Identification, the core problem of mankind

by awareness ~ June 11, 2008

The idea of non-Identification is a stream that runs deeply in Buddhism and Non-Dualistic Vendanta.

So what is Identification exactly?  Identification is core concept in Advaita Vedanta, and also a Fourth Way Idea.  Briefly one could say that it is “allowing oneself to be defined by others and wrong views”.

Allowing ourselves to be defined by others, society, is the central problem, the core problem of mankind.

But Identification can be with anything, my car for example.

What happens if my car gets dented?  One gets very upset!  If someone bumps my car, they bump me.

But, my car won’t last forever. One day I’ll get another one, yet, we think of ourselves as the sort of person who drives a Prius, a truck, a Porsche. etc.

The list of things we identify with is endless, our job, spouse, children, parents, hobbies, thoughts, fears, addictions, vices, sports.  All of these things will come and go in our lives.  There is nothing inherently wrong with most of them, it’s just that we assume this collection of stuff is us, in toto, and that’s it. We don’t look past it, we are caught up in it.

Well, there’s a huge cost to doing that! The cost comes from the fact that we develop some really bad habits that cause ourselves and the rest of the world tremendous suffering.  It is not my point to say stop!  It’s to say that waking up is another possibility, is the present moment exists all that we need to escape from this round.

The core problem is that we are convinced that an illusion is real. The illusion is the idea that a separate self exists, the idea that the personality we call “me” is real.

Everything around us, our work, family, friends, etc reinforces it.

Because we have this error in our thinking and believing, we do all sorts of idiotic things, that appear to be mechanical.

Personally I think we have choice, but because we lack wisdom, and our brain is a type of binary engine, we don’t think creativily or see in a 360 degree panoramic view, we only think we have two choices most of the time, when in reality we have an infinite number of choices and possibilities, most of them better than the two we think we have.

We are convinced, this person, this body-mind process is “me”, and we assert that we exist as a separate entity.

Now, if we call this into question, and begin a process of paying attention in the moment, or can find the reality of the moment, Here and Now, whatever, it’s possible to have an entirely different perception, ergo, that one doesn’t exist in the traditional sense, and the egoic sense of self is a fleeting fancy.

However, this is hard to achieve. We need our egoic identity,to survive in the world. The ego never dies and never disappears. It is a fact, that is always there, and we cannot try to rid ourselves of the reality of it. But, we want to see the truth of it, not destroy it or do some sort of inner violence to ourselves. Most traditions say we need to remove ego. That’s not necessary. Rather it’s much more vital to see it as empty. Even more than that is to get the Zen joke of ego. If we see it as a fiction and grasp the paradoxical humor of our situation, that we and everyone else, are run around by a fiction. It’s tragic and funny at the same time.

To see the tragic sense of our own personal situation is the beginning of self knowledge, to embrace the humorous paradox is the beginning of freedom. But it is possible to be free from it

One could say that this freedom, inner freedom is the only real freedom.  You see if we truly understood what Identification is, we would see we are in prison.

But it’s really very simple to get free. One just has to plant a seed, that grows in a different direction than the rest of the material in our life.   The practice starts when one begins to question, “Who am I?”.

You see everything we are identified with will one day die, or end.  This is the Buddhist idea of Impermanence.  but the idea “Who am I?” is not limited and comes from the infinite.

It is only possible to be non-identified when one has discovered a way to be, live or practice, in Non-Dualistic Reality.But it’s very simple as the “Work of Attention”, as Reality, in the Here and Now is already beyond dualism!  However the art of living beyond dualism is quite another affair.  One could say that if a person could arrange one’s life to live a majority of the time in the present one would be a Master.

But I can say categorically, as one who has made the journey, that if you can discover Reality, then you will feel as though you never really lived before that time.   The discovery of Reality is the next great realm of exploration.

So coming back to the idea of Identification, we live so enmeshed in the Matrix of identification, we have not yet truly experienced Reality.  That is unfortunate.  You see the two things are vastly different.   The analogy of the matrix is quite appropriate!   Many of us have had Matrix moments.  I call this the Singularity experience.