Identity

We are the awareness that discovers itself through the passage of time and the experiences we live.

That self-discovery drives its own expansion.

Expanding our awareness isn't about going from 0 to 100 in seconds, or reaching Nirvana. In everyday life, our awareness expands when we're able to notice that we've changed. There are things that no longer represent us. Habits, customs, ways of doing things that have expired and no longer reflect our identity.

We're no longer the version of ourselves that used to behave in those ways.

We've changed. We've grown.

Has it ever happened to you that suddenly you're not choosing what you always used to choose, and you don't know why? Or maybe someone has told you: "You seem different, like someone else," and you have no idea what that difference they're seeing in you could be.
It's happened to me several times throughout my life.

At first, since my changes weren't conscious, I couldn't register that difference people saw in me. My inner reaction wasn't pleasant — quite the opposite, I was afraid of being rejected, abandoned or humiliated over a transformation I had no idea about.

Later, by pausing on those comments and reflecting on myself, I was able to notice that I was choosing differently even without being conscious of it. Then I began to understand where those different choices were coming from. It was a shift in my needs and my desires.

Changes that responded to life experiences that had shaped me, that had had an impact on my mind and my emotions. Experiences that had transformed me slowly, because they'd been an organic process.

When I understood that everything I'd lived had shaped these new versions of me, I understood that my identity is malleable, that it can change, and that it's okay for it to be that way. It feels like I've lived many lives in a single life.

I'm not the same person I was 3 years ago, or 10, or 20. That's obviously part of growing up, but there's something deeper there too.

We change because of external causes we have no control over, but we can also change from within. We can make internal choices based on new needs and desires that arise from the inevitable experiences those external causes impose on us.

Life happens and is constant change, so it invites us to change at the rhythm of its pulse. The discomfort we feel every time the opportunity to change arrives is the sign that our identity is facing a potential change, big or small — it doesn't matter.

Because of the way our nervous system is wired, change isn't pleasant. The good news is that we can train it to offer as little resistance as possible.

That's how I've learned to do it.

Today, when I sense that a shift in scenery is going to transform my world and transform me, I try to flow with the new rhythm of life. I accompany my discomfort from many angles and I accompany myself with love, because I know it's expansion, it's opening, and whatever the lesson is, it's for my greater good.

I probably have no idea where this transformation is taking me, but the precedent is that, if I do it with awareness and my feet on the ground, I'll arrive at a new mental place of greater clarity and a scenario much more coherent with who I am: that new me who's about to be born.