Disidentification (The Practice of Non Attachment) - Teal Swan -

De-identification Hello. Identity is the condition of being oneself. A separate Self. Another word for this is ego. You cannot have a sense of Being without simultaneously having a sense of Other. Identity served Universal Expansion, because Unity cannot conceive itself. Obviously, to conceive something you have to be standing on an opposite platform. It takes "white" to conceive "black", it takes "black" to conceive "white". And so, the Universal Consciousness needed the singularity to become aware of itself. Just as a fish cannot conceive of water until it has experienced air, so was identity conceived. A more practical way of explaining this as it relates to you is that the separate Self or Ego is the necessary condition for you to experience Oneness or Enlightenment.

Whenever we associate something with our Self, we "identify" with it. It becomes part of us. We see it not as something separate from us, but as part of us, if not "us" in our entirety. So let's imagine that 'you' (the concept of You) is this. If you identify with a thought, that thought becomes you. If you identify with a person, that makes you you. This begins to become your concept of Being. This is what Attachment really is. So I'm angry... I'm going to identify with my son because he is 'my' son... This is what your personality structure essentially is, your ego.

It's a giant combination of all the things you identify with. It is a combination of things that you are attached to. Now, if any of these things that we identify with are threatened, that's when we have an extreme reaction. Let's say someone comes in and threatens someone we are attached to (or perceive there to be a threat); It's almost like it's trying to pull it, see that gravitational pull? That is the emotional reaction you are having as a result of the threat to what you are attached to or identified with. If what we have identified with is ever threatened, we experience it as a threat to our own survival, because we do not know the difference between what we identify with and our Self, so we see it as a threat.

Personal attack. One could argue that identification is okay as long as we are identified with things that make us feel good. But not so fast... Any form of Identification with something that makes us feel good, is a simultaneous identification with the opposite of that which makes us feel good. Another way of saying this is: all truly extreme positive states carry within them the seeds of the exact opposite, or potential, of their opposite polarity. For example, dignity carries the seeds of indignity. Emotion carries the seeds of disappointment. However, much more worrying is that we often identify with things that make us feel bad.

By doing so, we now have the motive to keep that alive within us, to continue to reinforce it. We need it to maintain our sense of Self. Many Spiritual Teachers will emphasize the importance of disidentifying with things that are external to us, especially other people. But in my opinion, these things that are external to us are not what cause us the greatest amount of suffering. What causes us the greatest amount of suffering is our identification with things that we perceive as internal to us. We are the most identified with the three primary aspects of ourselves. These being: Body, Thoughts and Emotions.

Each of these three aspects is inherently a different expression of Source Consciousness. We confuse these expressions with the totality of who we are. A bit like a painter who has identified so much with his painting that he has forgotten that who he is is ultimately more than his painting. In other words, we believe we are our emotions, we believe we are our body, and we believe we are our thoughts. And as such, we are so attached to them that they affect us immensely. They make us suffer. Those of us who have painful emotions, painful thoughts, or a painful body suffer to the point that life becomes absolute torment.

This is why

disidentification

is one of the highest forms of spiritual

practice

you can undertake. To disidentify with something, you simply have to see it as something other than yourself, as something separate from you. You could disidentify with almost anything. You could disidentify with your pain, for example. To disidentify with your pain, all you have to see is that your pain is like a separate Self. You can conceptualize your pain as a separate entity. And when you experience pain, you can observe that pain as if you were observing the reaction of that separate entity. This way you don't take the pain personally, because you have repudiated it.

But the most important thing you can do (as far as

disidentification

goes) is to disidentify with your thoughts, disidentify with your emotions, and disidentify with your body. You will notice that your

attachment

s to external things, people, places, etc., will simply disappear on their own, as a result of doing this. Because these external

attachment

s are filtered through our primary attachment or identification with our emotions, with our thoughts and with our body. The most difficult part of spiritual

practice

is the complementary contradictions that inherently exist within a multidimensional universe. Truths are not necessarily the same at different dimensional levels.

They sometimes contradict each other, but each is true in its own right. Ultimately, in the highest Truth, all is One. The painter is absolutely equal to his painting. So any form of disidentification is to enhance Self and Otherness within this Universe. When nothing is 'other' than you, not your mind, not your body, not your emotions, not other people, not your kitchen table, not your dogs, not the clouds, not the cement on the sidewalk... But even to see, much less experience this Truth, you must first disidentify from the very things that keep you locked into your own intense sense of identity.

The False Self is like a combination of things that you identify with. Like layers of an onion, you peel away everything you identify with, to expose the truth of Who and What you really are. Then the True Self is revealed. We do not engage in this process of 'separating ourselves from the things with which we are identified or attached' with an attitude of resistance. Doing this would simply perpetuate the problem. Instead, what we do is allow ourselves to fully become aware of the identification. And, in the consciousness of identification, at that moment we are disidentified with the very thing we are witnessing.

The best way to think about this is to think about those things that you identify with, like rose petals, that will simply, when exposed to sunlight, begin to fall off the stem. Trying to push away the things you identify with only makes you identify more. It only makes you feel rejected by yourself. Basically, you provoke an intense survival reaction within yourself, in response to your own self-rejection. You can't try to take something off without hurting yourself. When it comes to body, mind, and emotions, you cannot push yourself or disconnect from those aspects of yourself without those things being perceived internally as Self-Abandonment.

