What in My Experience Has Remained Unchanged Since Childhood?

There is a photograph of you as a child. You look at it and think: that was me. Not: that was a different person who shared my genetic material. That was me.

Despite the fact that the body in the photograph has been entirely replaced at the cellular level multiple times. Despite the fact that the mind held beliefs you no longer hold. Despite every possible dimension of change — you look at the child and say: that was me.

What is the identity claim based on? If everything has changed, what is the constant that makes the claim true?

The body changes. The mind changes. The beliefs change. The relationships change. What does not change? The awareness of the changing. The presence that was present to the childhood experience and is present to this moment. Not the same thoughts — the same awareness.

The Chandogya Upanishad's instruction to Shvetaketu — Tat Tvam Asi, That Thou Art — identifies this constant with the ultimate reality itself. The awareness that has been unchanged through every change is not a minor biographical constant. It is the same awareness that, operating at cosmic scale, the Upanishads call Brahman. The argument can point at it. Only the investigation confirms it.

Everything that has changed — and everything that will change — happens within something that does not change. The losses, the transitions, the failures and successes — all modifications of the changing dimension. The awareness itself is not modified.

What has remained unchanged since childhood? Not something found by thinking harder. Something found by stopping thinking long enough to notice what has been present through every thought you have ever had.