Discovering the Complexities of ‘Me’: Discovering the Patterns that Create Your Identity
Michael Shaun Conaway
Generative Futurist & Leadership Performance Strategist | Skip Fixing the Past—Start Building the Future
Who am I? Why am I here?
This is the most fundamental of all inquiries. It has initiated all kinds of quests and journeys. We want to know, with some certainty, what life, our life, is really about. It is a journey we must make within ourselves, often ill-prepared for the challenges along the way. Yes there are guides and guide posts, but which ones do we trust? In the influencer era, there are likely tens of thousands of people who will tell you what this life is about. While their opinions and experience may help, it is likely at some point that you will have to discover the answers to these questions for yourself.
One of the headwinds of the spiritual journey is what I call the Myth of the Singular Self. We are inclined to believe that we are a single, mostly unchanging self. Our experience of life is that while things change we mostly stay the same. But if you examine yourself over time, it is pretty clear that we are very different at 6 than 16. And even more different between 20 and 40. Still our memories connect us to our past selves and any experiences that would point to significant differences in identity are smoothed over, or made to fit our continuous model of identity. It turns out that this smoothing function of the self is one of the functions of the default network in the brain. This is a good thing, as we don’t want to be continually in a state of identity crisis. And yet if we want to truly know who we are, we have to overcome this continuous identity or single self.
In western spiritual circles this is referred to as taming or killing the ego. I think that’s a terrible mis-interpretation of Eastern philosophical tradition where we awaken to the non-dual nature of the universe. That is that we are not separate from everything else, not self and other. Realizing this does not require self negation, or ego death. Rather the awakened master has self experiences while clearly seeing the truth of oneness or unity. It’s a self experience because that is part of what we are, and a unity experience because that is the truth of what we are.
What I propose is that we examine the self experience to see what is really there. When doing that, the illusion of the single self becomes transparent. We are fundamentally different selves given different circumstances. When we are at work, we are our working self; boss, team member, director, news anchor, engineer, builder, teacher, priest, doctor, ect. When we are with our life partners we are; lover, family, friend etc. And when we are alone with our thoughts we are; critic, parent, child, indulger, punisher, lover, coach, etc. Given any circumstance a different aspect of yourself will unconsciously emerge. Think of all of the times you have thought to yourself, “Why did I do that?”
So what’s really going on with our identity?
Consider that at the quantum level everything in the universe can be thought of as mass, energy and information, which are patterns. At the physical level, patterns manifest in our cell biology, DNA, and life cycle, which includes being born, growing, reproducing, aging, and dying. At the cultural level, patterns exist in our language, customs, values, and beliefs. We also have family patterns that involve traditions and emotions, referred to as ‘family dynamics.’ Additionally, we have personal patterns that include our preferences, habits, and narrative.
All of these patterns overlay one another. Like the ripples made by dropping a stone in the water. One stone makes perfect circles. Two make overlapping circles. Many turn into unique interference patterns. You might say that we are from moment to moment a beautiful symphony of complex patterns.
Most of us don’t don’t experience life like that. Our experience is often dominated by a terrible kind of pattern called a limiting belief. These are patterns with negative attachments that are fixed. They can sound like; “I’m not smart enough.” “I’m not attractive enough.” “Rich enough.” “I don’t have the willpower to change.” We’re all familiar with these.
In your quest for self knowledge there is a particularly strong limiting belief that you will have to overcome and that is the belief that you are the voice you hear in your head. Our cultural patterns force this voice into a terrible position of either being the hero and commander of life or the failure and the victim. And often we swing back and forth in our judgment from hero to victim and back again depending on if we are able to have life go the way we want it to go. If we manage the circumstances so that we win, we are the hero. If we lose we are a failure and a victim. This is a terrible pitfall of the singular self identity.
A lot of personal development is guilty of perpetrating this stereotype. We are told to have positive thoughts, and then when we don’t succeed we feel like a failure. We are told that if we clearly “call in” something then we can manifest that thing. If we fail to manifest that thing we feel like a failure. “I must not be good enough to have the amazing life that the teachers say is possible. Maybe if I just tried harder.”
And we forget to ask ourselves if the problem might actually be with the teachings not the student.
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The internal master and commander is no more likely to create widespread happiness than the external dictator is to create a utopia. And we wonder why so many of us feel resigned about our ability to change, and have a happy, fulfilling life. The alternative is that we begin to see ourselves as a collective of personalities, of patterns that arise and steer us in one direction or another.
If “I” am not the one leading voice in this identity, then how do I change?
Now we are getting closer to the real truth. Force is not a very good leadership style internally or externally, rather we are going to need to become a good influencer of our collective patterns. I like to call it being a “Me Whisperer”.
This allows us to loosen the grip of the ego and open the door to spiritual growth. To make lasting and profound changes we have to influence our collective patterns, through vision, alignment and practice. This process gets you unstuck and moving. Active evolution means that once you are unstuck and moving your destination evolves and changes.
Motion, change, evolution, impermanence. That is the nature of the universe, from the big bang forward.
Examined from this viewpoint, your quest to know who you are and why you’re here takes on a very different nature. You are no longer looking for a static, fixed version of yourself like a table; rather, you are looking for the version of yourself that arises from moment to moment. You are looking for a purpose that emerges in each moment. While these can be similar in nature, the difference is that by doing so, you become free to experience yourself and the world anew in every moment.
When we release our experience of the singular self, we are free to dance with the arising world in joy. Visualize this, a dance of the patterns of the universe of which you are a pattern of the universe — you are in a dance with yourself. A unique momentary is-ness at a unique moment in time. Experience this in unity and you are close to the answers you are seeking.
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