The One Piece of Advice I Would Give
Here is the one piece of advice. If I could only give you one piece of advice for your life, this is the best advice I have to give. I am answering this question live, and I honestly do not know what I am going to say if I could only give one piece of advice, so this is just as exciting for me as it might be for you. And here it is: remember who you are.
When I think about what is the most precious thing I have in my life right now, it is my awareness that I am that I am. I am God. I am empty awareness. To me, that is the most precious thing I have, because I know that I am not Jerry Banfield, or just a body, or just a mind. I know that there is more to me than this flesh, this life, this story, and the thoughts I am having. This knowledge, in my experience, is the most powerful knowledge you can possibly have.
Ask Yourself: Who Am I?
If you want to access this, you can do it by repeatedly asking the question, who am I? If my one piece of advice could be simply quantified or explained, it would be to ask yourself repeatedly the question, who am I? I have read people online say they were able to get out of depression by asking this question of themselves, meditating on it, and thinking about who am I. A lot of the time you will get surface answers to start with. Well, who am I? I am Jerry Banfield. Really? Is that all you are? Your parents gave you a family name that is different than Jerry Banfield. Are you just the name on your driver's license? Who were you before you had a name, when you were in the womb? You did not have a name, so you were not Jerry Banfield when you were in your mother's womb. Who were you before you had a name? Who were you before you had a story? Who will you be when this life is over? Who is here throughout everything?
The more you ask who am I, the more this whole life experience starts to expand. You can see that this body is not fixed. There are hardly any atoms in this body that were in the Jerry Banfield body ten years ago. All the cells that were in this body ten years ago are dead. Every seven years or so, your cells grow from the inside out. You have new cells in your body. There are new cells being born every day and new cells dying every day. So who am I? This body is not the body I was in before. I had a kid body before. I had a baby body before. I was a fetus before. And I have had dreams where I remembered having a body that was a ball of light energy. These are all temporary. The most precious knowledge you can get is that all you really know for sure is that I am. That, to me, is the basic teaching of religion, what the religions are trying to tell you: find that oneness, the one creator, the one reality, the awareness that I am. I am aware that I am aware. Observe the observer. I am not just this body and this mind. I am everything. I am all that is and has ever been. That is such precious knowledge to me.
What I Want to Carry Beyond This Body
When I think about the only thing I really care about maintaining after this body passes on, it is that I want to remember that I am God. I am that I am. I am empty awareness. I am the observer. That was the hardest thing to get in this life, to remember who I am and why I am here. Why am I? Because once you remember who you are, then you can remember why you are here in life, and life really starts to make sense. Life does not make sense when you do not know who you are.
I remember when I was a kid thinking there were all these answers to these big questions that I just could not get, and life was so frustrating and lonely and chaotic. And then, oh, I remember, I am God and I created this whole reality for myself because that is what I feel like doing. Okay. Well, now I can just lean in and enjoy the experience, instead of having that experience of being a human who does not know what happens after I die. To me the most precious knowledge is that I am that I am. I am empty awareness. I am not just the body, or just the mind, or just a story, or just a name. That is so precious.
So if I could give one piece of advice, it is to find out who you really are, and do not stop asking the question until you get an answer that rocks you from the bottom of your soul, an answer that you remember: oh, I am spirit, I am creator, I am oneness, I am that I am. Any particular form is not who I am. That is just a temporary thing I am doing. That is what is so precious. So the best piece of advice I could possibly give is to figure out: who am I? Who am I really? Who are you? Because that allows you to get past all these old habits, and to be careful about when you say you are something or another.
The Path the Teachers Walked
To me Jesus was just trying to show us the path that he walked to God realization. And Buddha, and all these other religious figures, were just trying to show us what they did to remember: oh, I am God, I am the creator, I am spirit, I am soul, I am that I am. And from there, when I look at it and see that I am creating this whole reality, I feel so empowered and connected. Before I remembered who I am, I felt like such a victim, hopeless and helpless, like I had to just do what I was told and then rebel if I did not like what I was told. Now it is like we are all creating this reality together. This body and this mind are not God and should not be worshipped, and in my opinion none of the others should be either. We are all just creating this whole reality together.
So ask yourself, who am I? And go deep, deep. Who am I, Jerry? No, that is not it. Who am I? Well, I am a human. Really? Are you sure you are human? Who am I? At some point you often get to, I am not even sure who I am. It does not matter whether you are an atheist or an agnostic. You are awareness. It is the knowledge that there is something more to who you are, that you do not need this body to be alive. That is the most precious awareness. Well, I am not sure exactly who I am, but I know that I do not need this body to be alive. I know that for sure.
Why I Am Sure We Are Immortal
In fact, in a lot of my dreams I am in other bodies and other lifetimes. I even had a dream where I remembered dying, and it was so vivid I was kind of shocked to wake up here. I woke up here and the first thought I had was, nice, this one again, like I was coming back to a movie or a video game I was playing after going to play a bunch of other ones. I remember the grave void of being dead. It was not dark, but it was not light. It was just a kind of shimmery gray void, and in the lifetime before that I died. Then I woke up in this life triumphant, like, see, you cannot kill me. You can kill one body I am in, but I can take infinite forms. I can be in any form, in any body, at any time, anywhere, for all of eternity. That, to me, is where total peace comes from.
And that is the thing. We all conquer death, all of us. That is normal. None of us are conquered by death. All of us are immortal, continuing to go on forever. I am sure of that. I have remembered past lives. I have gotten glimpses of future lives. I am living concurrent lives that I dip into in my dreams. That, to me, is the most precious knowledge. If this way of looking at life speaks to you, you can follow much more of it in my Life playlist, where I share where I am on the journey.
So that is it. I did not know what I was going to say. Thank you very much for asking that question. Ask who am I until you get an answer that is essentially the last answer, the bottom answer, where there are no more answers beyond that.