Who Tells You Who You Are?

Tom Hook, June 2026

Who Tells You Who You Are?

We're all on the same quest. We are all looking for our True Self. That part of us that is untouched by our Ego Self – unaffected by our mask or persona. Something utterly reliable. Something loyal and true. Something we can always depend on. The Million Dollar Question is this, “Who Tells You Who You Are?”

Conservatives look for absolute truth. Liberals look for something real and authentic. Spouses look for a marriage that will last till death do us part. Believers look for a God who never fails them. Scientists look for a universal theory. We're all on the same quest. We are all looking for our True Self. That part of us that is untouched by our Ego Self – unaffected by our masks or persona.

Something utterly reliable. Something loyal and true. Something we can always depend on. Something unforgettable and shining.  An Immortal Diamond.

The Million Dollar Question is this, “Who Tells You Who You Are?”

·       Carl Jung observation: “The world will ask you who you are, and if you do not know, the world will tell you.”

·       Social Media tells us who we should be 24/7

·       AI is beginning to tell us who we are

·       How about our Political Affiliation?

·       Our partner, our family, our weird uncle Harry?

·       Zen Master – “The face we had before we were born.”

·       I suggest it is who we are before having done anything right or anything wrong, who we are before having thought about who we are.

Who Tells You Who You Are?

The Reverend William Sloane Coffin was one of the most prominent and passionate American clergymen of the 20th century. Best known for his 17-year tenure as chaplain at Yale University and his role as senior minister at New York City's historic Riverside Church from 1977 to 1987, he was a fearless voice for social justice, civil rights, and nuclear disarmament.

Not long before he died, he asked a beautiful question: “Who tells you who you are?” - which is another way of asking what covenants are we bound by - who protects you - and whom do you protect?

Some people rely on money to tell them who they are, and it’s a desperate standard.

Some rely on status or power or position, and some need enemies to tell them who they are.

Too many of us, too often allow our own mistakes to tell us who we are. We look through the murky lens of shame or regret at our own shabby jumbles and stumbles and failings and define ourselves by these alone. No other measure will convince us.

Who tells you who you are?

Rev. Coffin responded by quoting the prophet Isaiah: “I have called you by name. You are mine, says the Lord.” For him, a Christian preacher, this meant,        QUOTE: “For one thing, you never have to prove yourself. God’s love is poured out universally on everyone, from the Pope to the loneliest wino on the planet; God’s love doesn’t seek value, it creates it. Our inherent value is a gift, not an achievement.  So, you never have to prove yourself, with money or power or perfection. You only need express yourself and lavishly return the love you’ve been given so abundantly.”

He was preaching – I believe - the core of universalism, the radical and not so new idea that everyone is worthy, everyone belongs, not by virtue of anything we’ve done, or anything we’ve earned or own, but by virtue of what we are, which is human, which is inherently dignified, which is beloved.

And… which is easy to forget.

Douglas Steere, a Quaker teacher, says that the ancient question, “Who am I?” inevitably leads to a deeper one, “Whose am I?” – because there is no identity outside of relationship.

You can’t be a person by yourself. To ask, “Whose am I?” is to extend the question far beyond our little self-absorbed ego-self.

We wonder.  Who needs me? Who loves me? To whom am I accountable? To whom do I answer? Whose life is altered by my choices?

With whose life, whose lives, are we all bound up, inextricably, in obvious or invisible ways?

Whose song is traveling toward me from far away to deepen my days? What lines should we all be crossing?

How wide is the circle of our caring, the circumference of humanity, the bright ring of life, the holy perimeter, within which we live and move?

Remember brave friends: what is this work, this blessing, this mysterious life we are called to? 

Who Tells You Who You Are?

Many will give up eventually. Or won't even try to seek this truth, and instead we'll retreat into themselves. As if to say, I alone will be my reference point.

It is the most common problem of individualism and egocentricity. We split and retreat into ourselves. But we invariably go to our ego, (Which is the smallest Self or the false Self.) Because that is all we know about.

It is the common default position, even if it is largely unconscious. Yet it often takes over and depending on the severity of our “splitness”, it makes all common forms of life, Including marriage, lasting friendships, and commitments difficult if not sometimes impossible.

We are right about going inside. Otherwise, we would become lost in our outer and revolving hall of mirrors. But the question is, Which inside?  I am using this language of the true self and the false self, which many have found quite helpful. 

Both true self and false self will feel like yourself. So, you can see the confusion. One might be called “true centering”, and the other is the more common “ego centering”. Which shows itself to be the core of the problem.

The search for Soul has gained a bit of clarity in our time by finding words that make sense to us in more psychological terms.

What is the False Self?

