Identity: The Birth and Death of the Self
If we aren’t our past, our thoughts, our actions, who are we? We typically have a good idea of who we were, but we often put that identity on ourselves in the present moment, giving us a false sense of identity. We often rely on past challenges, victories, credentials, mistakes, traumatic events, experiences, and our skill-sets to give us a sense of comfort of who we are. However, the present moment changes that. While all these things influence us, our identities are endorsed and chained to them by choice; reinforcing a redundant sense of self and even limitations for ourselves. We have this reputation within ourselves to uphold based on past events.
This is where we can learn from the beauty of the birth and death cycle. On a macro-scale, we can visualize our birth; the fresh start of life as a new being with infinite potential. We understand that our time here on earth will come to an end and who we are will inevitably turn into who we once were.
Next, we can look at our lives, the different selves that we have been, that we will be. We can understand that in the different phases of life, we have been inherently shaped by our environments and by our inner atmosphere of our creative force. We can see how whether we like it or not, the self that we were, and are, will not remain. We are ever-evolving beings. Different phases of our lives have had birth and death cycles and will continue to.
Continuing down this line, our years have an observable birth and death cycle with the changing of the seasons. Nature teaches us every Spring; breathing new life into the world around us. The weather show us the necessary dynamics for the constant moving energies of the universe and ourselves; as above, so below.
The moon demonstrates its own 28-day cycle of life and death, affecting our vibrations, tides, and many aspects of nature, simultaneously along with all the other coexisting cycles happening around us. Each day has a life and death cycle, the sun gives life-force to every living thing on the planet in one way of another, and disappears into the night. With this cycle, we explore our own experience of the birth and death cycle with our innate daily rituals of our letting go of our baseline state of consciousness entirely, experiencing the phenomena of different dimensions within our dreaming consciousness. The next morning, we are inevitably endowed with new experiences whether we are aware of them consciously, or not.
On the micro-scale, every breath is a symbol of our birth and death. We breathe in life-force, and release life-force. Our breath is the main catalyst between life and death. It also demonstrates active participation; our natural ability to release control, with the voluntary aspect of engaging control. We can’t stop ourselves from breathing entirely, and at the same time, we can control how we choose to breathe when we focus our attention on it. We are alive, and we also are the active participants of how we live. We have a sense of identity and a sense of self; it evolves whether we are actively guiding it or passively unaware of its changes.
Our identity comes and goes, and our self is ever-changing. We mold our identity like clay and the longer it remains in the same configuration, the harder it is to reshape it. As the creators of our own identity, we shape it from nothingness, and in order to reshape it consciously, we need to be open to it being nothingness once again first. Surrendering to the flow is being open, detached from that identity as a rigid formation. Allowing it to be malleable for our higher purpose, the divine will, beyond what we can imagine for ourselves. We often consciously imagine what our higher self or best self could of should be, and it is powerful to let go of even our greatest hopes and dreams, to let nature take its course. What will be, will be, and it will be perfect. While it’s powerful to have a sense of self, motivations, hopes, and dreams, it’s also powerful to let them go and trust the flow; “for my highest good or better”.
