Identification

Guiding Question: How is identification limiting my capacity for effective freedom?

Last week, we reflected on the six inner obstacles to effective freedom as a whole.

I thought it might be valuable to dig into each of these obstacles, one at a time, for the next six weeks. We’ll start with identification.

“Identification is a false freedom, the illusion of freedom, where we feel free because we are doing what we want to do. Instead of finding ourselves, we lose ourselves in what we are doing, and then what we are doing may be free but we ourselves are enslaved… When we are in this state we feel any interference with what we are doing is an encroachment on our freedom.” – J.G. Bennett, Deeper Man

To test this, we might bring to mind recent activities. For example, those of yesterday or this morning. Where were we doing “what we wanted” in a way that resulted in the illusion of freedom?

For me, I can see that behind certain activities there are conditioned patterns to which I’m identified: husband, father, consultant, entrepreneur, etc. What patterns do you see for yourself?

Bennett’s premise that we “lose ourselves in what we are doing” brings up an image of being taken over by a particular conditioned pattern. The pattern is really a narrative, a story about who I am.

For example, I can see that in certain situations as a father with my kids, I may believe I am acting freely, when really I am only acting out a role within my story of “fatherhood.” This story was constructed through my own experience: being “fathered” as a son, watching movies, observing my friends’ fathers, and so on.

Choose a particular role that feels most alive for you. What is the story that holds it? Where does it come from?

One of the core premises in the lineage of developmental work we are exploring is that we are not one, but we are many.

In other words, our ideas about who we are and what we are meant to do are really a jumble of stories that have formed through our conditioned experience. This can feel unsettling when we begin to see the truth of it.

In my own experience, reconciling this tension begins with creating some space around the stories. As I observe them, I can feel my unconscious attachments to them begin to dissolve (if even just slightly).

In some cases, I can recognize useful patterns in these stories. There are things I’ve witnessed from others which are worth testing for myself—there are others clearly worth avoiding.

Yet I’m also getting a taste for a different degree of freedom as my awareness around these internal identity narratives grows. The question shifts from “am I doing what I want?” to “where is the desire to do this coming from?”

Reflect: Where do you recognize a tendency for yourself to follow the patterned identity narratives that you’ve inherited? How does your sense of freedom expand as your awareness around this grows? What’s required of you to discern these narratives and make more conscious decisions?

Part of the capacity we are working on here involves our ability to sit with the messiness of what we observe.

When we are identified with the mess, we avoid seeing it for what it is. The truth of it is too unsettling. We pretend like everything is in order. We pretend like we are acting as ourselves.

When we begin to dis-identify with the mess, we gain the ability to see it for what it is. Doing so is no longer such a threat to our state of being.

Of course, this is all very difficult work. I’m bound to forget all of this shortly after writing it, and you after reading it. But we can learn to remind ourselves and each other.

An idea I’ve been testing in my own practice is that in the light of consciousness, things self-organize to a higher order. I invite you to see for yourself if there’s any truth to it.