Eric Oliver

And these are stories that are oftentimes, you know, fed to us by our parents or culture or other people.

And they're not really the stories that we have figured out for ourselves because we don't necessarily know who we are.

And if we want to know who we are, we need to begin to have a richer set of concepts that are available to kind of apprehend what's going on behind this experience of being me.

Right.

And one of the things I do with the class is I give them a questionnaire and I ask them things like, you know, who are you or what are you?

And they typically give me kind of pat answers.

You know, I am a sister.

I am a daughter.

I am a student.

And I try to say, well, let's start with that because you're not a sister to me.

I'm your professor or you're not a student to your parents.

And we begin to see that a lot of the ways that we commonly think of as the singular parts of the self are really just conveniences.

Or as I like to describe to them, we are not nouns, we are verbs.

There's no part of us down to the molecular level, up to the cellular level, up to the psychological level that's static.

We are beings of constant change and flow.

And so a big part of beginning to apprehend what's going on behind this feeling of being me is seeing what is it that's channeling this flow?

How is it arising?

Where is it out of balance?

Where are blockages?

How can I make it flow better?