Today we explore identities; ours and those we assign other people and human conditions - familiar or global. No small thing, these identities. Hugely affecting our mental, emotional, physical and spiritual lives, identities are well worth our attention.
We're counseled to realize that we have attached identities to other people and conditions or situations. Identities are trouble. We gather information about people and expected situations in our lives, and every identity becomes a thing we then begin to manage. Managing these identities takes energy. Lots of energy. It amounts to self-imposed imprisonment.
If I wake up expecting certain things to unfold according to information I've gathered, I have just colored my day with an illusion of my own making. When my relationships are based on what I expect of people, not only to I burden myself with managing all that expectation, I also cripple our relationship. How is a person I love expected to grow and become when he or she is so involved in reacting to my reactions. And if that applies to a person I love, think of what a mess it is between me and a person who has injured me. Oh, how compelling the identities we create and hold.
Years ago System reported that humanity uses 87% of its creational energy managing identities. It's exhausting. And we cannot escape the result of holding identities. We all occupy the same sea of Consciousness. We all affect it and are affected by it. As surely as the sun rises and sets I am living in the result of the identities I have created.
Now, how about the person I believe myself to be? How limiting might it be to create expectations of myself and then try to live up to them - or to live down what shames me? Am I comfortable with the person I have created myself to be? Some days, yes. Some days, no way.
Identities are all about projections. Identities are about expectations, then trying to live up to those expectations. I'll use a simple example: I am taught by family and society that I am expected to be the most perfect parent I can be - or to hide my failures in that area to avoid scrutiny. I become a puppet of my own unrealistic expectations. And parenting based on self-consciousness/fear is crippling to the parent and to the child. I am caught in an identity that is culturally accepted, therefore pervasive. And we all suffer the consequences.
Now, imagine all the identities we accumulate in the human condition. The parent, the child, the truth-seeker, the partner, the worker, the member of any number of communities. And now, imagine how confusing it has become for us as the consciousness expands and we become aware of all the dimensions of Self - and therefore the many layers of identity we have accumulated. And we see the result in so many instances of people choosing now to change the shape of their lives; to grow closer to the center of Self-identity and to shed the layers that no longer fit.
The remedy is the same, whatever the condition. Whew! Gratefully, we have one and only one simple remedy. We go to the Essential Self, the center of consciousness. We go as frequently as we feel fragmented; we go as often as we need to feel peace. At the center of Self we visit the place where all other people and conditions stand on their own, following their own Perfect Plan. At the center of Self we have peace about who we are and all of the past we've created and all the future we have yet to create. Breath takes us there.
Most importantly, at the center of Self this moment is free of all encumbrances. This moment is a moment of breath and of freedom. In this moment I free all others and I breathe freely. As I learn to breathe free of identities I change the shape of the consciousness. And in this moment I change the shape of the human condition.
Until next time,
Phyllis, Still Becoming
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