Moving beyond the limitations of labels, identity and other self imposed boundaries

I remember some years ago going on my first long holiday from work, to see the outback. The scenery was breathtaking, the lack of phone calls peaceful and the chance to sleep in bliss. Yet for the first few weeks I was at a loss. Who was I? I had identified with my job too much. I'd tied my self worth to it. What was my worth beyond the job? Who was I if not that identity? Fortunately I'd taken a few months off so I had time to disengage and disengage I did. When I came back to my job it no longer had the same hold on me. Sure I was still concerned with helping people who rang me in the job I administered but I had started to look beyond. I now knew I was something else than what I did.

We spend our childhood and teenage years trying to define ourselves. As we leave home we have to find out who we are as adults. What is our purpose? Now we've left home who else will love and care for us? I remember my frustration in my twenties, wondering what I was supposed to do in this life as nothing quite fit.

One day I had to wait by the side of the road with our trailer while my partner went the short way back home for a spare tire. I had no books, no one to talk to, no tv or radio to listen to. So I sat and watched the birds flitting in the trees, the breeze as it moved the grass, the color of the sky. Time dissolved and a peace I had never known merged with me. It was a first awakening of a sort, a preliminary one anyway.

This sense of boundlessness is what can be found when we let our selves go, lose ourselves in the moment of the infinite now.  There are plenty of how to instructions around the internet but really it is as simple as that. Letting go all effort, just being.

Despite the simplicity of that, once you've mastered it, it's not as easy for those still immersed in who they believe they are. One of the most famous approaches to unraveling the self is the "Who am I technique." You start by saying something like your name, where you were born, what you do. You can make up quite a long string of things like "I am Jane Citizen from Idaho, I'm a typist and I like to paint." See how that feels. Now repeat your version of this but drop off the last bit. ""I am Jane Citizen from Idaho, I'm a typist". Does that feel any different? Keep repeating but each time dropping off more of the sentence until you are just left with "I am". How does that feel? This is the "Who am I method developed by Sri Ramana Maharishi. His answer to the question was a very yogic one "‘Who Am I?’ I am pure Awareness. This Awareness is by its very nature Being-Consciousness-Bliss (Sat-Chit-Ananda)."

Sometimes how we define ourselves can be a very long sentence indeed but if we let go all the labels what we are left with is infinite potential. See:

Sadhguru - What Do You Identify With?

Yet even dealing with identities is quite an abstract conceptual exercise. And we come back to the act of simply letting go: 

Boundless View, Self Arising Meditation, Flexible Behavior