I often talk in the meditation classes I teach on Monday evenings about the importance of discovering your true identity. This is a rather abstract subject for a beginner’s class, but I talk about it anyway because eventually, like all techniques, mindfulness fails to bring the kind of relief it did in the beginning, or it just isn’t enough anymore. And thank goodness, because this forces us to become disgusted and keep searching, and possibly discover freedom!

The remedy to failed techniques is to discover yourself as limitless spirit, which makes it possible to touch back to this truth in any moment. In fact, you never really lose touch with the truth of your identity after you discover it. It changes the lens through which you view life. I’m talking about discovering the truth of your identity in that “aha” way, that resonates in the gut, where you know it in a factual, visceral way – not just reading about it and thinking that it makes sense.

When you know your true identity in this way, then some part of you, underneath it all, even in the middle of chaos, knows that this is all part of the dream, part of a play that your spirit came here to dance in, masquerading as a “you” with problems and worries. (No, you don’t then lose all motivation to participate in life…but that’s a topic for another post.)

People discover their true identity in all kinds of ways…through meditation, reading, teachers’ words, and sometimes spontaneously in the midst of great suffering. What’s evident to me now is that it doesn’t have to be an accident. One can actively engage in the kind of inquiry that leads to the personal discovery of true identity.

To know our true identity is actually our heart’s longing. People call the discovery by all kinds of names – knowing God, finding yourself, discovering your “no me-ness”, discovering your nothingness. Really, all the searching we do for the right career, spouse, or organizational system is the seeking energy, desperately trying to know itself, to wake up to itself.

If you feel like you’re always searching for the magic solution, maybe it’s time to consider whether all of the solutions you’ve found so far have ever lasted, or have satisfied that hunger. Maybe it’s time to try a different kind of search. If you want to know how to engage in direct inquiry, contact me. I can facilitate self-inquiry or point you to others who also do such work, which is traditionally done for free.