Flipping the Switch of Identity

Generally speaking people have a pretty strong and stable sense of personal identity; that is, you know who you are. You know something about your history, you know your name, where you came from, what experiences you have had. You know your personality traits, how you are likely to respond in certain situations, what your plans and hopes are. All of these impressions about who you are persist over time without huge changes.

And then there are periods in life when that is not so clear, usually in adolescence, or when you have gone through some kind of major life-changing experience, or maybe during a “mid-life crisis.” Your self of personal identity is unsettled so you feel lost and confused until you can find one again. Unfortunately, there are also people who go through much of their life without a strong, stable sense of identity.

Developing that sense of identity is a good thing. It helps you make your way in the world and interact with other people. Yet people who have that sometimes still find themselves searching for something beyond it. They might approach this through meditation, other religious and spiritual practices, psychotherapy, or even the use of drugs. All of these can be ways of trying to look deeper within to find something more there.

If you do search within, it does not take long before you begin to discover there is something there; something that is hard to give a name to, something vaster and deeper than the familiar sense of self. You may find intuitions or hunches arising from this place, or sense a transcendent presence, or a vast openness, or have some other “spiritual” experience.

When this happens a without/within dichotomy becomes part of your experience of life. The “without” is the familiar personal identity you usually see yourself as, and the “within” is the different and mysterious inner self. You become like Clark Kent after he discovers his super-powers, walking around with a secret identity. The old self adapts somewhat to incorporate this new discovery into its identity as a self in touch with its spiritual side.

For many seekers that is enough; they are content to live as the “in touch with the spiritual” self and delve into the deeper self from time to time, perhaps to draw intuitions from it for guidance. But that is not all that is possible. Up to that point they have not yet flipped the switch.

Flipping the switch is like going from being Clark Kent with a secret Superman identity to being Superman with a Clark Kent persona that he presents to the world. It is a change in your sense of who you really are. You flip the switch from identification with your small self, the self you have been familiar with all your life, into this vast self. The small self becomes but a persona that you present to the world; it is still present, still useful for engaging with the world, but you now know yourself to be the vast self.

What does it take to make that extra step? How does one flip the switch of identity?

What it really takes is wanting it badly enough. That is all. You have to want to be that vast self more than you want to stay the usual self; you have to be so bored, dissatisfied, or tired of being that little self that you are willing to take the leap into the unknown.

Imagine you are on a dock in front of a lake. People have jumped in the lake ahead of you and they look like they are having fun, but you are reluctant because you are not sure you want to get wet and perhaps feel cold. You can stand on the dock and study, reason and puzzle about all the ways other people have made it from the dock into the water: some dipped a toe in then gradually, inch by inch, lowered themselves into the lake; others pull back, arch carefully and dive in gracefully; and yet others just cannonball into it to get it over with fast.

But it does not matter how you do it, the important thing is overcoming your resistance to making that leap. You have decide whether you are content to stand on the dock and watch or want to jump in and find out what it is really like. When you want it badly enough you will take the leap. It takes wanting it and some gutsiness to jump, because once you jump there is no going back.

That’s flipping the switch!

© 2011 Alan F. Zundel

Alan F. Zundel is a counselor, author, and teacher currently living in Eugene, Oregon. His talks are available to download for free at HeartAwake Center at www.heartawake.org.