What If “I Am” Was A Complete Sentence?
I don’t think that anyone would find it unusual to hear that the topic of “identity” is something that finds its way into the small groups, the 1:1 bereavement work and writing courses that I lead and even onto the mat in weekly yoga classes. In fact, most of the suffering we face in life is connected to the idea of accumulating, maintaining and preserving the idea of who we are, what we stand for (or against) and what we are capable of. We perhaps proudly identify as students throughout our lives, and if we are a student who gets high marks, we readily add that modifier (straight A’s, 4.0)…as we take on hobbies and learn new skills we tout (as we have the right to!) each accomplishment or area of passion that allows us to feel…well, like “us” (writer, DIY’er, yogi, adventurer, lover of the classic Arts). We hold tightly to our roles in the lives of others, friends, employees, partner, wife, mother, daughter…the list goes on and on, as do the opportunities for suffering.
Where am I going with this? I am taking the position that there are two main reasons that all of these ideas cause us suffering…love and ego.
Love, because we truly love the people, hobbies, roles and expansion of knowledge that are parts of us, but also, because loss is love in a different form. When we lose a role, a loved one, a job…when we trade a title for a new, and possibly undesired one (wife for widow, healthy for unhealthy), we are experiencing a loss and whether it lands in a small or large way in our psyche, we are grieving.
Ego, unlike the negative connotation we assume it holds, is merely our striving to understand ourselves and to develop meaning and purpose from within this very human experience of ours. We reach a point of accomplishment or of self, that feels right, or good, or like the best possible outcome, and we want it to stay that way FOREVER FOREVER AND EVER. When our sense of self is in jeopardy…when something doesn’t feel like it matches what we once decided was absolutely true about ourselves, we may experience panic, shame, anger, denial, anxiety …oh, and grief. This can be anything from our clothing size going up (internal dialogue…No! You can’t be this size), to our appearance and age changing (internal dialogue…you can’t be gray, or wrinkled, achy, any less capable or attractive than you once were) to over-cooking the protein with dinner (internal dialogue…No! We are supposed to be a GOOD cook…and perfect in everyway… : ) ).
So you see, our ego, when it joins forces with love, can prove to be a powerful and cunning arch-nemesis to this other state that we constantly long for that is named PEACE.
The Yoga Sutras provide some beautiful guidelines for this very human dilemma….and don’t worry, it doesn’t involve releasing matters of the heart or the ego. The Sutras remind us that we are constructed of two selves…the Seer self (permanent and likened to the soul) and the Seen self (impermanent, often suffering and perfectly imperfect in human form). Our Seer self, unbothered by love and ego, can serve as a tether, as safety gear, for all of the climbing and exploring that we choose to undertake.
The hypothetical safety gear is the “I Am”.
“I Am”….the epitome of unconditional love and belonging. We belong, just because we exist. Period. We are love and are loved, just because we exist. We are sacred, just because we exist. We have nothing else to prove. We are not loved because we are good and talented, skinny and well-moisturized, hard-working and because we have kept our sourdough starter alive for 3 years now. It is like the most innocent love between parents and a freshly born child…the child has accomplished nothing of significance yet…they merely exist…and that is enough.
We lose sight of this as we age. We seek to embody this kind of unconditional love in our relationships with our partners, from our parents, and from all places outside of us…when we don’t even regard ourselves in this same way.
Suffering at it’s best worst.
What do we do? We keep climbing and exploring…traversing new paths, loving new people, adding to our roles and accolades….but first….we check our safety gear. We establish an understanding, within ourselves, that no matter what goes “right” or “wrong” we are enough. When we are new climbers, we read the safety manual, we check, double check, triple and quadruple check that rope, and once it’s steady, we keep going. Soon, we trust our understanding of the gear, of the tether, and we don’t need the manual too often anymore…instead of four times, we check once, maybe twice, before venturing outside of ourselves.
We find peace more intimately than we have before because it is permanent and always available for us to practice connecting to.
THIS is the study of Yoga.
“It is like going down into a tunnel with a life-rope tied around the waist and one end of the rope tied to a peg outside the tunnel. Whenever there is any danger, you can just shake the rope and get pulled out. In the same way, a part of your mind is tied to (God, higher power, your Seer self) through your mantra (I Am.) while the other part is engaged in worldly pursuits. You dive deep to get all of the pearls you want to gather: name, fame, money, position, friends, anything you want. You need not stay away from anything as long as you do not lose hold of the rope.”
Sutra 1:28
