Setting Identity Aside for Self

In 2010, I was a cause myself. I thus affiliated myself with championing causes, crusading to right the world's injustices from the dangerously flawed premise of feeling wronged within. I wasn't resolved, but instead of fixing what was broken within, I went outside of me to fix it in the world around. Naturally that never helped me arrive at any solutions as I kept fixating on what was broken around me, as I deeply identified with that state of "being broken."

Identity is a tricky thing. Big or small, all of it starts within from an inner misalignment that finds unfortunate articulation in the world beyond. You cling onto an identity because you have not worked yourself out, to be fully available as an equal to all, to life at large, in the present tense without the narrative crutch of the past, devoid of the promise or potential offered by an imagined future. To be here, now, means working through one's own landscape, first, and foremost.

I spent three years, recently, unpacking all my wounds and traumas, refining my boundaries and shedding identities, thought patterns, scarcity mentality and other codependent relational dysfunctions that stemmed from my own disassociation with self. I no longer feel like a cause, and I thus do not perceive causes around me. I am empowered, and I thus no longer align with narratives that disempower any group or individual. When we give someone a leg up because previously they weren't given the opportunity at all, all we are doing is continuing to be "charitable," we continue to condescend, patronize and address them as "not an equal." Being inclusive isn't about letting "girls go first" because "some girls don't get a go at all," that pattern of thinking continues to perceive a girl as a victim, as a disenfranchised entity, seeding disparity as a narrative in the minds of the next generation of boys as well. I do not wish to support this. What I have come to see is that we inevitably disempower those who most need to be seen in their power at present, as their whole selves, sans the labels that perpetuate the very storyline that excluded them from equality and equity to begin with. We preserve the status quo by continuing to use the same hierarchical or separatist vocabulary we previously did, and by creating a "giving" module that gives a fish instead of teaching one how to fish. It does not create the lasting, self-sustaining, solution, instead it applies a bandaid fix. Quick fixes carry on the "us" versus "them" mindset, like "haves" versus "have nots" or "persecutors" versus "victims," which kicks off the cyclical "begging bowl and hand out" socio-economic hamster wheel.

Identity politics cannot exist without "identifications." In any story, individuals involved need to identify in order to play the parts that keep the narrative alive. It takes one label, one characterization to assert into existence the "other" label and characterization. Every villain needs a hero. The world of opposites is unending. Duality can never reconcile into singularity, until the singular is the true focus. We cannot be focusing on the plural and still nourish into existence oneness, we cannot focus on differences and somehow discern similarities. Where we put our focus is what we nurture and manifest.

So long as you adopt a label, you will need to distinguish it through comparison, that is how a label finds validation, by contrasting itself with externalities and underscoring how it is similar to or different from what it perceives around its utterance. This is a flimsy facade. A superficial scaffolding we all hang on to when we each fail to introspect and come into a space of self awareness. When you embrace the true objectivity of the light of consciousness you harbor within, you will "be" effortlessly present. It is pure, unconditional witnessing of the act of "being." Nothing more, nothing less.

If we take a breath, a beat, to come back to center, and shed all the external white noise of identities -experienced, embodied and enacted- we will each be able to discern that at our core, without all the labels, we are each just a portal of perception for reality as it is unfolding. This is what meditation enables, this is what remaining completely mindful of the breath at hand cultivates: a sense of presence that strips you bare of all the cacophony outside of you that you have come to model your authentic self as. You are the perceiver, the receiver, that can witness through the simple act of being fully present. You can co-create as you are available in each instant as things are forming and coming into being. "You" have to be, alive, "in existence" for life around you to unfold the way it is for you.

You are, and thus you are able to think, yet to our own detriment we subscribe to "I think therefore I am." Your presence comes first, not your personhood. You were present and thus your first memory could imprint upon you, making you experience yourself as a person, as an identity. When you stop thinking... when you draw a blank, you don't cease to exist! You are that light of alertness, awareness that can bring into focus and thus into recognition things outside of you and inside of you, as you choose to. It is your choice. It is all within your jurisdiction, so do not shed your responsibility. You are a sovereign, self contained whole that can curate how you show up and participate in each instant. You are entirely empowered. You choose to feel, think, act, react and express as you do, based on your ability to come into center, in alignment with your own inner awareness. When the awareness precedes the thought, feeling, emotion and action, those aspects of self expression do not get confused with the enduring, timeless totality of self, that is you. You no longer mistake the parts of you, for the whole of you.

Identity politics is an expression of the outward, of the "parts," its born of identifications that are entirely artificial and transient in nature, because even without your skintone, religious affiliation, education level, monetary assets, career, relationships, words, actions, thoughts, feelings, you would still not cease to exist. You, as you draw your next breath, even without those aspects of identification, would still be your self. (The self, i.e. the awareness that can perceive its self as "being" with or without.)

Come back to your true nature. To your self. This will help you shed the pain you carry, the resentment you feel, the anger that fuels your destructive behaviors, the loss you grieve, and the distrust you emulate, based on what has been and who you have identified yourself as in the past, which you continue to find comfort or security in perpetuating, even in the present.