The way to begin to allow these aspects of yourself to move away from the True Self is to recognize all the things you are attached to. For this reason, I want you to take out a blank sheet of paper and I want you to write down all the things that you think you might be attached to. Keep in mind, of course, that the actual list of things you're attached to extends far beyond the one you're about to create. ~Giggles~ But this is an Exercise of Consciousness. A good way to find things you identify with is to look at all the things you identify as "Mine." For example, the moment you say "My friends", you are identified and therefore linked to them.

Also, look at all the things you would fill in the blanks with when you say, "I am ______." You are also attached to those things. For example, the moment you say, "I'm sexy," you identify with being sexy. Also, try to identify the thoughts and beliefs you are attached to. For example, a belief you might be attached to is: "Money doesn't grow on trees." Try to recognize the emotions with which you identify. The emotions you identify with are the ones that are chronic. They appear more frequently. They might even set the emotional atmosphere of your entire life. For example, disappointment could be one of them.

Additionally, I want you to try to recognize the aspects of your body that you identify with. For example, if you look fat, they identify you with being fat. Remember, anything you identify with will cause a strong reaction within you. The Ego has possessed him as part of the compound that makes up what he is (his Self-concept). Whenever those things are threatened, the Ego will enter a state of reactivity and defense. The Ego has reasons to maintain these aspects of your life, even if they cause you pain, because it sees the loss of these things as an annihilation.

We can even come to identify with the pain itself. Isn't that an interesting twist? This, of course, is one of the most painful conditions you can experience: identifying with the pain, because the Ego will seek out the pain only to reinforce its own sense of Being, its own identity. But there's an interesting little downside: People who identify with pain often end up in so much pain that, in one fell swoop, they end up disidentifying with themselves completely. It is a form of emotional suicide. This is, in essence, what happens in a spontaneous Awakening Experience. All that said, true practice begins when we become aware of what we are identified with at the moment those things arise or cause a reaction within us.

The easiest way to do this is by responding to emotions. You can use strong emotions like an alarm bell or a meditation bell to alert you to the fact that your direct and exclusive attention and presence is required at this moment. There is something you must recognize, there is something you must become aware of. By recognizing something, by becoming aware of it, you are in that moment, in the perspective of what we would consider your Eternal Self, observing the Temporal Self, rather than being purely immersed in the perspective of the Temporal Self. Instead of being underwater, you are above the surface, looking at the water.

When a strong emotion arises, face it within yourself, rather than reacting to it or reacting in a way that tries to distance you from it. When you feel it, you use the feeling as a reminder that this feeling is the Emotional Body that is activated like an electric fence or charged. As in: "It's not me." It is not the emotion itself that causes the suffering you feel, it is the fact that you identify with it that causes the pain you feel. This is all it takes to disidentify with something. Don't try to stop caring about how you feel or try to change how you feel, just acknowledge it and let it be there.

A fun little note on this is that if you use these kinds of "triggers" that happen as a result of something that you are identified with, that pushes or pulls you, in that very moment, if you can become intensely present, you have opened yourself up. to Insight. You will experience intuition and insight entering your Being as a result of being fully present with that strong emotional reaction, rather than reacting to it. For example, you might notice what triggered you and why it triggered you. You may receive information that will allow you to help dissipate that charged reaction.

When it comes to negative emotions, you can see that you identify with those negative emotions even in the words we use. For example, we might say, "I'm sad" or "I'm angry," implying that that is the entirety of who we are, instead. What we are is having that experience... of being angry, or experiencing anger. . Don't worry if disidentification causes repression or repression. In fact, disidentification is the opposite of repression. It is the moment when Choice or Free Will is introduced into the experience, so now you have the free will to choose how to express that emotion. But it's helpful to think about it this way: the moment you are fully aware and present with the emotional reaction, or with the thought that you are thinking, what happens in that moment is that you are introducing the pure light of your Consciousness into those shadows. , to those things...

So, it is almost as if the light of your Consciousness dissipates or burns them, almost like a film strip exposed to fire. By acknowledging a thought, observing it, and letting it be there, you are not actually adding any fuel to it, because you have stepped out of your participation within that thought. In other words, you were in the Thought, now you are outside the thought, observing it... This prevents the thought from attracting other similar thoughts. Basically, you have stopped the thought impulse, which stops the negative spiral. When it comes to the body, if you think that you are your body, every time your body changes, you essentially lose your identity. ...that must be creepy...

We can practice observing the body as if it were an experience we are havingtoday, instead of who we are. This is the idea behind the fact that we are a Spiritual Being having a Human Experience. When you recognize your Body (see it, feel it, experience it), in fact, at that moment, you are not your body. you are disidentified with It. You are not your Ego... You are not your separate Self... The moment you become conscious of the Ego, you are at that moment disidentified with the Ego. And what you can clearly see is what you are not.

When you are fully aware of what you are not, then the filter that separates you from the awareness of what you are is removed. And all that remains after that understanding is your True Self, your true Self. It is a state of Peace, it is a state of unbreakable Grace. Have a good week. Subtitles by: Tanya Duarte www.tanyaduarte.com