WHO AM I NOW?

Would you like your life to stay exactly as it is today forever and more?

If your answer is “Yes”, I have some bad news that someone should have given you long ago. That's not going to happen. You're in the wrong universe for everlastingness. Here on Earth your life and its context are not ever going to say the same, any more than the ocean stays the same from moment to moment, day to day, or season to season. It's always there, but never the same.

Change is a human given. The only variables are the pace and magnitude of change.

If your answer was “No”, I have some good news for you, and that is –

 This today

Will pass away.

Unless you resist Change, in which case the scenario will repeat itself over and over, with changes of scenery and cast - until - you get the message – “the game's often transferred, without notice, to another ground where the rules, the goalposts and the scoreboard are different. Now, on your bike!........”

If your answer to the question on top was “I don't know”, you need to know that, in this context, “I don't know” is victim-speak for “Please don't challenge me. Please let me take an early retirement from exploring.” Of course, you are perfectly free to select the "Quit" option. But if a life of resignation is your choice, please proceed down there to the dead-end and huddle with the other walking dead. If nothing else, you'll get heaps of sympathy from them. Sorry, I don't do Sympathy. Sympathy is the surest way to de-power both giver and receiver in one fell swoop. 

To an aware person, “Who am I now?” embarks him/her on a curious journey into self-discovery. For most, sadly, "Who am I now?" is the psyche's automatic wail of protest against any threat to, or loss of anything we identify our Self with. It doesn't matter whether I identify with my integrity or a contact lens; if it is lost or even seriously threatened, I'll react like my home's in a tree. 

Ken Keyes declared "Identification is the only cause of suffering". If we didn't identify with a particular thing, person, belief, perspective or quality, losing it would not cause us suffering beyond (maybe) a little inconvenience; we'd just shrug and move on. If you are stuck on any kind of repetitive pattern, it's time you woke up to the possibility that you have attached your identity to something that isn't really you. You've hooked your star onto a falling piece of space junk.

Perhaps you might like to sit with that for a while......

There are several techniques to fossick out the myriad of ways you've attached your identity to (“That's me!”). Here's one ….

Notice what you do, why you do it and, consequently, how you do it. I'm not talking only about big-ticket, significant things, but also about the ordinary unremarkable things you do that, at the time, don't seem to be important. Go back in memory over your last 24 hours and look at everything you've done and what you've said. Ferret out the mundane things you've forgotten about. No varnishing or justifying, please. Stick to the raw facts. (eg. "I told that bitch to F*** off" Maybe not out loud, but I did it, with anger.) For the moment discount who was involved and disregard why. The question is "what have you done? What have you said? And how? This is what 'I' did." 

The answers may not be flattering, but they will give you a peep inside the character of the fictional personality - the front you've shaped yourself to be. You did this in the mistaken belief that what you've created would work better than being Your Self. You were quite mistaken about that. Seriously mistaken. Because you have become inauthentic and not-real, pretending to be authentic and real. And inauthenticity spawns in you falseness, deceit, falsity, untruth, inaccurateness, carelessness, casualness, confusedness, misapprehensiveness, fallacy, falsehood,  subjectiveness, self-deception and fallibility. 

Does any of that ring a bell with you? Don't answer that question, please. Just sit in it and be with it.

Another way of finding what you've created as your self is through your relationships -- all of them. Relationship is the mirror that allows us to look at what's reflected back to us off all the people we know and have met. 

Looking through the seeing-glass of relationships -- yours and those around you -- will test the integrity of your intention, because you're not going to like all that you see. Your "look-good-to-itself" mind is going to wriggle and squirm like crazy. Let it. Pay no attention. You look at someone and assume that what you see and hear is “them”. It's not. Not even close. What you see is You! You're looking at a mirror.

That's partly why, when really close relationships or a job, are threatened, or end in separation or death, we feel empty, lost, and start to question “Who am I?” Something external has left, but the vacuum is felt deep inside ourself. We took this person/thing on board and said "This is Mine; this is Me." Now that it has gone we cry, “I can't live without......(what?) Without this relationship, this role, my contact lens or my morning coffee, what am I? Without this, what is my worth as a human being?”

Even the threat of this existential vacuum makes us chary of change. We get so fearful that we deny, shirk or resist the existence of the law of Inevitable Change. Human beings, just like anxiety-induced lab rats and dogs, are far less likely to explore their situation, and more likely to spend their time and energy looking for way of diverting and dodging their stress. We forget that this stress is what we came for. And if we avoid, avoid, avoid this until death do us part, it's possible we may have to come back and do this all over again until we get the message == embrace this. (Have you seen "Groundhog Day"?)

The naysayers, the avoiders, the control freaks and the timid alike seriously doubt their resources of Resilience and Adaptability, perhaps with good reason. They've been denied the training. “Spoiled” children, deprived of opportunities to learn how to deal creatively with change and adversity (“No” is a very under-used child training tool), find real life and relationships very difficult to navigate in the later years. They stay “childish”, and try to back-pedal at the first sign of progress, equating “change” and any threat to their status quo with “trouble”. To some, Jesus Christ was the Saviour and the Lamb of God; to others he was TROUBLE! Same bloke. How do you explain the difference in perceptions?

[You Are a Child of the Universe]

There is a delightfully enlightening programme on ABC-TV at the moment called "The Dreamhouse". It follows a group of three intellectually challenged young adults who, under supervision, break away from sheltered home lives and learn to live, work and socialise independently. We watch and learn as they successfully learn, almost in slow motion, how to face the same challenges and stresses, and develop the skills that you and I may have glossed over or even missed out upon. My heart sobbed last night as one of the housemates, after the initial euphoria of asking a girl he likes out on a date and getting a cautious "Yes", sits in his room in a funk of anxiety quietly sobbing to himself "It's too much. It's too much." God, I know the intensity of that stage fright!! I hope the WA-produced series gets repeated. It's an eye-opener of the sweetest kind.

