”Self-identity” is an interesting ‘thing.’
After all, there is who we are, and then who we think we are.
And, both change over the course of our lives.
Who we are, changing as consequence of both our organic growth & soul evolution and the experiences we go through that shape us along the journey. Who we think we are, also changing for those reasons, but with an extra layer of derivate complications consequential of what we think - the beliefs subconsciously compounding along the way, the programming/conditioning of culture & society, the impacts/influence of successes on the ego and traumas on the body, brain & heart.
It may take some humility/humbleness to admit, though it’s pretty damn easy for our clear perception/conception of who we are to become swayed, obscured and distorted with our filtered perception & (mis)conceptions of who we (think) we are.
In the domain of nature, an acorn has inherently, the full genetic coding to become an oak tree. Simple, straightforward. It’s an acorn… that grows into an oak tree. For us humans, there is some genetic coding for what we might/could become / grow into… yet as per “nature versus nurture,” the inevitability of our ‘fate/destiny’ as one particular ‘thing’ isn’t quite as simple. Our environments are infinitely more complex, as are the spectrum of possibilities for how the multitude of conditions we move through within them alter our course(s). No matter how much one might choose to lean towards the ’predestination’ side of the predestination versus free will debate, there’s still a whole lotta choice we get to exercise along the way - each choice, small & especially large, altering the trajectory of both who we become and who we think we are (becoming).
And as the brain/mind tends to work, we often resort to heuristics to simplify conclusions of ‘who we (think we) are - perhaps never even fully capable of truly understanding the complex multidimensionality of who we are, as an evolving soul undergoing evolutionary processes in a far larger span of time than the human brain has the processing capacity to handle.
So, we often define ourselves according to limited sets of criteria - often taken on societally/culturally, context determines by the frameworks, paradigms, and models we’ve intellectually learned - telling ourselves who we (think we) are… sometimes to fit ourselves into the roles (we think) those contexts require us to play, sometimes to relieve ourselves of the discomfort of uncertainty that may (understandably) arise if/when/from being 100% truthful with ourselves that we may not entirely know we actually are when all the ideas/concepts of who we (think we) are are stripped away.
So, we tell ourselves these narratives that evolve over time. That we ‘are’ the roles we play - familial, defined by our relationships; economical, defined by how we spend our time doing certain things in exchange for money; societal/cultural/racial, defined by the groups of humans we’ve come from and/or ‘belong to’ / associate with; ideological, defined by the beliefs shared with those groups. And for many, the layers of story grow thicker as accumulating more data to support the narratives - the beliefs of who we think we are, being reinforced through confirmation bias as spending more time in the different/various roles and losing sight of the fact that they’re just roles.
Though of course, there also come points where cracks form in the foundation of these concepts; where/when the solidity & illusory stability of “self-identity” begins to erode with awareness that we are not who we think we are. The “identity crises,” the “existential crises,” the “midlife crises,” etc, etc.
Even at these/those points, the grip of beliefs and habits to attempt self-definition can remain strong, however. i.e. ‘the awakening soul’ - some prewritten/adopted conception of where we are in what process, still grasping for some ‘grounding’ sense of certainty amidst the crumbling of an outdated self-identity.
(Confession: I’ve been at/in one of those points lately… if it hasn’t been already completely obvious. Ha.)
I’ve always, so I’ve been told, “marched to the beat of my own drum.” I’ve never really walked/lived a conventional/traditional path. But the question is worth raising: to what degree is even that narrative a role/belief/conception - not who I am, but who I’ve come to think I am…?
Throughout my twenties, I’d taken on the role of this hyper-ambitious ‘up-and-comers’ that was bound to achieve “big things.” And it’s taken nearly a decade to see it as a role - and one that needs to be “let go” of. For years, I’d played “the DJ” - in the latter years, who pursued the dream of living in Bali; a narrative romanticized with such ‘exoticness,’ imbuing the ego with a sense of ‘specialness,’ having ‘broken away’ from societal norms to pursue a ‘passionate’ life of ‘freedom’ most never would. And years after that chapter, looking back with (slightly) more wisdom & “clarity,” the less “special” that role seems to be - observing from a distance, a younger generation of ‘digital nomads’ playing out variations of the same sets of programs now that I did then, feeling the futility of holding onto the narrative as a pillar of a self-identity as more realistically being honest with myself that it’d be no less lame to base my self-conception on experiences & romanticized narrations of the past than those alleged degens indefinitely reveling in the ‘glory days’ of high school popularity decades later. It felt “cool” to tell (myself) the story about living in all these different places, Thailand & Bali being the highlights - until the years start flying faster and self-awareness kicks in that ego’s been sourcing its sense of ‘importance/specialness’ from sentimental reminiscence rather than anything tangible here & now. The temptation to confuse who I think I am with who I am no doubt apparent once again, thoughts & emotions swaying/influencing self-perception as judging self, feeling like some washed-out mediocre DJ as reality checks come in the silence & isolation of space left in the wake of an imploded marriage and extended hermitude. (The “cocoon” phase surely serving some “purpose” - albeit opportunities to objectively observe who I am somewhat limited in the absence more regular, face-to-face human interaction. Granted, that framing could merely be another narrative.)
Whether “midlife-crisis,” consequence of timing in our larger collective evolutionary cycle (that could be reasonably interpreted through the lens of astrological transits giving articulation to more specific energetic dynamics at play in the current processes), or some other ‘random’ chaos that doesn’t adhere to any of my conceptions/beliefs as to possible ‘reasons/causes,’ times are changing. Values are changing. Wants & needs are changing. My ‘sense of self’ is changing. I am changing. And it’s tough - if not impossible - to ‘get’ any clear sense of “who I am” in the midst of all this change.
