whose silence are you?

Who are you? 

I think I usually try to answer this question by making statements about what I believe/wish to my personality traits or interests: I'm a caring person. I'm into yoga. I listen to NPR. Constructing an identity for myself in this way is comforting because it makes me feel like I've figured myself out, like I finally know my place in this world and what I ought to be doing with my time. 

And yet it seems somehow ludicrous to imagine that I -- or anyone -- could be summed up by a flat paper list of interests and characteristics, a Facebook page.

So what is beneath this surface, and how can I access it?

I've come across a couple of things recently that address this question:

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"As you begin to befriend your inner silence, one of the first things you will notice is the superficial chatter on the surface level of your mind. Once you recognize this, the silence deepens. A distinction begins to emerge between the images that you have of yourself and your own deeper nature. Sometimes much of the conflict in our spirituality has nothing to do with our deeper nature but rather with the false surface constructs we build. We then get caught in working out a grammar and geometry of how these surface images and positions relate to each other; meanwhile our deeper nature remains unattended."

- Anam Cara, John O'Donohue

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In Silence

Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
to speak your

Name.
Listen
to the living walls.

Who are you?
Who
are you? Whose
silence are you?

Who (be quiet)
are you (as these stones
are quiet). Do not
think of what you are
still less of
what you may one day be.

Rather
be what you are (but who?)
be the unthinkable one
you do not know.

O be still, while
you are still alive,
and all things live around you

speaking (I do not hear)
to your own being,
speaking by the unknown
that is in you and in themselves.

“I will try, like them
to be my own silence:
and this is difficult. The whole
world is secretly on fire. The stones
burn, even the stones they burn me.
How can a man be still or
listen to all things burning?
How can he dare to sit with them
when all their silence is on fire?”

- Thomas Merton