Our True Identity

It is sometimes interesting to ask the most basic of questions, because we take many things so much for granted that we seldom actually think about them. One example of this is to ask, ‘Who am I?’

If we look at our life experiences, the people that we have known, the many activities in which we were involved, our work, our studies, the places we’ve visited – do these describe who we are? If you meet someone, one of the first things they want to know is ‘what do you do?’, as if that will tell them all they need to know about you. For others it will be ‘what astrological sign are you?’, as though that holds all the answers to your true identity.

But if we look at our lives in these terms, as measured by external parameters, we are not really looking at ourselves, nor getting any meaningful information as to who we are. It is a little like looking at a star. Do you actually see the star? That star’s light took years to get here, and only now do you see it. That star could actually have ceased to exist, it could have blown up, but still, here we are looking at what we think is a star. The fact is that we’re looking at that star as it was several years ago, depending on how long it took for its light to reach us. Bear in mind that the closest star to us is Proxima Centauri, which is over four light years away. This means that if it blew up, we would only know about it four years later, so while looking at the night sky we are actually looking into the past.

Similarly, if we look at the measurable, observable parameters of our lives, what we see does not describe us as we are now. We are apart from that. What we are looking at is a karmic pattern. This pattern was constructed from our actions over many lifetimes and assigned to this one. We therefore meet a particular person at a certain point in our lives; we are steered towards studying certain things at certain times; we are given this job at that time, and another job at a different time. And so on. But we get confused and think these were all decisions that we have made now, in the time frame of our current life. But this is a mistake. Actually these things happen in conformance with the karmic pattern that is assigned to us and which we brought with us into this life.

So we get back to the question: who are we really? What about us constitutes the real being that is us? This is where it gets really tricky, because it is not something that can be adequately expressed in words. We are beyond the measurable parameters of ordinary life: beyond the body, deeper than mere psychology and so much more than the sum of our actions.

Behind the layers of mind and illusion that envelop us is something that one could possibly label as Being. Our being is what is left when we strip away the karmic pattern of our destiny and the veneer of cultivated and learned behaviours that we all have. It exists independently of all that and all our history, our associations, our relationships and our professions. It merely is – and it is beautiful beyond measure. This same being is the true nature that all of us discover when we dive beneath the superficialities and attributes that the world uses to label us. It is called Soul.

This is the ground zero of our existence; it is this essence of being that is our true identity and is immortal. It is the reality and the truth behind the smoke and mirrors of our everyday life; it is our inexpressible Self. And it is this self that yearns for a higher reality than the everyday, ordinary life that we are living in this world. The soul is the true child of God that will not, cannot, rest until it returns to the ancient original home that it left so long ago. It is this inner restlessness that has driven us to seek for answers beyond the ordinary and the commonplace, and has taken us to the feet of the living Son of God, who has blessed us with initiation.

Our inner truth has brought us to the feet of the Master and it is the expression of this certainty within that drives us even now in our search for the highest Truth and the fulfilment of our spiritual destiny. This destiny is for our long-lost soul to return to the house of the Father, to reunite with him and rest finally in a state of indescribable and eternal bliss.