There is a Zen Koan that asks; "Show me your original face before you were born".
Nisargadatta Maharaj used to ask students; "What were you two hours before you were born"?
It is interesting to note that people have no fear of before they were born, but greatly fear after they die. People fear death. But what they fear is the death of the ego because they have mistakenly identified themselves as this.
The question to be answered is, "Who am I?"
Are you the body or the mind? Are you the contents of the mind (ideas, beliefs, conditionings, concepts)?
Who are you?
Some may say, I am a doctor, lawyer, plumber, or even Jedi, but to identify yourself as any of these things is to encapsulate yourself and take you from the truth. Those are roles that you are playing. Who are you? Those things arise and fall away depending on need and situation. Who are you that is independent of those things? Who are you that is eternal, unchanging?
You are infinite, consciousness, awareness. How could you be a finite thing that comes and goes, arises and falls? The body is here today gone tomorrow. becoming a doctor or plumber arises and falls away. Ideas beliefs and conditionings are finite onesided limiting products of the mind, changing all the time. How could you be those? Yet most people attach themselves to these things and use them to construct for themselves an ego that they call "me" or "I". In this they are mired to duality. They live in the endless realm of likes and dislikes, love and hate, good and bad. They live in the suffering of their own creation.
And so the question, "Who am I"?
It is said, that there is no one who is not enlightened? That people do not see it, is because they attach to this manifested form. All the things clung to, your self, your beliefs, your "truths", let it all go, it is all going down with the Titanic anyway. Personal truths, beliefs clung to for security, dreams, your own self, all of it, right down to the bottom of the sea, none of it survives. So if these things are not you, your true nature, what could it be? Why nothing! Even the buddha said he got "no-thing" under the bodhi tree.......
In the great ocean that is, waves arise and fall. Some waves are large and some are small. Some run a great distance, others a short one. No matter the size, length, or distance a wave is and always was water. So it is with you. You are consciousness that arises as pure awareness, expressed as bliss. You are als the wave that arises out of water for a while, runs it course, and settles back into water. Was there ever a time that the wave was not water? And thus with the force, you arise, flow in the great way, and then settle back into the force. There is no death, this is the force.
When we are aware of our true nature, mindful, concentrating on the moment, focused on the living force, then we are simply doing and being the great way, flowing in/as/of the force. This is the way of the Jedi.
Living in the confines of ego, we are asleep to the force. We cannot see our true nature, and we begin to live suffering. The ego must constantly seek and strive. It must try to justify its existence. But it has mistaken the answer for a question. The ego is like the wave shouting , "look at me, look at me, look at me!!!! I am a wave, I am seperate, I am a really important big meaningful wave. Look at me, I am important, look what I can do!!!!"
So turn your attention away from the arising and falling of the waves. Be Mindful and look to see the force that is eternal, unchanging. It is there always. It is what you have overlooked like a painting on the wall you no longer notice. It is in the gentle background of your awareness right now. So as in our ocean analogy, stop clinging to the waves and look at the water. Instead of trying to bring about an experince of peace, knowledge, serenity or the force, we realize that we see that we are and always were the force in manifestation. Rather than trying to bring about an experience of the force we realize and "know" that we are and always have been this, that this is our true nature.
Seeing this takes time and training. It is not "knowledge" but realization. It cannot be reasoned to and it cannot be grasped by the mind. It can only be "known" and lived in the moment.
So instead of trying to know anything, just relax into not knowing. Relax into the force, into your true self, it is there in the background of awareness.
It is there, in the space between thoughts. Just observe all this, without the need to do, or be, or say anything and there it is.
In fact spend the day just observing. Just watch the flow of thoughts in the mind. Watch yourself watching. See how thoughts arise and slips. Watch how you react in the ways you always do. Watch how you create your emotions by dipping into memory, using your conclusions about the world and how it should be, forever living in this egoic past, to create your feelings and reactions. Watch how "you" cling to some things, reject others. See it and just watch yourself watching. But don't react, just watch. Make no attempt to change or do anything. Just observe.
What do you control other than the ego likeing some things and rejecting others? That is its power. The power to create your suffering. To really bake your noodle, if you can watch yourself, then who is it that is observing? Even worse, how could those thoughts and ego that calls itself "you" be real if you can watch it? How can that be you if it comes and goes, arises and falls away, changing, flawed, impermanant, ephemeral?
Your true nature is there, that gentle background of awareness that all these thoughts arise in. There is no one that is not enlightened. You just have to want to see it. But the price is high and the sword of truth cuts very deep. Didn't Jesus teach that you must die (to self) in order to be resurrected? Didn't I read somewhere that he said you must deny your very self, take up your cross and follow. So you have to ask yourself, do you want to cling to the beliefs in all these things, illusion of your power or do you want to end your suffering.
After you practice mindfully observing, come back to the question of "who am I". If there is a thought that follows it ask yourself, "In who has this thought arisen". If you think "in me" or any answer ask, "then who am I". You will observe that this continually brings us back to our true nature, to the force. For there is no answer to who am I, the mind cannot grasp it, it cannot be reasoned to, it cannot be spoken of in words. But when you see it, you will know, you will understand.
I am consciousness, arising as pure awareness in the force.