Identities and Their Use


Identities, like bodies, are important to normal operation in life. You would be hard put to do much, even driving a body around town on some automatic basis, without an identity. Having one of one's own is a natural evolution from the decision to be and the postulated agreements of what it means to operate in the space-time frame shared with others.

When those agreements are themselves put pretty much on automatic through the disavowal of knowingness and responsibility, then a question of survival identities enters into the individual's calculations about living. Should I be like Mom or more like Dad? Maybe I should borrow that tough sneer from the bully in 4th grade...he always seems to win. Mom's 'see how brave I am despite the damage you have done me' routine seems to pull a lot of weight in getting the family to vote her way so I'll keep that on reserve for when I get a husband and children. And the vicious ignorant rabid animal spirit of that dog who nearly ate me when I was seven, that obviously had much to recommend it. I put that one in the bull-pen, in case. It must have some use -- look what it did to me!

The question one tries to answer is not 'where should I naturally put my attention according to my own preference?' Or 'how do I wish to be left to my own natural insight?' Below a certain ratio of self- to other-determination (always as a result of one's own creation ultimately, however) the sense one has of one's self is one of 'losing unless one has help' and one starts looking around for the necessary crutches with which to 'be' one's way through life.

The question one starts running is 'Where can I find ways to be which will make me survive better?'

There are many variations and manifestations connected with this travail of finding a 'survivable identity'. For one thing if one is creating one's own self weak he will want to power those identities that have over-turned his own self determination; he will keep around him in facsimile form those 'bad creators' who have put him at the effect-point of their bad creations.

Some tricks for locating these, since the most effective ones are below normal awareness (since one is identified with, not just associated with them) are:

Who do you really regret having known?
Who are you most ashamed of?
Who do you most blame for your condition?
Who would you rather forget ever having known?
Can you think of anyone you HAVE forgotten having known?
Whom have you pitied most?

Or, 'What identity should be....'(forgotten, pitied, blamed, regretted, ashamed of itself??)

The answers to these if thoroughly pursued will bring to attention identities one has chosen in answer to the problem of survival. It is useful to release these to their appropriate actual moments of time.

There are actual identities which help survival: a smart person, a competent professional under whom one studied, a causative person who was on one's side in life. These, if they were really pro-survival, are better left in place because the MOST gain comes from the MOST other-determinism being returned to the being it belongs to. And the MOST other-determinism in his energy-forces is that of the 'bad cause' kept close to his secret heart by means of pictures then obscured with various forms of not-isness.

But the toughest task, to FIND the core 'bad-cause' identity one has taken on, is made hard because it is usually the identity one carries closest and therefore the one through which one answers the question.

So it takes some interesting angles of consciousness to unstick Self from this adopted Identity without alarming 'it' into putting up major defenses and circuits which avoid the whole issue neatly. A bad-cause valence will assert itself to the extent of ducking the question, in an effort to guarantee its OWN survival; even though that survival is not optimum for the being behind the identity.

Know thyself and all the rest follows as the night the day.

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