What Is Identity? · I Am Teachings

What Is Identity?

I’ve been trying to reconcile the idea of identity within myself.

What is identity?

Why do we hold identity in such high regard?

Does the idea of identity support who I truly want to be in this world, or does it negate it?

I’ve come to the conclusion that identity, with all that it encompasses, may have far less value than we give it. Perhaps it may even be one of the reasons we experience ourselves as separate entities from the world and from one another.

These identities we take on and wear like coats tend to cover who we Truly are. Somewhere along the way, we begin to believe that we are the coats. We become characters moving through an illusionary world, playing the roles we have accepted for ourselves and the roles others have given us.

But are we truly these characters we have created through thoughts and ideas of who we need to be in this world?

Are we portraying Truth as we wear these coats and dance through this world as characters in a play?

I’ve been thinking deeply about these things and trying to make sense of them in relation to the world we see before us.

Is this reality we seem to be living in truly Real, or is much of what we experience simply a reflection of the identities we hold?

Identity is ripe with misunderstanding. And because of this, perhaps most of us live under the enchantment these identities create.

We believe we are merely the people we see in the mirror.

We believe we are the roles we play in the lives of others.

Ruler and ruled.

Master and slave.

The haves and the have-nots.

The successful and unsuccessful.

The powerful and powerless.

But are any of these identities ultimately Real?

Or are they misconceptions covering a deeper reality—that beneath all of these distinctions, we are expressions of the same Being, living through what appears to be many, yet existing as a whole?

If we could only see how significant we truly are, perhaps we would hold the Truth of ourselves in the same high regard that we presently give our identities.

How could we become so estranged from ourselves, in Light of who we Truly are, that we put on these coats of illusion and forget that beneath them we are of the same Being, the same unity, the same Life?

How can it be that we have wandered so far from the Truth of ourselves that we live under enchantment rather than in Truth?

This is what concerns me.

We have come to see ourselves primarily as individual rather than universal. We think of ourselves as identities rather than Beings. And in doing so, perhaps we perpetuate the very illusion that keeps us separated from one another.

The individual says, I am this, and you are that.

But the deeper Self asks:

What are we before we call ourselves anything at all?

Before the names.

Before the titles.

Before status.

Before nationality.

Before wealth or poverty.

Before authority and submission.

Before every coat we have ever put on.

What remains?

Perhaps what remains is the Iniversal Self—the One experienced within the many.

Not an identity that separates one from another, but a Being that lives through us all.

And perhaps awakening is not about becoming something greater than we presently are.

Perhaps it is simply the removal of the coats.

One after another.

Until what has always been underneath them becomes visible again.

If we could only see the forest through the trees, perhaps we could finally recognize ourselves in one another and begin to live truthfully—not merely as separate people attempting to coexist, but as one people participating in the same Life.

And maybe then we would remember:

We were never the coats.

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What Is Identity?