Identity is the Source of Delusion

Understand Identity, Understand Self

Understanding identity has helped me to stop chasing others dreams, and work out which are my own. Identity is what people use to interact with the social dynamics around them. For example, you could drive a BMW, run marathons, and look like Bubbles from Trailer Park boys. These things define who you are, right? But does the sunblock you use define who you are? No, then why do any of these things define who you are?

A car gets you attention right, so it must define you? The car changes how people think about you, the idea of what ‘you’ represent. That is what attracts people, an idea as opposed to actually you. What you believe to be your identity, how you are perceived, is no more than a collection of ideas that you have picked up about the objects you interact with in this world. You have let these ideas define you. Ideas filter the reality you experience, creating a mirage of an experience.

Spending your life chasing “success” in aspects of your identity whether that be the job you work, the person you partner with, or the exercise you do, is a life spent in a mirage of reality. Your experience of reality, a volatile one-time venture, is being viewed through the lens of identity as opposed to removing the glasses to experience reality itself. In reality, no ideas have any bearing over you.

So, if your experience of reality is constrained by the identity that you have there’s two ways you can go. One is to expand your experience of reality. This is logical, expand your identity until you are no longer constrained right? Allow the rubbish on your beaches to be a part of your identity, the success of your company, the food you eat. Constantly judge your identity and suffer to maintain and fulfil the identity you have assumed.

The other approach is to negate all identity until there is simply nothing left. Relinquish the judgement that your car has upon you, the judgement that your meditation techniques have upon you, the judgement your physique has upon you. When there is nothing left to judge, there is no longer anything to worry about. You are living through reality, not the constraints of your identity’s ideas.

So, how does one approach negation then? Catch yourself when you refer to ‘I’. Who are you referring to when you think or say this? ‘I’ is the idea of who you represent in some social dynamic, a character. It is not you. Inquiry into this will lead to a profound realisation that underneath your built up identity of ideas, you are no more than the bones and mind that provide your consciousness a medium to experience the world. You are nothing.