So-Hum: I am that

There is a commonly used mantra for meditation: So-Hum or Ham-Sa.

It means something to the effect of “I am that.” There are quite a lot of interpretations of the significance of So-Hum/Ham-Sa, including the notion that it is really just a longer version of OM, the universal sound of the divine. I like to sit with all of the interpretations, one at a time, at different moments. That said, most of the time I think of it like this:

I am that which I am which is the culmination and amalgamation of all of which I was and will be. I am a being in movement. I am never the same. At any giving moment, I am that, and it is all I can ever be: that which I am.

This is, of course, not to say that I don’t occasionally get pulled into who I was. It sometimes feels as if each molecule of a smell or a sound or a visual memory is invested with the full weight of what that used to mean. Like, for example, the teen angst that comes back when I listen to certain songs from the 80s. Or the slight feeling of being on edge that comes with the smell of a place I used to live and that had me feeling like that all the time.

I felt the full weight of this type of subliminal embodied memory this past weekend in Bogota. I have never lived in Bogota, but I used to live in Lima. I am well aware of the differences between these two cities, but to be honest they smell and look pretty much the same at the molecular level. At least to me. And my embodied memories of living in Lima are to some extent about loneliness, rejection, and aggression. So even as I felt deeply at home in Bogota, this city I had never lived in, even as I felt that I knew what was happening around me, felt comfort in the sounds and smells of the streets, there was an underlying layer of anger and alienation. It crept into my bones before I was aware of it. It colored my experience of every interaction. It made me close up and be the person I felt I was then: less aware, less open, less joyous, less me.

And yet, even then, I was that which I was. And, even now, I am that which I am.

It took me much silence and reflection to feel into the core of me again. And there it is. There I am. I am that.