I’ve been thinking lately about all the years I’ve spent working with people, and how much of that work has been centered around unraveling our fixed sense of identity. One of my ‘Gift of Presence’ students called it “a joyous unraveling.” There are an infinite number of ways that we can relate to our identity, our ego, our sense of separate self.  Some people want to understand their ego, some want to improve it, some want to destroy it.  And of course some people just want to dress it up and take it out.

There is a lot of controversy in spiritual circles about all this. What to do? How to proceed? Do I embrace my identity? Do I expand it, do I dissolve it?  Is it real? Is it an illusion? Do I need therapy, or coaching, or meditation? Or three years in an ashram? I don’t think so.

The whole conundrum seems so much simpler to me now than it used to. I think that’s because I’ve learned to trust my own experience, and the experience of my students and friends. For me, the simple truth of the matter is this: we all get tired of ourselves!  Being a separate person all the time is exhausting. That’s why it’s so hard on people when they can’t sleep. Sleep is a total release from our whole waking-state identity.

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There was a phrase from one of the scriptures that we heard a lot in India. It would get inside my head and make my mind itch. “What is poison for you in the beginning,” it said, “will be nectar for you at the end. And what is nectar at the beginning, will become poison for you at the end.” I’ve been connecting with the
meaning of this lately, in a whole new way. Somehow this experience has lifted me up, encouraged me, and awakened me to new possibilities for our future.

How we know ourselves, how we imagine ourselves, can feel so solid and static. And how quickly it can change. Our whole identity can open and expand in a moment, no matter how much resistance we are feeling.

About a year and a half ago I came to a turning point in relationship to Mother Earth and my willingness to live a sustainable life. I realized that prayers, recycling and emails to our government were not going to do it for me. I felt this longing, deep in my heart, to take a big step forward. And I kept wondering why we humans so often wait until things are totally desperate before we are willing to do things differently.

Gradually it became clear to me that I wanted to learn to live without my car. I was quite surprised by this, as I was very attached to my car. It was a Honda Accord I inherited from my mother, after 25 years of living in India without one. It represented freedom, mobility, and the spirit of adventure. I would think about letting go of it and feel a lot of resistance.

But the longing was even stronger than my resistance- I knew that to be true. I was preparing to go to a Radiant Mind teacher training course in France this fall, and in July it became obvious that the only way I would be able to afford the trip was by selling my car. Isn’t it strange how the universe conspires to help you evolve and grow, even when you think you are not ready?

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When I speak, it is not my intention to tell you how to live, what you should believe, or how to improve yourself.

My intention is to offer some pointers, some radical new perspectives that will shake you up, and loosen the fixed ways you have of looking at yourself and your world.

Instead of filling you up with more information, these pointers can awaken you to a field of intelligence which I am calling ‘The Heart.’ This field of intelligence functions in an entirely different way than your conditioned mind.

Discovering the nature of this wisdom for ourselves allows us to ask ourselves some powerful questions about what is actually working in our lives, what we really want, and what matters most. 

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