While a fully formed identity is a healthy component of early development, maintaining it can be a real struggle. The more identified you are with what you do and have, the more trapped you’ll be. Continuously scrambling to alter your identity in order to project the ‘right’ image to the world takes a lot of work and yields dubious results. The alternative is living in the present moment, going with the flow and feeling grateful for the abundance…
You already have.
Steve and Jarl
I hear and appreciate what you’re saying. I feel frightened sometimes when I’m not sure I’m a person, and sometimes it helps me to search around for ways to be confident I am here, materially or any other way. Not too sure how to square all that. When my sanity is hanging by a thread, I feel like grasping for some identity to help me breathe deeply.
That’s totally normal, Larry! Dropping the identity can scary. It’s not your sanity that’s hanging by a thread, it’s your insanity. When you let go and find that you still exist, what’s left is quite delightful and free. But it’s a shift from the false self into the true and that shift can feel frightening when the roots are so firmly planted in the conditioned part of you. Beginning to identify the characteristics of the true self help you to establish roots in the true self and then that transition/shift isn’t so frightening. Acceptance of what is, surrendering to not knowing and allowing the Universe to show you the way, letting go of the judgmental mind that wants to categorize and label everything, etc. These are practices that help you plant some roots in your essential self. Love you Larry.