# Where are you?

A moment's thought should suffice to convince you that all you've ever experienced -- all sights, sounds, tastes, etc. -- is your own mind. Pause and reflect on this for a moment. Point at some objects and say out loud "this is my own mind; *this* is my own mind."

Now, point at *the one whose mind this all is*. That is, the one you normally think of as "me." You probably did something like this:

Now ask yourself: how much sense does it make for *me* to be over here while *my mind* is over there? Is my mind *outside* myself? That's a pretty strange conception of mind and self.

Wouldn't it make more sense for my mind to be *inside* myself? If so, then logically I must be *outside* my mind. Point at the furthest away thing you can. Maybe go outside and point at a star. That's your mind, remember? Do you suppose *you* are located somewhere beyond that? That doesn't make much sense either.

So where are you?

Normally, you think of "my consciousness" as being *over here*. Point at "yourself" again like you did before. It doesn't make much sense for your *consciousness over here* to be experiencing your *mind over there*, does it? Something fishy is going on with your model of experience.

We are using the word "mind" here to refer to *that which is experienced* and "consciousness" to mean *that which experiences*. But what if these aren't two different things? Then all those sights, sounds, etc., are your consciousness -- and each of these phenomena is simultaneously *being experienced* and *doing the experiencing*. That is because they are *experiencing themselves, right where they are*.

This is what the Buddhists mean when they say there is no *self*, no *you* that stands apart from your experiences. There is just this magical, vibrant, luminescent, timeless display of self-experiencing phenomena. *And it is all equally you*. (Or, equivalently, none of it is. It amounts to the same thing.)

Of course, it probably doesn't *feel* that way to you right now. Although you are the Buddha, you have placed yourself under a magical spell to pretend you are not. And the whole game called "awakening" is to rouse yourself from this slumber.

It all begins by asking yourself the seemingly innocuous question *who or what or where am I?*

> *What is that by which
You know that you exist and by which
You perceive the body in the world?
Is this not really the only question
Needing to be answered?
Investigate this exclusively*
>
> -- Wu Hsin

Alan Watts video:
[](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckiNNgfMKcQ)