A Letter to a Human Being on… Identity

Dear Beloved Human Being,

I know you sometimes struggle to remember who you are. I know you sometimes believe lies about yourself. And the lies can be particularly harmful when they sound something like “I am a bad person” or “I am a failure and not good enough”. Oh, and how easy you believe these lies! How easily you forget your true nature, full of potential, an absolute beauty that cannot be captured in any language. How easy we take one instance, one judgment about ourselves in one moment, and generalise it to our whole experience. How easy we confine our entire being in a few words strung together. We often limit ourselves to be whatever we can conjure up in our imagination. We restrict our experience when we do not allow ourselves to BE.

So who are we? Who are you? Who am I? Such complicated questions. Sure it sounds simple enough. Usually, we provide answers such as our names, our gender, our roles, our race, our occupation, our personality traits, and the list goes on and on. But even these answers cannot describe who we really are because we are soooo much more than any of these descriptors. These are descriptors we designed as an attempt to capture our essence, but it’s limited. When we over-identify with any of these descriptors, we forget who we truly are. We know we have done so when we experience the need to defend these descriptors when threatened by another person. When these descriptions become more important than our relationships, we start to listen to our egos, our insecurities, instead of our inner wisdom, our core essence.

So who am I? Well, just sit for a bit with it… and as answers come up, gently remind yourself that that is only one part of your existence and cannot capture the whole. Until you get to a feeling. A feeling that feels like it cannot quite be expressed into words. A light feeling that accompanies a deeper understanding of something, even if you cannot explain it. When we get to a feeling or experience where we are a bit lost for words, we know we are closer to our true selves, our pure, beautiful, shining essence. And when we connect to this part of ourselves, we find it easier to live more authentic lives and experience more love, peace, joy and lightness. And everyone has this within them. You are beautiful, amazing, and perfect, just as you are. When this feels untrue, you have forgotten who you are. And that is okay. There will always be time and opportunity to remember again.

Like Syd Banks once said: “You’re not just a physical being. You’re something far greater. Go beyond the physical to the spiritual part of you. There you will find more power than you’ve ever realized in your life”.