Who are you, really?

Your identity is just one of the beliefs we'll be challenging

Photo by Andre Mouton on Unsplash

Yesterday you read the preface to my burgeoning book. It was a personal note to give you a background of what led me to write about our reality. Today I share an overview of the ideas we’ll explore and trajectory of the journey we’re embarking on together.

******

First, the good news. You're never going to die.

The bad news? There is no you. The idea of a distinct “you” is a mere concept, one of the millions of erroneous beliefs we mistake for truth. Just as we believed in the tooth fairy as a child, as adults we have a worldview that is far more fiction than fact. Our belief in an objective reality that obeys certain rules means that anything that deviates from what we want is seen as a threat, and any part of what we idealise that changes is seen as a terrible loss. This view causes us to feel painful anger, depression and fear over the prospect of death - whether of our careers, ourselves, our loved ones, or our planet. 

Many, if not most of us, view the world through some version of the Essentialist lens first described by Plato and Aristotle. Essentialism, according to the Oxford dictionary, is “a belief that things have a set of characteristics which make them what they are, and that the task of science and philosophy is their discovery and expression; the doctrine that essence is prior to existence.” Our Essentialist outlook has us literally make ourselves believe that we can or do know who we are, who others are, what things mean, and what is important. The evidence I aim to set out attempts to challenge that worldview so we see things in a brand new light.

Underpinning my writing is a different philosophy, one that says that what we describe is not what is. It suggests our daily experience consist of a series of inexplicable phenomena that we need only observe and respond to in an ongoing flow, rather than try to pin down as certain or worse, fight against as wrong. Yet such a philosophy sounds woo-woo or New Agey to my left brain and for a long time I fought against it.

In the past I often found that when I sought solace from the painful outside world through spiritual practices such as prayer or meditation, the world of rationality continually countered my search for love, peace and joy. I questioned whether it was appropriate to live in something as seemingly small as the present moment when there were so many problems swirling around that clamoured for my attention. How could we all live in peaceful acceptance if forest fires are raging, oceans are being polluted or war is breaking out around us both abroad and in our own relationships? Mindfulness is all well and good, but my mind continued to pipe up loudly that I shouldn’t ignore reality in my search for spiritual bliss.  My ego simply refused to accept the serene principles that spiritual practices offer. So I went hand in hand with the skeptical parts of my ego to see if I could find any concrete evidence that would support a more peaceful view of life, and I ended up finding that the reality I thought I knew didn’t seem to exist.

I perused everything from research gathered through scientific methods to religious texts whose lessons derive from more intuitive places. I looked in academic journals, mainstream news and books by experts in fields of everything from journalism to neurobiology, and I’ll be presenting what I found I into three main parts.

In part one of this series, we’ll be looking at where the stories that led to our understanding of reality come from. The fallibility we find when we look closely serves to erode the strength of the foundational beliefs in the concepts that I lay out in the second section.

In part two, I choose a few of the countless beliefs we carry around with us, the ones I consider the most important and perhaps the most painful. Yet the evidence for our beliefs in separation, in right and wrong, in our ability to control, and even in life and death suggests anything but truth. The way we have tried to pin reality down into a discrete series of inviolable facts has simply been a way to support our unfounded beliefs, no more or less true than a fairy tale like Jack and the Beanstalk. 

In other words, I use facts to suggest that there are no facts. Such a paradoxical undertaking might be able to chip away the certainty of our left brain, where our self-professed rational ego resides. Once we’ve loosened the rigid holds our concepts of reality have on us, we can be open to finding ways to navigate the uncertain world that results when we let go of them.

Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti suggested that “if there is no certainty, there is freedom to look”. Part three of this series will offer ways to explore life with that newfound freedom to look.  It includes practices that allow us to look at the wonders of each moment and glide more easily through our daily lives, noticing the flow of energy we experience rather than getting stuck on everything we may currently see as an insurmountable obstacle.  

What we think of as reality is just an experience from our perspective. There may be no such thing as objective reality, or if there is, it is likely far beyond our ability to understand. When we see that reality is not what we thought it is (and perhaps not anything at all), we will be able to fully experience the present moment. Living fully in the present moment means there is nothing left of us in the next moment, which we are then able to be fully present in as well. While we can certainly feel pain, the suffering of fighting it can’t exist when we live fully in the present moment - we simply experience whatever shows up in that moment, and then move onto the next in one fluid motion. Living in the present moment answers all our questions. Or, more specifically, it does away with the need for them. It gives us a way of living with the reality we experience, without the belief that what we experience is reality. It is not that there is something wrong with believing what you experience is reality. If your experience is positive, there’s no need to change it, after all, who wants to wake up from a blissful dream? But if the experience involves suffering, as it does for many, or if the reality seems not a beautiful dream but a scary nightmare, it’s worth waking up.  

When we realize that all that we thought certain is not, we may be freed from our false identities, and clear the clouded lens through which we see the world. Instead of seeing change as a loss to be mourned, railed against or simply denied, we may see possibility. Instead of fearing death of ourselves, our children, our fellow sapiens and all the living and non living beings we are so fortunate to share this world with, we may feel gratitude for our life in the now. And instead of blaming each other, we may rejoice in a continual celebration of what is all around and within us.

Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, during an interview with cultural commentator Russell Brand, said that challenging our worldview requires  “somebody who is super curious, and somebody who is willing to not accept their own experience, no matter how compelling it is, as evidence that this is how things are”. Are you that person? Or would you like to be? If so, this book aims to help you dismantle the beliefs that may be getting in the way of experiencing life to the fullest.

There is one caveat to keep in mind when reading. In presenting these ideas I have struggled with the language to express life and death, separation and unity, good and evil, and the impossibility of finding absolute truth. Even as I attempt to challenge concepts as untrue, I must use words whose understanding we (hopefully) share. Though there is no such objective thing as “life”, I use that word to refer to what we consider as life. The same goes for words like death, reality, the world, matter and energy. Thus I am somewhat stymied in my attempt to challenge reality by the very language with which I’m describing it. I hope that you will see my rejection of these terms even while I use them as fallibility in my use of language rather than a contradiction in my meaning.  Writer Theodore Dreiser said ”Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean”, so I am trusting you, the reader, to intimate your own volumes of meaning from the shadows that are my words.

I hope what’s in these pages will help us all experience fascination and gratitude for the world we are in. To notice the miracle of existence, embrace whatever surrounds us, and respond with grace and wisdom to all that arises. I hope this book can help anyone who believes they want to make things better in the world, but is paralyzed with doubt, sadness or anger about the way things seem to be. I hope it can help people who feel their lives aren’t what they should be to see that their life, and they themselves, are perfect. When we realize the only thing that matters is the present moment we are experiencing, we can always find what we need, whether it’s the energy and inspiration to create, the freedom to yell or cry, the generosity to help others or the peace to rest. 

When we give up our belief that we know what we see, that we have the ability to control anything, that there is blame to be cast, and death to be feared, we can devote all our energies to creation. We can actively and joyfully share our own dream of paradise with the world, witness all that we can't control with curiosity, and dive into each moment with a childlike enthusiasm, knowing that, as Max Ehrmann said in his 1927 poem “Desiderata”, the universe is unfolding exactly as it should.

*******