False-Self

Here is a practice from my book Leap Before You Look.

Take some time to reflect:
Who have you defined yourself to be?
You can write your answers on paper,
or practice with a friend, and ask your friend to make notes for you.
I’m a plumber. I’m intelligent. I’m wealthy. I’m uneducated. I’m a liberal.
Now go back down the list, and for each of these statements,
ask yourself, “If I stopped defining myself in this way, would I still exist?”
Or ask your friend to go back down the list with you.
If I was no longer a plumber, would I still exist?
If I no longer thought of myself as a father, would I still be here?
If I no longer defined myself as intelligent, would I still exist?”
Take your time to work through all the labels you have placed upon yourself
and find out if any of them can really define you or contain you.
When all labels have been cast aside, discover what remains.

This practice will transform your relationship to your identity. For some of your answers, you’ll get an immediate clear “yes.” For example, “if I were no longer a plumber, would I still exist?” Yes, you could always go into selling life insurance. Some may be a little stickier: “If I were no longer a father, would I still exist?” You might have to carefully remember your days before you had children, and ask yourself if the core of who you are now and the core of who you were then is the still same. You might have to imagine what it would be like if one day you woke up and found that your entire experience of parenting was just a dream. Disorienting as it might be, would you still be here?
Some answers will be even more difficult: “I am a man.” It might take you several minutes of feeling deeper even than your gender identity to decide if you’d still exist without the gender you are used to. Some of your answers may be conceptual, like “I am light” or “I am consciousness.” When you ask, “Would I still exist?” you may feel that this answer points to something deeper than the other labels. You can change the question to, “Would I still exist without this thought, without this concept?”

Whether you do this exercise alone or with a friend, you will need some time for it to go deep. If it does, stop and feel your own presence when you have let go of all definitions. Are you still here? Can you still feel and see and hear? Take some time to relax into knowing the face you had before you were born.

We perform myriad roles during our lifetime. Each one may be necessary, even creative or enjoyable, but each can also become a prison if we become completely identified with the role and forget our deeper nature.

To read more, purchase my book Leap Before You Look here.

Photo credits: Nutdanai Apikhomboonwaroot, samarttiw