Identities

Identities:

I recently heard this very wise saying:

“Most people spend half their life building their identities, and the other half defending them”.

It is so true.?Our ego wants and needs identities, multiple identities: from our family of origin to wherever, whatever and with whoever our ego wants to associate with, to strengthen its “self”.?Directly or vicariously through others.

Identities of physical appearance, vigour, sexual orientation, social standing, class or caste, wealth, intelligence, worldly knowledge, academic knowledge, mastery of something or another, eminence, fame, tribe, nation/state, land ownership, religion, sub-religion, politics, economics, product brands, and so on.

Sadly, identities at the other end of the scale, can also be built and defended, such as belief of worthlessness, generational unemployment, generational addictions, substance abuse and criminality.

For many people, identities are based on their version of morality. However, immoral behaviour is not exclusive to any forms of identity and is based on the values of the identity and the context of the behaviour. Morality itself is non-binary. For example, killing another sentient being such as an animal for food, is moral or immoral, depending on one's values (that human life is or is not more valuable than animal life) and the context of where and how one is able to live and the alternatives available.

Old age doesn’t automatically bring wisdom.?Old age can bring a thickened ego and ignorance, through decades of identification with the mind and notion of self, instead of realisation that at our deepest level, our essence is undifferentiated consciousness, not eternal self.

Instead of stripping away our egoic identities one-by-one, till the time of our last breath, we do the opposite and let our ego build them stronger and thicker.?This only takes us further into delusion and sets us up for rebirth into another life of egoic ignorance.?