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Who are you?

I have a question for you.

Who are you?

This may be a simply enough question but before you attempt to answer this question let us go on a voyage of personal self discovery which will allow you to find an acceptable answer.

The difference between the "Living" and the "Non Living" is the existence of the spiritual soul that manages the physical body from birth to death. The soul expresses itself through the five senses of the physical body. Without the soul, the physical body cannot express or maintain itself.

The reflection you see when you look into a mirror will be that of your physical body which gradually ages. Your soul is "seen" through your personality. You may look old when you look in a mirror but you could feel and act like a child.

The soul is your mind that is not constrained by time or distance. Within a second your mind can race back to your youth or visit any place your thoughts may pull you towards.

Souls cannot be seen. The understanding of the soul is limited because the soul is spiritual and cannot be explained or understood with the knowledge of the physical laws of sciences.

The soul or mind is similar to the tiny microprocessor of a computer system that obtains information from input devices like the keyboard and processes the information and communicates via its output devices such as the monitor and printer. The microprocessors RAM and Rom memory are similar to the soul's conscious and sub-conscious memory respectively.

Like the microprocessor, the soul obtains information via the body's sense organs (input devices) processes them with memory of past experiences in its conscious and sub-conscious mind and communicates with the outside world via one or more of the bodies organs (output devices).

For example, when something "nice" is seen, heard, smelt, tasted or felt the signals (input) are processed as pleasing and positive. This creates the positive response of a smile or laughter. The overall response is one of attraction rather than repulsion and should be repeated rather than avoided.

The soul is a tiny point of energy and functions on three levels that may be broadly categorised as the Mind, Intellect and Impressions.

The function of the mind is to imagine, think and form thoughts based on emotions, desires and sensations. Happiness and sadness are created and experienced by the mind but displayed by the physical organs of your body. The function of the Intellect is to access the thoughts created in your mind. It has the capacity to reason, memorise, discriminate and make decisions. It is your conscience that discriminates between right and wrong actions.

The Impressions are the memory of actions that become ingrained in the soul. The actions especially when repeated become habits, tendencies, emotions, temperaments and general personality traits.

There is a cyclic pattern in that the minds thoughts are put into action by the intellect to create impressions or memory of past actions. Repeated actions, especially those of a negative nature, create habits and addictions when your minds thoughts are acted upon without being judged by the intellect.

Smoking, consuming alcohol and indulging in sexual lust are actions that you enter into in search of happiness and fulfilment. The happiness created is just an illusion because ether the senses are temporarily incapacitated or the happiness cannot be sustained. You suffer the negative consequences of addiction and dependency due to the need for increasingly more stimulants in an effort to create decreasing levels of temporary happiness.

When you perform actions without thinking, you, the soul becomes a slave to your senses. Addiction and dependency are not just smoking and consuming alcohol. Laziness is an addiction just as is over-eating. Expectation from others is a dependency. Almost anything that you want or desire rather than need is a form of addiction.

The word "I" is used to refer to the experiences and wishes of the soul with statements such as "I am", "I love" and "I hope".

The word "My" is used to refer to the physical body, possessions and activities with statements such as "My hand" "My car" or "My job"

The advantage of knowing "who I am" is to realise and use the powerful spiritual energy that is within your body.

With you intellect now awakened you can focus on your power of judgement to become more selective and choose only those thoughts that will lead you to experience permanent happiness and contentment. Addiction to temporary happiness can now be avoided. Bad habits can be replaced with good habits you can be proud of. You can be more peaceful and deliberate rather than tense and anxious. You come to realise that happiness is a state of mind that it is created by you. Likewise you can avoid unhappiness or the experience of sorrow because you do not need to experience negative feelings.

You can and should be in control over your body's senses.

With the realisation that you are a peaceful soul you can begin to see others as equals to establish relationships of harmony. You can now avoid personality clashes and discriminations based on sex, colour, language, nationality, religion, culture and physical disabilities.

Most of your activities such as eating, sitting, working and sleeping are all done for the health of your physical body. What we all do is fail to address the need for peace and happiness of the real you, the soul within the body.

So back to the question, who are you?

I can not give you the answer as only you know. I have just set the question to make you think.

Mark Claridge specializes in teaching motivational and self-development skills. In his new e-book "Mindset and Match" he covers amongst other subjects how having the correct mindset can bring you all you want out of life and is available at http://www.mindsetandmatch.com. Visit his motivational web site http://www.inthe6th.com