Was I really standing on the edges of my own identity?

What follows is an attempt to get down some thoughts about how we construct identity and what identities mark the boundaries of our complex and often conflict ridden identity. Everything that follows is what I feel, my own opinion.

The definition that I am using for identity is from how to be clear creator Charles Davies- “the sum of all the ideas that each of us holds onto”.

At its most basic if feels like:

I am alive and I am safe and I am not safe.

Have you ever felt unsafe?

I have. I feel unsafe all the time- It gotta be part of being me- I just never realised and never really put it into those terms ever before.

So I decided to break it down and see if I could pin down how I felt and how I could use the tools that I have been learning to get clear on how my identity works.

I feel like at a most basic level all of us animals commonly known as homo sapiens, have two clear identities- I am safe and I am not safe- they are just feelings which due to my extensive schooling in language over the years, I am able to mutate fellings into the sentences that represent the edges of my identity.

I am safe and I am not safe

I am privileged to live in a very civilized world- my parents looked after me, my friends look out for me, there are hospitals in the wider community, there isn’t a war raging in my vicinity, there are no wild animals roaming around trying to kill me, I know what is poisonous and not poisonous pretty much- so I am safe- but nevertheless I waver on a barometer all the time- I am safe, I am not safe.

At first what I noticed was that there are noises everywhere- screeching cars, shouting, animals other than myself, phone notifications, running water, planes overhead- each time I hear these things a kind of inner barometer goes on the one hand from I am safe to I am unsafe. In order to not get distracted by the noises, I have to feel safe so I say- I am safe and its opposite, I am not safe- it somehow takes in the postive and the negative and brings all the energy back to me.

So without diving into text books or the internet, but really just asking other animals that I know, (all my crew are homo sapiens), I wanna find out if this makes sense to them as well.

This morning I went to my morning meditation group- its a new thing, a few guys who live near each other. We go to one guys house who sets the scene and I think that this scene-setting is vital as the exact edges of the surroundings are defined- we stretch, we the sit for ten minutes, there is a timer, there is a sound to signify the end, there is only one place to sit, there are cushions to sit on.

Why did I feel safe?

I think I can pin it down to several things.

1. I understood the physical environment I was in.
2. I understood what to do.
3. I didnt feel alone.

The only thing I then needed to do was accept that I was safe- this was the only resistance that i needed to overcome. Once I accepted that I was safe and that opposite identity of I am unsafe was also part of me, then I could get on with the task at hand- being and accepting.

When the idea is clear and the resistance is overcome- in this case — I am safe and I am not safe, by accepting that both of these identities exist and show up as beliefs and stories within ourselves we can accept and then we can get on with the task at hand.

And i am left wondering- if we can accept the edges of our identity, does that mean we can accept all of who we are, all of the identities in between, and if so- does that mean that all of us can do anything that we set our minds to?

Originally written in draft in 2018, whats the hell, lets publish..

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