Meditation has shaped my spiritual life more than any other practice. In the early days, I used a simple mantra to create a little distance between me and the constant stream of my thoughts.
Over time, something shifted. I realized I wasn't my thoughts at all. I was the quiet awareness behind them, the one watching them come and go. It felt like stepping out of a crowded room into open air.
A question I wasn't ready for
Then a friend asked me something simple: if you're the observer, who's observing the observer?
I didn't have an answer. Worse, the question shook the identity I had quietly built around being "the witness." It felt like losing something.
For a while my meditations became anything but peaceful. I chased the question in circles, the classic restless "monkey mind," trying to think my way to an answer that thinking could never reach.
Mirrors facing mirrors
One day an image came to me: standing between two mirrors, my reflection repeating endlessly into the distance. Along with it came a gentle knowing from somewhere deeper than thought: you are all of it.
My ego still wanted to find the last reflection and pin down who I really am. Eventually I stopped looking. I let the question stay open.
Rather than defining myself, I now think of myself as an infinite being having a human experience.
Many teachers have pointed to the same place: a timeless awareness behind every experience that can't be grasped, only rested in. If you're meditating and you meet a question that unravels you, you don't have to solve it. Sometimes the unravelling is the point.