Just like "love is love is love," "pain is pain is pain." Whether we unconsciously identify with the pain of feeling mariginalized, dismissed and oppressed, or we identify with the pain of feeling the need to marginalize, dismiss and oppress, both involve the same baseline of disconnection and ignorance within. Only you can make yourself feel as badly as you do in this instant, no one else has that power. Only you can endure the quality and quantity of suffering you choose to embrace. The choice to not suffer, to feel expansive, free, ebullient, the choice to realign, to reframe, exists within each and every one of us, in each and every moment.

Identifying with being "privileged" or "denied" both occur from a fractured perception of self, and it means one has lost sight of the light one harbors within irrespective of that identification. No one is a victim, but to their own ego, to their own tapestry of identities and self limiting beliefs. Whether you believe "we are all god's children" and that "all men/women were created equal" from a religious perspective or advocate for "all lives matter" from a humanitarian, inclusive perspective, it cannot be given true recognition until you yourself shed the labels that hold you back from embodying the self evident truth of unity. You cannot find unity outside of you when you are not in union within your own self.

When one has come into "self" it affords them presence of mind, because they are fully present for life as it is unfolding from an inner anchoring that cannot be manipulated, distorted, or deformed by ever changing externalities. There is a stability, peace, bliss and resolution that genuine self-awareness, self-actualization and reclaiming of one's whole self fosters. The more you engage within, the more you see how connected all life is, how we are all emergent from the same fabric of life, the same blueprint of consciousness, the same truth of existence. We can each hold ourselves accountable for how we reconcile, heal and resolve to a space of wholeness within, and in doing so perceive the reconciliation, healing, and resolution of wholeness outside of ourselves. After all we can only give recognition to what we are within, in the world around. If you cannot perceive it inside of you how will you recognize it when you encounter it in the world around you?

To the contrary, the more disengaged a person is with their true inner being, the more identified they are with peripheral labels and the material world, the more caught up they are with how others perceive them.

Broken people can only ever break anything they encounter. They are unaware of the light within and consequently act out of ignorance. You are a light, what you shine your light on is what comes into focus for you.

If you were to stand in your light, you would see darkness so starkly for what it is, just an absence of light. It is not personal. It need not be taken personally. If it becomes personal it is because you have darkness in you that needs to be spotlighted and addressed. No one who is not pain would identify with pain, and champion it. You would not part take in the story that pain enacts, nor would the stage and set up pain plays out its stories on appeal to you, because it will be an exhausting loop that feels as pointless as a puppy chasing its tail.

Pain does not serve you nor does it empower you to come into your fullest and highest expression of being. When you are in your light, you will experience true compassion and unconditional love for those who are ignorant, as your enlightenment will afford you the elasticity of spirit, the volume of real estate to accommodate their darkness in your light. Your light will compel those in darkness into a space where they have to witness their own destructive outputs, sans your enabling them. You are no longer involved, and thus you will offer those who behave from a broken place within, the space to see that what they are doing and/or saying is to their own detriment. Only hurt people who are oblivious of their own inner hurt, behave hurtfully, as they are unable to embrace their vulnerability. Only they can truly help themselves. If you are truly healed, you will just hold space, and will no longer try to change or fix others. When one is unable to come to terms with his or her vulnerable, wounded architecture in a healthy productive way, because he or she fears transformation, fears losing his or her familiar bearings and becoming a stranger to his or her constructed self and life, there isn't much you can say to catalyze metamorphosis.

There isn't an expectation of the other needing to evolve his or her engagement, rather just your understanding of his or her negative expression as an extension of the pain they harbor from feeling disconnected within their own body and being. You no longer receive it as being a part of a continuity of injustice from an identity stereotype, rather an expression of a continuity of ignorance toward self from that individual identity or egoic thought pattern.

Separation from self occurs when you harbor strong, unflinching identities, but you clench on those constructs, because you have no idea where to anchor once you shed those identities. It's a deeply fragile, fragmented, terrifying state to occupy, and those who are in the light must have more compassion for people enduring in this state of extreme anguish and inner distortion. When you are able to remain less defined from a space of awareness (that is able to perceive and let go of labels), while remaining flexible in your self expression, you experience what it means to be truly aligned with your quiet inner being. So if you are feeling reactive, distressed, guilty, privileged, marginalized, judged, hated, loved, favored, disfavored, dismissed, disregarded, acknowledged, validated, or discounted check in with your own self first and solve for "why." Why are you internalising what is unfolding externally to you in the way that you are. This will expose the identities you hang on to that keep you from experiencing your most abundant, expansive, wonderfully luminous, inimitable, exquisite, inclusive, whole self. Fear of not belonging to a community that will validate and accept your identity comes from not feeling that sense of belonging within you. You only seek out externally, what you are lacking within and should be providing for your own self.

No one can deny that within you which "is," irrespective of external variables. If you have done the self work, to come into peace within, you will experience two words deeply: surrender and reverence. You will surrender to your own immensity, and the humility of that self surrender will instill reverence for your own inner light. It is something untouched by all externalities, and no one can ever strip any conscious being of this light. Especially when it has been self-acknowledged and self-actualized. So come back home. Come back to your own self. Don't lose sight of the light that you are in the darkness around. And embrace your whole with gratitude because it is an incredible blessing to know one's self without identity, but you only get there when you examine and explore your own identifications and sense of identity with intense curiosity. We cannot rewrite history, but we can drop the baggage, we cannot predict the future but we can each assume personal accountability to show up fully, as our whole selves, now. Only if we each strive to find resolution within, can we coin sustainable solutions in the world around us.