Who Am I

By Fred Pruitt
(from 2009)

It is good for people to question who they are. That’s the way I started out on this spiritual quest, in 1972, having read a book that stimulated me to begin earnestly asking that question. I spent days walking around and meditating on that question. I was into formal meditation then, and it became my one question. That opened a river in me, that has continued until this day.

To find out who we REALLY are, we must be willing to rid ourselves of our self-idols of who we THINK we are. Any spiritual discipline will tell you this. When I first began, I had a teacher who first started me into yoga, and then Zen, and then finally, we both progressed from there into Jesus. We were deadly serious in what we were doing, because we knew it was a matter of life and death, not for fad or fashion or because it was “cool,” but truly a real matter of life and death. We HAD to know!

The first day I went to see my friend who for a couple of years was my teacher, he said to me, “If you want this you must be in earnest and completely serious. Everybody is stuck in the mud, and most people are just playing in it. Only a few really want to get out of it!”

When I say “serious” I don’t mean we don’t live life in joy. Because if we really do seek to know who we are, we do find joy. But there is also a place for sorrow as well. It all works out.

PS — To really find out, it will cost you everything. Jesus said, “He who loses his life will find it; he who seeks to save it will lose it.