely on your level of perception.
Imagine you’re standing in front of a building. From the ground, you see it one way. Climb the stairs and it looks different. Reach the fifth floor, different again. Stand on the roof, different still. Float over it in a balloon, and you see things you couldn’t have imagined from below. Perception of truth works the same way — the higher you rise, the more of the whole picture you take in, and the more precise your understanding becomes.
The different levels of perception — or consciousness — are a lot like the old story of the elephant in the dark.
Rumi tells it like this. Some men bring an elephant into a pitch-black room and let people feel it with their hands. One touches the trunk and swears the creature is like a water-pipe. Another feels the ear and is certain it’s a fan. One grabs a leg and says no, it’s a pillar. Another lays a hand on its back and insists it’s a throne. Every one of them is honest. Every one of them is partly right. And every one of them is completely wrong about the whole — because a hand in the dark can only ever catch a piece of the totality.
People at different levels of perception do exactly this. They each touch one part of the truth and mistake it for the whole. And here is something worth sitting with: a huge amount of human conflict comes from precisely this — different levels of perception, and the refusal to consider that I might be the one holding only the ear. The way out of the fight isn’t to shout louder. It’s to stop coming to strong conclusions — because there can be endless levels of seeing the same one truth.
Buddha is considered one of the most awakened beings who ever lived — someone at the very summit of human perception. In the earlier stages of his awakening, he spoke about many dimensions of truth. But as he climbed higher and tasted higher states of consciousness, he arrived at something startling: there is no such thing as the highest level of perception, no final ceiling of truth. What you realize depends on where you are standing.
Yes — from a human standpoint there is a peak most people can reach: the experience of unity, where you realize you are one with all of existence. That is well documented across the traditions. But even that is not a final wall. Even an exalted being keeps going. Even Buddha, in effect, says: I don’t hold the highest perception — because there is no such thing. There is always a higher truth to wake up to.
The moral? Never think you’ve got it. Never think what you know is absolutely, finally correct.
There’s a story in the Buddhist tradition about a seeker who sat in deep meditation and rose into higher states of consciousness. Afterward he opened a sacred text he knew by heart — and found it suddenly meant something completely different from what he had always understood. Later he ascended to an even higher state, opened the same scripture again, and found it deeper still. Again and again, as he rose and looked back, the very same words opened a new meaning each time.
This is the secret behind why the mystics say a sacred text is alive. The Sufis speak of the outer shell and the inner kernel of a teaching (remember Rumi’s line from the first part: he took the core and left the skin). The words on the page never change. You change — and as you rise, the text rises to meet you. A scripture isn’t a flat statement; it’s a staircase, and you only see the next step once you’ve climbed the one below it.
Only a fool is too sure of himself.
“This universe of diversity, Is truly One that appears as many”
What Shabestari is pointing at here is the same thing every Guru and realized master in every authentic tradition has tried to tell us: existence is One. We are all One. The only thing that makes it look like many is our limited perception. Go beyond the ordinary mind, beyond the narrow intellect, and everything is — really, actually — one.
And merely talking about it can create even more confusion. We could reach for science, for quantum physics, for a dozen kinds of logic to point at it — but none of that will ever let you experience it. For that, you have to climb. You have to see for yourself. This is the path of inner ascension. This is Sufism. This is Yoga. This is true spirituality.
📖 Read the Full Series: Garden of The Secret
Introduction · Part 2 · Part 3 · Part 4 · Part 5 – Thought · Part 6 – The Right Thought · Part 7 – The Universe Became Man · Part 8 – Who am I?