On Identification - by Andrew Schneider

The Soul has an agenda in each of our lives. That agenda is determined by its essential nature and qualified by the personality through which it expresses itself. At different times and in different situations it will try to express a particular aspect of itself. Sometimes this attempt will be ongoing over a long period of time. It may, for example, be attempting to express beauty or love or patience as a central theme of its purpose. In fact, it may be trying to do this over an entire lifetime.

If there has been anything relating to this energy which was previously denied, repressed, not allowed or not accepted, then this energy cannot express itself in its wholeness. It would be blocked by the shadow aspects of itself. Beauty, for example, would be blocked by judgements of ugliness, sinfulness or defectiveness. As the beauty is trying to be expressed in such ways as "I am beautiful," "others are beautiful," "life is beautiful," the shadow is being challenged to give up notions of ugliness such as "I am ugly," "everybody else is more beautiful than I am," "I am bad, defective, etc."

Psychologically, negative judgements of others are taken by the subconscious as also applying to oneself because there is an identification with the judgement when it is made.

The soul is the Light Within, and when it emanates or expresses itself it always casts a shadow. The shadow is part of the ego, but the rejected, unloved, unlived, often unnamed part.

None of the wisdom teachings tell us how to change the world, for then the focus would be in the wrong place leading to much greater suffering. They also don’t teach us how to escape from the world. Instead, they teach us how to live in the world while at the same time how to transcend the world. "Transcending the world" really means transcending duality - that is, not being caught up in it as the Reality, or the whole of reality. This is synonymous with giving up the ego as the central identity and becoming the soul in full consciousness. When we do that, then ego/personality and soul function as one.

Giving up the ego is really understanding its role to keep things functioning in our external life, and then transforming it. Transforming the ego or the personality simply means to make it a suitable instrument capable of expressing the soul. In order to do this we need to understand it in its entirety, which means in its unconscious shadow part as well. Confronting this shadow will make us whole, for every encounter with the shadow opens the door to transcendence and to union with the soul.

Changing perception is the key to changing unhappiness into happiness and illness into wellness. We can only change perception by shifting our identification. When we identify with a noble, whole, loving, powerful part of ourselves, then we are able to perceive and experience the noble, whole, loving, powerful part of what we are perceiving. That shift of identification is a choice. Perception is not a choice. It is a consequence of identification.

Everything we do has a single aim: to see reality more clearly so we can see the connections and eventually the whole. There is nothing that we need to alter or improve except our identification with the truth of who we are in our grandness. The greatest impulse toward this end is to identify with what soul is attempting to express in this life and particularly at any given moment. When we actualize this potential, we are developing soul consciousness and aligning ourselves with our life purpose.

Remember that what you identify with is a choice and changing identification, changes perception. And changing perception changes experiences.

Exercises:

1. What do you identify with – the shadow aspects of yourself or the soul dimension of who you are?
2. What thoughts and feelings do you have that diminish your sense of Beauty about yourself?
3. What quality or positive energy of soul is attempting to manifest in your life?
4. Identify the most common negative tendencies within you. Then identify the positive opposites that are blocked by them. What does this tell you and what can you do about it?

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