If every belief you hold about who you are, why you are here, and what happens after death disappeared tomorrow—what would remain that you could still call you?
I think what would remain is awareness itself.
Strip away my name, my history, my religion, my beliefs about death, even the stories I tell myself about who I am—and something would still be there observing the silence.
Maybe that is the closest thing to the real self: not the body, not the biography, not even the beliefs, but the consciousness experiencing all of them.
And perhaps the deepest question isn’t “Who am I?”
It is “What is it that knows I exist?”
My Near Death Experience Arts and Thoughts. By Bonnie Jennings 