WHO are you? Let’s consider it by letting me ask myself that question. Some of the words that appear to my mind are father, husband, mindfulness teacher, writer and poet, businessman, family history speaker.

These describe relationships or activities I do, with tangible evidence to back up my claims. I note that I no longer include the word "son" in my list of who I am. My parents died three weeks apart in 2012. Maybe "orphan" is the right word but I think of that as the word for a child, nor an adult.

Then the other, trickier words. Harder to pin down, to define. Scot. European.

Not just tricky but inherently divisive, if by divisive we mean they cause the potential to say “them” and “us”.

Not British. Though my passport says I am.

Not Irish – my mother’s background – though other tests show that’s part of my deep-seated roots (specifically Ulster despite my family tracing back to Wexford in the south-east of the Republic).

Nor Polish, even though I was privileged to receive a state honour last week from the country of my father’s birth. DNA tests show me to be Eastern European, with a strong emphasis on the south-east region of Poland where Dad’s family lived for centuries.

So I have no DNA-defined Scottishness in my body. Yet I thought “Scottish” when considering who I am in terms of national identity.

Then the wider words – human, sentient living thing, part of the planet we call Earth, ultimately a very temporary aggregation of ever-changing sub-atomic particles in a vast universe, an aggregation that happens for now to experience something we call being alive.

This last list might seem a bit esoteric, left-field, even wishy-washy, though if you’re reading a column on mindfulness you’re probably more open-minded that that. It’s the direction my mind has been moving in for the past 20 years since I first started practising mindfulness.

Interestingly this has not affected my political views or decisions made in the recent two referenda. This may simply show just how conditioned my political mind is, and that I haven’t yet freed it from narrow political and identity views. It has however changed dramatically how I engage in political discussion, especially around the man-made notions of national or indeed supra-national identity. I am now very aware that much scientific research has shown that political views, especially those related to authoritarianism or liberalism on the one hand, and elitism or egalitarianism on the other, are genetic. In other words, we are born prone to have certain political or socio-economic views. Life experiences then reinforce or modify these.

So my supposedly reasoned and deeply considered reflections on politics are actually to a greater or lesser extent, the views rubber-stamped on the genes my mum and dad bequeathed to me not even at birth, but nine months before then. So instead of the midwife saying “It’s a boy, Mrs Stepek” (to which my mum would have answered, not another one!) she should have said: “It’s a green-leaning liberal, Mrs Stepek.” But national identity is not genetic; it is an accident of where you were born or how people around you influenced your views on the subject. In other words it is artificial but extremely powerful.

Things do shift, however, especially when you deliberately cultivate your mind through practices like mindfulness. When you repeatedly see the same manmade senses of identity arising in your head, and when you realise these are just forms of cultural conditioning, you also see that they block you from being a wider and deeper type of person. You see not only yourself but others from a conditioned, ie prejudiced, view.

The prejudice might be positive. When I worked my way round the world in my youth I always loved bumping into fellow Scots, even before I worked out what they were like as people. It might be positive but it was still prejudging them.

This is not actually that relevant to the major issues of the day, Brexit and Indyref2, though some readers who are conditioned in any of these matters might think I am making a political case. I’m not. One can see the inherent human or mental problem in identifying as Scottish, British, or European yet still reason that an independent Scotland is the best governance structure for Scotland. Or that it would be better to remain as the UK. Similarly if we extend the political landscape to membership of the EU. A case can be made for any of the four options In-in, in-out, out-in or out-out, and this does not need to depend on any form of identity at all.

But for me personally I am now more concerned that we as a species still do not think or act from a whole-planet or universal perspective. This big-picture view is skewed by narrower identification with nation or political entity. We have climate change, multiple wars, horrific inequality (in which most Scots count as the mega-rich), and a destructive form of economics in my view. If we primarily focus on Scottish, British or European issues then we don’t actually deal with the bigger issues that cause the most suffering and heartache.

So look deeply with mindfulness at how you define yourself, and see if there are aspects which you feel may be blocking your potential to be fully yourself.