Your Mistaken Identity

Yes, I am on Facebook. But I had what you might call a bit of an identity crisis when I went to create my profile there.

The crisis was that my identity isn’t defined by activities, interests, music, movies, books, television, political views, religious views, and what I’m looking for.

Therefore, I didn’t fill in any of those blanks. It seemed like such a diminishment. It seemed like such a misplaced idea of what identity is. And besides, I am not looking for anything.

A list of likes and dislikes really has nothing to do with who I am, or with who you are either. Mostly, it would just be a test to see whether my conditioning matches your conditioning. Then we’ll know if we share an agenda.

Like, whose side are you on, anyway—milk chocolate or dark chocolate?

Or another way of putting it: A friend of mine, whom I’ll call Joe Smith, has an expensive hobby. Some concerned people tell him that he spends too much money on his hobby.

When they ask why he doesn’t change his ways, he repeats a phrase that I am sure you have heard before, and perhaps have used yourself: “It’s just who I am.”

“No,” I would say to him, “that’s who Joe Smith is. It’s not who you are.”

What I am saying is that you are not your desires, habits, or personality. You are not even your name. And you might ask, if not those things, then who is a person?

There is a section of Answers From Silence that has the title, “Your Mistaken Identity”. To quote: “Your true identity is Being.”

And: “When you flip your identity to the ‘to be’ verb instead of identifying with the nouns that you are now ensnared in, you cross the line into Eternity.”

Let’s look into each other’s eyes and see the divine light that is shining there. It is not affected by time, place, or circumstance. And especially not by preferences for one thing over another.

—J.C.