Amidst all the noise of dogmatic rhetoric found in “self-help” and “spiritual” circles such as “remember who you are,” that’s sometimes easier said than done… and doesn’t account for the fact that we change over time. (And by linguistic architecture, would such “remembering” not be of a past self - a version of self that no longer exists here & now in the same form, just as the oak tree could not really remember “who it is” as the acorn…?)
I’ve had this self-identity as someone always on the move… leaving home at 18 to Banff, back, Banff, back, Vancouver, Thailand, Vancouver, Thailand, Vancouver, Phoenix, Victoria, Bali, Vancouver, back, Revelstoke, back, Revelstoke…and where next?? Twenty fours years of experience to reinforce the role and support the confirmation biases of that’s just who I am. But in honesty, I’m tiring of that role. All that movement used to be exciting, adventurous, fun - providing both dopamine and sense of ‘specialness/importance;’ but now, the prospect of continuing just jumping around indefinitely, never “growing roots” anywhere just feels exhausting, and honestly kind of sad. That role doesn’t feel to be serving well anymore. But I’ve been playing it so full-on for so long, I’m not even sure who the fuck “I am” without it. That narrative crafted & repeated throughout the journey became such an integral part of my self-identity (who I’ve thought I am) - and I’ve also changed so much over those last decades - that it seems impossible to “remember who I am.” Who am I supposed to remember, after all - the naive, youthful kid/teenager - as though his “truths” were infallible and to stand the test of all experience that’s come since…? C’mon.
Though to confess, I wish I could “remember.” That it’d be that simple & easy.
Whereas I’ve felt plagued by fear, uncertainty & doubt as contemplating where to go/move next and navigate the ‘responsibilities of adulthood,’ I almost wish I could reel back to the version of self circa age 17-21 that hadn’t yet started contemplating moving overseas and felt like all I needed was within Canada, was just a whole lot happier in the present moment rather than endlessly overthinking and being overconcerned with the future, whose ambition & imagination of possibilities hadn’t yet been stretched so fucking far it became detrimental, whose “naivety” carried the positive flip side of an easygoing trust in life.
But for all the spiritual word-salad about ‘time being an illusion, everything existing here all at once in the quantum’ and such, the oak tree can’t revert back to being an acorn. Tell the butterfly to “remember itself… what’s it gonna do, remember the caterpillar, as though that is itself? And while one could go down the spiritual-intellectual masterbation route of “remembrance of everything as all one ultimate oneness,” ‘the acorn & oak, caterpillar & butterfly, but two/four different points of God experiencing itself in/as everything’ or some shit - or an ‘infinite soul in human body, a fractal of God consciousness reflecting itself in the full spectrum of the genetic program,’ etc, etc… I need a fucking break from the Neptunian depths & delusions. Lol.
So what the fuck else ya do here, besides “surrender to the process” or some shit…?
No doubt, everyone has their own unique path. Some seem to go about their entire lives with a strong sense of self-knowing, while others struggle with a sense of identity, getting blown this way & that by trends & outside influences. Some of us seem imparted with an unshakeable sense of purpose & grounding in self that remain unperturbed by life’s trials and conditioning, while others get “lost” and/or “lose themselves” along the way. And, there are bound to endless variations of those/these dynamics between one end of the spectrum and the other - to remain static at any single position too long, practically equivalent to death; whereas realistically, the ebbs & flows of life never cease until death - the waves of our soul frequency carrying us through the highs & lows; the contrasts of yin & yang essential to developing our capacity for discernment & (self-)knowledge as experiencing it all over time.
Maybe there are dimensions of/to our experience that have us undergo the processes of conditioning & programming, only to later decondition & deprogram, coming back to rememberance of ‘who we are.’
While also simultaneously, we move through other dimensions of growth & evolution - with ‘who we are’ changing, transforming, evolving (and sometimes devolving).
Logical paradox, perhaps a bit.
Though maybe these are the points where that notorious “surrender to uncertainty” is called to duty. Some things, just not being fully knowable - even/especially when they seem as critically ‘important’ as something like who we are.
Though undoubtedly, whether its a “remembrance” or fresh discovery as expanding awareness into new dimensions of who we grow into over time, the shedding of our ideas of who we think we are may be essential to the (re)emergence of we we are. Clearing away the beliefs, the filters, cognitive biases, and logical fallacies - creating space for objective perception of the undistorted signal working its way through our genetic code. Ceasing trying to be who/what we think we are or ought to be, half-stepping back to get out of our ways with some sense of trust in the universe and faith that there’s an innate intelligence in/to our bodies & souls that knows what its doing better than our conditioned minds & egos. Abandoning layers of self-identity that no longer serve our growth, peeling back the falsehoods to slowly reveal the core of what was there all along standing the tests of time - while also maturing into a form that was always encoded into the genetic blueprint, just as the oak was to come from acorn. Not only stripping away noise & clutter of the mind and outdated loops & patterns of ego, but undergoing the alchemization of their decayed remnants into the gold of wisdom & character of a refined soul climbing the ladder of vibration.
Or some shit.
Maybe this is still all a nice-sounding story, parsed together from bits & pieces of different belief systems, told to make (an illusory) sense of certainty out of chaos, yet again spiralling out into logically-justified overthinking… when it’d be far wiser to just fucking breathe, relax, and slow down to enjoy the simplicity of life, without trying/needing to understand it. 🤷♂️😼🙏