If your sense of your personal value is to have any permanence – and I assure you that is more than possible – it can not, and must not, be tied to anything or any one, including anything you think you are. In fact, severing those emotional bonds is essential before you'll ever experience freedom. Cut yourself loose from your person-ality; it's keeping you tied down.

The irony of this is that when you cut your emotional  tether of need to some one, you become free to love that one! Yes, I know, that doesn't make sense. It's never going to. That's my point. Love isn't "sense-ible". Loving your lover and loving your lover's lover is a matter of the heart, not the rational mind. Hellooooo!

Consider these propositions -- Anything you put after “I am...” is NOT you. Whatever you stand for or refuse to fall for is NOT you. Whatever you think, feel or believe you are – that's .. not .. you. Why? Any and all of those things can change and even cease to be, yet YOU still will BE. Whatever comes … can go again, and you will still be. So you are not anything that can appear and disappear (including the bodymind you get around in).

 

What you ARE is that which is real and immortal, that which is immovable and unchangeable (and, by the way, that has nothing to do with being pig-headed and stubborn). So when major changes and crises hit, they fly right on through. Any loss, emptiness and vacuum you feel are not in you, but in the "not-you", and that, despite how it feels, is disposable. It really is. The damage done by natural disasters, loss of employment, breakup of relationships and such will probably be physically, emotionally and maybe spiritually devastating, but what is being destroyed? You? No. What you think and believe you are, yes. And the more identified you are with that hologram, the more you are likely to suffer.

Anything not you is where your suffering begins, lives and dies. And that false you is where the question “Who/what am I now?” originates. That doesn't make it a bad question, but you'll never find the answer inside those cell walls. You really ought to get out more!

How do you prepare for the unexpected and become self-reliant and self-sufficient? Well, you could try purposely getting out of your comfort zone occasionally, on your own, looking for challenges. Any sort will do. Experiment and practice. When you're trying out new ways to see what works, you cannot fail. Who knows, with the dread of falling flat on your face out of the way you might find managed risk can be fun!

Through experimenting, you can develop a range of ways and activities in which to value yourself, ways that do not rely on the recognition of others, but on the value you bestow on your own courage and initiative, on what you decide to do, and why.

We can all use a gentle hand occasionally, and it's a great gift you bestow when you graciously accept a kindness. But if leaning on others outside of yourself has become a habit, your equanimity has become dependent on what they do. Where's the freedom in that?

Only a suspiciously needy person wants anyone to lean on them for long, and that kind of person rarely can be honest about why they need your dependency. But here's a social problem – "I want you, but I don't need you" doesn't fit the popular romantic idea of a good pickup line, does it? Why? Why does "I need you" creep into the lyrics of so many silly love songs? (I use the word "creep" purposely).

When you need something from somebody or something else, you literally give yourself away. You sell yourself short, and no healthy person wants that burden. And needy people suck. Keep your balance by cultivating a calm Enoughness within yourself.

Not all change involving major adjustments is harsh or arduous. Some lifechanging upheavals are welcome and even enjoyable. I'm thinking of huge changes like getting into a primary relationship, or expecting your first child. But nervousness, uncertainty and stress are still inevitably involved in the process, and if you're not adept at navigating emotional rapids, you could still end up getting hurtled into white water, laid low in slack pools, snagged on hidden branches and marooned on rocks. I think it's called "adventure".

Stress is the package of symptoms that arise in any new situation you haven't fully experienced before. Stress symptoms result from tension between the situation as it is and your resistance to it. Stress is evidence of an internal emotional cat-fight going on. The resistance emanates from your unkind mind, the source of all opposition to change. In the early days of partnership nature provides us with the distractions of romance and sex to disencumber and lubricate the early explorative stages in the journey of negotiating and adjusting to each other. In parenthood, we get the miraculous joy and novelty of the new being entering our world and raising our hopes for this close brush with immortality. We get biological and psychological fillips to get through the initial upheavals. But they are only temporary! Don't expect them to last "forever after".

Most other sudden dramas come with a surge of adrenalin to help. But it's up to you to develop the skills that, fueled with your natural chemicals, will see you through to a new world.

Other changes are not actually change at all; rather they are opposite ends of the same dynamic. For example, Mrs. Truck marries Mr. Mighty, and she finally has to get rid of him because he won't let her have her own way all the time. So she then marries Mr. Wimp, who does exactly what he's told, when he's told. Unfortunately, she still doesn't get to be herself because he's such a spineless dickhead he can't tie his own shoelaces without supervision. She's still trapped. Opposite dynamic – same result.

It's a darn sight easier to cope with change and crisis if you know yourself intimately, and know what kind of activities are guaranteed to allow you to recuperate, replenish and aerate your self. Petria King calls it "Fluffing yourself up." If you, armed with that self-knowledge, take the time and space to revive yourself you will cope far better with major and sudden changes by embracing them with your resources freshened, rather than having to fall back on an already exhausted, frazzled, flustered, morose, miserable, anxious and depressed condition.

The unexpected, the unthinkable, the unmentionable, the unfathomable and the unimaginable are always on the menu – see in fine print under "Side Dishes". They're there to test the workingness of Who you Think You Are. When your "I am" creation no longer works, you can blame the test (what most people do), or create something new that works.

Life examinations are rarely pre-announced. No press releases. No Emergency Warnings.

So do a Baden-Powell --

"Be Prepared"