Put more simplistically, what Identity are you showing to the online world?
We humans get awfully attached to who we think we are and one of the reasons for that is that we do not fully know who we are. This identity that we think is us, is in fact only the ego on show and if we have begun to peel the layers of the onion of our personality, then we know that like peeling an onion, it hurts.
And it doesn’t hurt because someone else has hurt us; it hurts because we are so identified with this image of who we think we are and in fact are not. The nature of human experience is such that we have the tendency to take what society and everyone in it presents to us as our own and we create our identity, or role, based on that. Look how vitally interested you are in what others think about you?
Once we are entrenched in this perceived ‘role’, to see reality from another person’s point of view becomes very difficult. Can you remember the last time you awoke at night after a deep sleep and didn’t know who you were and didn’t know where you were and didn’t know if you were married, with children or divorced, separated or in a love relationship?
If you cannot remember such an occasion, then one evening before you go to bed, ask your partner to wake you suddenly in the night when you are deepest in sleep and jolt you suddenly; if you’re lucky you may get a glimpse of being awake and aware but not knowing in that second who you are.
It could be far more effective if someone altogether different woke you up.
People (read most of us) are so identified with who they think they are, that it is only on rare occasions that they get a glimpse of their true selves.
Remember when you last had to apologise for something totally out of character, that you did or said and confessed that “I don’t know what got into me?”
Our real identity is closer to the emptiness of the onion once all the layers of conditioning have been peeled away; in fact the word identity is misleading because it is more like a nothingness. The more we are closer to our essential nature, the more of ourselves we will reveal to our connections, whether online, offline or anywhere else.
You only have to look at small children to see that they have an individuality but not that false personality they eventually acquire as they get older.
Do you feel you have revealed enough about yourself so people know who you are?
Chris Borrett
Image Credit-FreeImages.com-Fernando Weberich
If by chance, you have not encountered my previous posts outside this blog, one of my favourites is about “A Woman’s Labour of Love.” You have the luxury of reading it by clicking here.