Your false self is not your bad self, your clever or inherently deceitful self. Actually, your false self is quite good and necessary as far as it goes. It just doesn't go far enough.

And it often poses and thus substitutes for the real thing. That’s it's only problem and that is why we call it false. The false self is bogus more than bad and bogus only when it pretends to be more than it is.

Your false self is who you think you are. You're thinking it does not make it true. Your false self is almost entirely a social construct to get you started on life's journey. It is a set of agreements between your childhood and your parents, your family, your neighbors, your school chums, your partner or spouse, your vocation and your religion.

It is your container for your separate self. Your ego container likes to stay contained and hates change. Your false self is how you define yourself outside of love relationship and divine union. To move from here after you have spent many years building this separate self with all its labels and preoccupations is the work of a lifetime. You're very attached to it, and why wouldn't you be? It's what you know and perhaps all you know. To move beyond it, will always feel like losing, or perhaps dying.  Except, as I stated earlier, when you are able to move beyond your false self at the right time and in the right way, it will feel precisely as if you have lost nothing. In fact, it will feel like freedom and liberation!

One of the diversionary tactics of the false is self-sacrifice. Or the myth of sacrifice. Sacrifice usually leads to a well-hidden sense of entitlement and perpetuates the vicious circle of merit. This mindset leads most of us to assume that we are more deserving than others because of what we have accomplished.

The ego and Egoic culture continually lead us right back into it, probably because the false self rightly feels so unworthy that it must earn a sense of worthiness through the notion of heroism or hard work.

When you sacrifice, you always deserve. Sacrifice, much more than we care to admit, creates entitlement and a well-hidden sense of superiority.

We might call the false self our small self or ego. And we might call the true self our soul. When the true self becomes clearer to you, you will have grounded your spirituality. And you will have hired the best counseling service possible!

Now – Back to the Good News

The True Self includes everybody who wants to join in. It is almost too simple and straightforward.

Let the master, Thomas Merton, say it best, as he often does.

“A door opens in the center of our being, and we seem to fall through it into  immense depths, which although they are infinite, are still accessible to us. All eternity seems to have become ours in this one placid and breathless contact.” New Seeds of Contemplation

The Song of the True Self

Within us there is an inner, natural dignity. (You often see it in older folks).

An inherent worthiness that already knows and enjoys. (You see it in children).

It is an immortal diamond waiting to be mined. And is never discovered undesired.

It is a reverence humming within you that must be honored. Call it the soul, the unconscious, deep consciousness, or the indwelling Spirit.

Call it nothing.

It does not need the right name or right religion to show itself.

It does not even need to be understood. It is usually wordless.

It just is and shows itself best when we are silent, or in love, or both.

I call it the true self.

It is God in all things. Yet not circumscribed by any one thing.

It is enjoyed only when each part is in union with all other parts, because only then does it stand in the full truth.

Once in a while, this true self becomes radiant and highly visible in one lovely place or person.

Once you have encountered this true self -  the false self will begin to fall away on its own.

This will take most of your life, however.  

Because in finding your true self, you will have found an absolute reference point that is both utterly within you and utterly beyond you at the very same time.

Living in the true self is quite simply a much happier existence, even though we never live there a full 24 hours a day. But you henceforth have it as a place to always go back to. You have finally discovered the alternative to your false self.

William Stafford said all this, just about perfectly, in his rightly named poem and Book of poems, “The Way It Is”.

There's a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn't change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread, but it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can't get lost.

Tragedies happen.  People get hurt or die and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don't ever let go of the thread.

Richard Rohr’s word for the thread that Stafford speaks of, is the true self. The immortal diamond that we have been mining here, your true self is who you are and always have been in God and at its core. It is love itself.

Love is both who you are and who you are still becoming, like a sunflower seed that becomes its own sunflower. This is your participation in the mysterious life of Universe. The great surprise and irony is that you, or who you think you are, have nothing to do with its original creation or its demise. It's sort of disempowering and utterly empowering at the same time, isn't it?

All you can do is nurture it, which is saying quite a lot. It is love becoming love in this unique form called “me”.

Searching for and Rediscovering the True Self is the Essential Task that will gradually open us to receiving and giving love to God, Others, and Ourselves.

Immense Humility – not arrogance – characterizes someone living in this True Self.

And so, we do this naming, this blessing, this reminding, for each other, and for everyone within earshot of our voices.

Who tells you who you are?

Benediction Prayer

Spirit of Life and Love, Source of Pride and Well of Power, may we always find the places where we belong. In a world struggling to find hope, may each and every one of us be known. May we be free. May we be loved. In the name of all that is holy and life affirming, amen and blessed be.

Rev. Kim Mason