Loss Of Identity

“Leave it all and let yourself just slip back into the rhythms of your intimate wildness.”

John O’Donohue

Identities we have crafted for fitting in, belonging, survival or that have been culturally bestowed upon us, can imprison in a cage of our own unrequited longing.

If we had no words we would simply be present to the landscape and relationships with all of our senses without capturing them in definitions, culturally prescribed boxes and assumptions. Yes, language has the power to expand our embodied life experience, but how freeing it might be to go beyond words and identities that we are caught in.

During this powerful shift in consciousness, and also as we age, it is our task to untangle ourselves from identities that are stale like old bread though they served us at one time, and cast them gently aside as a fresh recognition of who we are in our wholeness slides into our awareness.

Not to immediately form a new identity to “secure” our place in the world – but instead to wake up to the passion and wildness that has somehow been left on the highest shelf where we never looked collecting the dust of what we had covered up long ago.

How we clamber to find out who we are and where we belong only to step to the precipice, look down, and decide we are not courageous enough to take the leap into discovery and vulnerability. As we face the last part of our embodied lifetime we may be more willing to take those leaps.

So many humans on all levels are being confronted with having to do just this right now, for there doesn’t appear to be any place to run away from ourselves in mindless business or how we have contributed to our own neglect and seeming powerlessness. Instead we are challenged by the discovery and appearance of our desires beneath our worn out identities and illusional restrictions.

It is not easy to discard old identities that no longer serve the “one” that is emerging. There is a sense of loss and uncertainty as we stand at the threshold of being more fully ourselves.

This was clearly shown to me through a dear friend that recently transitioned out of her body. She was aware at the end that the identities she claimed had relentlessly imprisoned her, and at the same time were doorways she could walk through at any time. She had started to courageously cast off these identities, yet the cancer kept claiming her back into a narrowed landscape where fear and doubt rose up like a seemingly never ending flood.

Where are we as we come up against our own worn out identities that smother wildness, passion and discovery?

Recognizing them for what they are and with great compassion and mindfulness unraveling the binding threads to reweave ourselves in the wholeness of our wild untamed being.

“One of the sad things today is that so many people are frightened by the wonder of their own presence. They are dying to tie themselves into a system, a role, or an image, or to a predetermined identity that other people have actually settled on for them. This identity may be totally at variance with the wild energies that are rising inside in their souls. Many of us get very afraid and we eventually compromise. We settle for something that is safe, rather than engaging the danger and the wildness that is in our hearts. We should never forget that death is waiting for us. …….”it is a great liberation because it means that you can in some way feel the call to live everything that is within you.” John O’Donohue, from Walking In Wonder

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Copyright Gaye Abbott, Natural Passages Consulting, June 2020

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