Know Thyself: Your Identity Revealed

So today I did what I’ve been doing everyday for nearly 2 months. I laid in my room and waited. What I’m waiting for is irrelevant, but this downtime has allowed me to probe my mind in such a way that I have found myself staring at my most personal insecurities & virtues.

One’s identity is pivotal in this lifetime. It defines your preferences, penchants, proclivities, aversions, affinities, and neutralities. It directly reflects who you will become as well as who you were. One’s identity; however, is in my opinion not the summation of one’s life. Your identity lies in the here & now. It is instantaneous, just as the Divine is timeless. Who you are may comment on who you were and who you might become, but the only thing that truly matters is who you are embodying right now.

I for years have been the quintessence of a skeptic. I’ve often given off images & illusions of believing people or ideals, but in actuality each person or concept was inconsequential to me. If they were to press me and really try to see how I felt, it would become painfully apparent that I believe in very little of what they had to say. Pastors, teachers, friends, family, the whole lot. This is because my personality, my identity, has always pivoted along the axis of perceived perfection. I rarely commit to anything that does not give off the likelihood of being perfect. Instead what I’ll do is generate a series of images around something to satisfy the status quo and avoid criticism or ridicule. For instance, when I left high school, I told everyone I wanted to be a doctor. This was not entirely true. I was fine with being a doctor, but I had decided on it because it was a highly praised profession. It was the universal currency to buy the admiration of a young woman, the acceptance into her family’s good graces, and the pats of approval from various university figures. I created (somewhat subconsciously) an entirely fabricated reality in which Bryce S Brown wanted to be an anesthesiologist.

Furthermore, in efforts to distance myself from the conventional teenager I would swear up & down I knew my identity. What I would then create is a reflection of who I though I should be, not who I was. If I were to adopt the Freudian construct, I was obsessed with my super-ego. Obsessed with what was right & true by the standards placed on me by people I respected. What this created unfortunately was an intense power vacuum within my young adult mind, one that was eventually taken over by my ego (pride). My ego was driven by the illusions I had created. The more insidious part was that the illusions were not entirely fake, but instead amplified versions of partially accepted truths.

Now I am by no means deprecating myself, nor am I saying that my appeals were disingenuous. What I am ultimately pointing to is the reality that this is a struggle that virtually every human on the earth goes through. The struggle to find one’s self amongst the maelstrom that is life. We adopt principles, religions, schools of thought, talk to others and read books, but only to have our minds further confused by information.

I am a follower of Christ; however, I do respect the traditions of other cultures. As I’ve searched for ways to free myself from my ego (prayer, meditation), I have also looked to those traditions that truly dismantle the ego. I came across some Taoist literature lately that essentially said one must live in the here & now. The ego is cacophony of who you were, who you think you are, and who you think you may be. However, the truly enlightened simply is. He or she IS. Let’s briefly look at how this correlates to my spiritual path in Christ. Heaven has no time. Therefore God lives in a state of “now-ness”. He states over and over in the Old Testament “I am”. He simply IS. We through Christ also have these same properties. We are alive, there for we are. In one of Jesus’ parables he talks about the flowers and how they are clothed in some of the most exquisite garments in nature. They don’t worry about yesterday or tomorrow, but simply that moment…

I reached a momentous point today in my own journey to my identity. This epiphany is something I may share at a later point in time, but for now I will simply say that you cannot escape who you are. Your identity has been with you since the day your parents’ conceived you, the instant God breathed life into the womb. Who you are is as plain as day, but who you are pretending to be may be much more comfortable right now. The problem with pretending is that it lacks passion and authenticity. It lacks zeal. Those who pretend are depressed, oppressed, and thus forced to regress. Those who pretend are locked in dead end careers. They are in relationships with people they don’t want or love. The entirety of their being is compromised because not only are they not acting in accordance with what they want, but they are not even heeding the voice of God.

In closing, you are important. You have life coursing through your veins, filling your lungs, and electrifying your brain. But in order to maximize who you are you MUST stop pretending you know who you are. A true identity does not pretend, it knows. It doesn’t think, it knows. It doesn’t believe, it knows. When you know who you are, then life becomes tantalizing again. You will be borne upon the wings of discovery. A quick note, your identity is not your job, your lover, your school, or your political affiliation. But all of those things will reflect who you truly are. Fear is the biggest enemy of your true self. This is why the Bible says that “perfect love casteth out fear”. When you fear being alone (relationships), fear being broke (following your career passion), or fear the ridicule of others, you will NEVER love anything. You will reflect illusions of love. You will give off partial love. But when you embrace who God made you to be, you will undoubtedly love 1. Yourself 2. Life itself 3. Others.

Know thyself and never doubt what you come to know.

Bryce