Most of our adult life, we are occupied with searching for our true self. Many people come to me with the question: “I don’t know who I am – can you help me?” It’s a raw and vulnerable state of mind. It is what is known as an existential crisis in the Western psychological world, and in Zen, it’s called the first awakening of the Bodhi Mind, the mind that seeks the Way.
It is a wonderful and as well a deeply challenging process to allow oneself to fall into. It cannot be forced or willed through. It is a natural process that emerges by itself. It can be caused simply by sudden awakening experiences or changes of lifestyle, loss of loved ones, job changes, illness, loss of life purpose, living in a monastery and so on. Any major changes in our current relationships and activities. It can provoke a deep disorientation in life and eventually lead to questioning our sense of identity.
This text below was written in the middle of a two-year retreat, during which I primarily meditated on my own in Oregon and at other times together with my husband and teacher Genpo Roshi in Hawaii. It was challenging and life transforming. The time alone stands out as the most challenging. I had already left my homeland Denmark behind some years earlier and wanted to let go of all stimulation from the outside world, not even watching TV or reading books. In the end I was left with just my own mind and how it constantly wanted to create a sense of meaning and fixed identity.
What is here is what we become
We might try as long and hard as we can to hold on to the idea of who we think we are. We can be very invested in that idea and keep trying to manifest it, to have people see us in that way. But if we remove ourselves from the environment, and the very life, we created for ourselves that reflected it, it won’t be mirrored back. We discover it is now just an idea. We may try to hold on to it in our minds and insist that “this is who I am.” However, over time we start to get frustrated when things do not work as they usually did. We become angry, confused, and very sad too as we feel we have lost who we were, lost our past and our future, and begin to lose our sense of identity. When we lose our sense of identity, and no longer know who we are, it’s a shock, activating all kinds of reactions such as anger, grief and a sense of deep disorientation.
Later we go through a phase where our identity becomes “the one who is dissatisfied,” the one who is in a wrong place, the one who has lost it all. And we may even contemplate wanting to die because there’s no reason to live. Nothing makes us happy, and we feel like we just live outside the world, we don’t exist. We fall into a state of deep suffering, and maybe depression.
Eventually we see how our mind goes in smaller and smaller circles, exhausting ourselves because all our efforts to retain our old identity end in empty space. No one can change it. We hope someone will come and save us, take us out of it, bring us back; but it’s just not happening. And then, we realize, “oh it’s all me!”
It is me holding on to the past, holding on to an idea of how things were and should be, how life should be. But we have a choice! Do we then surrender to what is, live fully, completely let go of whatever we’re holding on to — and become what is right now in the moment, nothing else? Or do we keep fighting and holding on to the past that is gone? It’s a choice though I think not everybody feels it is one. It might be a karmic choice.
The process feels uncomfortable. It brings us to the bottom line of life, of existence, of who you are. I find that letting go of that past sense of identity and being at ease with what is and who you are in the moment is — liberating. It’s like letting go of a huge burden, simply dropping thinking and trying to figure out who you are, and just allowing the current state to be as it is. It is landing at ground Zero. It’s the complete freedom of being anyone, and no one in particular. You are just who you are — without knowing who that is.
When you don’t know who you are – You are just who you are
The most interesting aspect of this is that when you truly don’t know who you are, you really are who you are! When you can’t find any sense of “self” and have no idea of how you should be, you just respond to what is in each moment. Not being occupied with your self-image and how you are seen by the world or by yourself frees up your mind! We can respond directly to what is in the moment instead of relating back to our past or to the idea of who we are or who we think we want to be.
However, it doesn’t take away the grief. It takes time to fully process such loss of identity. The grief has to be allowed. I find that before we let go of the past the grief will not fully come. It must flow freely and as long as it needs to.