What Am I?
Wedding the self to an identity seems natural, even a forgone conclusion. But as any life’s journey of self-discovery will reveal, identity equals limitation. Even if it’s a perceived positive identity. The veritable opposite of ex-con, failed businessman, divorcee, addict, and so on. Let’s say successful businessperson, happily married for 51 years, “never inhaled”, and never so much as received a parking ticket.
Let’s go further. Deacon, medicine person, scholar, self-made, good father/mother. Maybe more specific such as an expert in (fill in the blank), Vietnam Vet, doctor, lawyer, midwife, leading authority on _____, or just simply he’s a good man or she’s a good woman.
As soon as we place something after “I am” we’ve attached a limitation, because it means we’ve arrived at this place called I am a ________. There is no further unfolding. No continuous becoming. I don’t even need to keep learning because I already have the moniker of success.
And if I’m a biker for example, am I into Harleys, metric cruisers, or dual sport? Because the style I identify with will determine who my riding partners are. And if I have prescribed riding partners I must agree with them to some measure when it comes to such things as world view.
But then if there is no identity at all, what are we? It’s becoming almost cliché to say that we’re spiritual beings having a human experience, even though it’s true. But what does that mean exactly? What is it to be a “spiritual being.”
Disembodied soul housed in bag of mostly water?
Ethereal corpuscular of angelic energy?
Energy blob commonly thought to be of God origin?
Bi-pedal energy mass of thought held in physical form?
Fractalized thought expressed as biological life form known as Homo Sapiens Sapiens?
The options are endless. But if we stretch our thinking for just a moment into the realm of non-duality in which there is no separation, no here and there, up and down, you and me, just one continuously expressing energy all taking place at the same moment in time, because of course time itself is an illusion, then identity is meaningless. It’s even less than meaningless. It’s a fool’s errand, a misnomer, a paradox, and an illusion all rolled in one.
But then what of belonging?
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