Identifying Identity
What am I? The nature of identity seems so intensely ineffable. I know what I am not. I am not my body. I am not my karma and my reactivity. But what am I? What makes each of us the unique thing that we are? How is my identity fashioned, and from what is it formed?
Consciousness flows. It flows from us like a river of particles into everything we interact with, no matter how small; and the consciousness of everything we interact with similarly flows into us. Everything that we have ever interacted with is inside of us, not just a remnant of the transformation wrought by the interaction, but active and alive in its own way.
At one point in the evolution of our consciousness, we understood all of this at the level of our physical senses. When we looked at a tree, a portion of our consciousness would flow into the tree, mingling with its consciousness, in a way that would be obvious to us and everyone else; and a portion of the tree’s consciousness would similarly flow into our body and mingle with our consciousness. Since then, our minds and the ego structures that shape our experience have been steadily refined and limited, such that our current consciousness sees only the surfaces of objects and events, missing entirely the vast rich dance of consciousness that is occurring underneath.
When we identify with a job, a role, an organization, a sports team, an ethnic group, a nationality, a particular creed, an object, an aspect of our appearance, or anything else, we are putting a portion of our consciousness into something else in a way that is contrary to that natural flow. Our consciousness stays lodged in the focus of our identity, and we are hollowed out by the act. When the focus of our identity becomes threatened, our egoic mind experiences it as a personal threat to our safety and often reacts in unconscious and extreme ways in order to protect us from that perceived threat. When we place our identity in a romantic partner, we see the end of the relationship as a sort of death that we are forced to somehow survive, and we end up desiring to please our partner at our own expense, even when all we are doing is fueling dependent connections. When we place our identity in our parents, children, other people or pets, we come to feel that pleasing them or having them succeed is the only way to feel truly real — the only way we actually exist. All forms are ephemeral, and placing our identity into any form will inevitably lead to suffering.
One perspective on the path of spiritual growth is that it is all a process of reclaiming our identity from the people, things and concepts that we interact with. But who is the “I” doing the reclaiming? Where does this identity flow when it is not lodged in some form?
René Descartes said “I think, therefore I am.” Before my full realization, I thought this was an accurate statement. What else could we be, other than the thoughts that we think? What is the mind, if not us?
There is a physical body having a physical experience. There is a divine spirit that animates and gives meaning to all of existence. There is a mind, that translates the formlessness of that divine spirit into the forms of our physical reality. The mind is a tool we can use to shape our reality from our beliefs, and that helps us to identify psychic blindnesses and clear confusions through pattern recognition. It is not us.
Monsieur Descartes missed the point entirely. It is not “I think, therefore I am.” Better to say “I believe, therefore I am”. I am a self-referential axiom composed of a fundamental belief. And the fundamental belief, the one that kicked off creation and gave birth to all of the other beliefs, the belief at the core of everything that has ever and will ever exist, is so simple as to almost defy belief. It is “I am”. I am, therefore I am.
I am not my thoughts, nor am I the egoic structures in my mind that like to think they are me. I am not my name, or my role as parent or child, lover or friend. I am not my history, or my possessions, or my memories or my achievements or my failures. All of those things are mind-stuff. When I reclaim my identity from all of those things, what is left is the sure unassailable connection to that astonishing divinity inside of everything — the spacious stillness that exists beyond form and formless; the being of pure joy and unity, possessing infinite value, and capable of manifesting form from the formless in acts of infinite creativity. I am a unique prism by which the light of creation takes form. I am.
