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Guest Post: Finding Ourselves in the Depth

Guest Post: Finding Ourselves in the Depth

Last updated on: July 20, 2013 at 3:27 am by Greg Richardson

Guest Post: Finding Ourselves in the Depth 2013-07-20T03:27:33-08:00 Greg Richardson

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Samantha Hall is a strong, honest, courageous woman. She works hard and tells the truth, no matter difficult that might become. I value Samantha’s willingness to be vulnerable.

I am proud to say that Samantha Hall is my friend. Step by step, layer after layer, she is one of those people who works through the challenges and pain that life can bring.

If anyone can help us find our true selves in the Depth that is all around us, she can.

Thank you, Samantha.

When Greg asked me to write a guest post on finding our true selves in the depths, I was both honored and excited to focus on a topic that is near and dear to my heart. As I began to wonder in preparation to write this post, I actually caught myself in my own private joke, because it is the ONE topic I can easily sum up in a matter of two simple words. Yet, of course, I don’t plan on letting any of you off the hook that easy though as it has taken a great deal of time swimming in my own depths over the years to find such a simple answer to one of the most common questions in life:

‘Who am I?’

I found the answer to be astonishingly simple. And although the answer I came to find for myself is amazingly simple, it has taken years of navigating through agonizing complexity in order to find it. Even now, it is something so simple that I’m only one reaction and hairs breadth away from forgetting it and stumbling blindly and unconsciously back into complexity without even blinking an eye. It is THAT simple!

From the moment we are born, from heart beats to first breaths, open eyes and first cry, it’s as if we’ve been dropped into a vast ocean of knowledge. Most of us begin this life with eyes filled with awe and wonder as we explore our new surroundings and world. We find ourselves swimming in a vast sea of new sights, sounds, and sensations. Our senses are tantalized and buzzing with massive amounts of data as our tiny brains take it all in like a super absorbent sponge, just soaking everything up as fast as we can.

In time, we begin to associate everything with words that are taught to us by our caretakers and society. The words help us communicate and articulate wants, needs, ideas, beliefs, rules, and expectations. As a result, we are inundated with information that constantly drives us on in search of ‘more’. We chase after this. Wander after that. Follow down one path until we hit a ‘Y’ in the road and off down another path we go.

We may as well be Alice in Wonderland and so down the rabbit hole we go.

All of these things are a natural and necessary part of our journey and existence here. It all helps fulfill the need to know and be known. They are for the purpose of communicating, relating, and living with one another. Initially, this serves to help us make some sense of our world and our place in it.

Over time, however, it can turn into a bit of a paradox. All of this knowledge we acquire in the form of ideas and beliefs, also has a tendency to lead us astray from the simplicity of our own nature and existence. Our access to all of this knowledge easily blinds us, obscuring our view from being able to see who we really are.

We get lost in the depths.

We lose sight of our true identity in the accumulation of labels and identities we pick up along the way. Basically, we unknowingly begin to limit ourselves and each other by the very labels and ideas we create to help us understand and make sense of our world. We become trapped in a very limited box called an ‘identity’.

• Girl and boy

• Mother and father

• Leader and follower

• Master and slave

• Fat or skinny

• Stupid or smart

• Beautiful or ugly

• Rich or poor

• Weak or strong

• Success or failure

We unknowingly limit and reduce ourselves even further by all of our beliefs surrounding gender, race, color, culture, politics, and religion. ALL of us do this, without exception. None of us are exempt. All of us experience this information confusion in our lives.

We become distracted and miss the simple point as we jump straight into a sea of complexity. A massive web of confusing theories, ideas, and belief systems.

In the beginning as babies, we came into the world naked, free, and unashamed. Over time, our true selves get covered up and burdened with too many layers of ‘clothing’ in the form of all these labels, identities, and beliefs. We may lose our sense of wonder, our joy over just being alive. We lose our precious innocence.

Why? Because we are spiritual infinite beings temporarily dwelling in finite bodies and we don’t fit very well in such tiny boxes! Our infinite nature within us continually LONGS to be expressed in our finite forms.

So what happens is our infinite nature gets blocked. Our pipes get clogged. Our creative energy begins to wane as we become shackled by the conditioning of our own minds as if someone has literally programmed our brains just like a computer. What goes IN to our brains is what gets programmed and begins to operate in the background of our life unconsciously. And will continue to do so until we experience some sort of initial ‘awakening’.

Something triggers us and helps us to start waking up. Become more conscious. We start to question things that we never thought to question before….

We get a glimpse that none of these labels and identities accurately describe or define who we really are. They may identify our roles and define specific tasks we carry out in life, yet we are not these labels or identities. However, we can become deeply attached to them for our sense of meaning and purpose. Many of us don’t realize just how attached we are to an identity until we lose one or more of them with the loss of a spouse, or perhaps a job or special title.

Some come face to face with this once they reach retirement. They no longer know who they are without their job or their title. It had unknowingly become a source of identity that held them together in life. Not their TRUE selves, merely the version of themselves they’ve learned to identity with as who they ‘think’ they are.

It has taken me years and many different occupations to come to grips with the fact that although I was all of those ‘things’, roles, and identities, I am not and don’t ‘need’ to be defined or limited by them. Those were limited to what I did at specific times in my life. Wife, mother, soldier, nurse, painter, executive assistant, etc. Naturally, I experience a period of grief between each role and job change i go through in life. Each time, I have wrestled with having to let go of a known and comfortable identity as my ego frantically tries to resist a free fall into what it presumed would be a bottomless pit of nothingness. ‘I’m now a ‘nobody’ syndrome. My sense of self deflated. Reduced.

Only to find, each and every time, that I am still ‘me’. I’m still the same person who did all of those things. Accomplished all of those things. I still have all of those experiences. And if I were to travel back in time and figuratively remove each layer of ‘clothing’ in the form of all those labels, identities, and beliefs, I would eventually return to a state of innocence.

I can imagine myself as a baby, drawing in my first breath of life. Once again, naked and unashamed. A clean slate. All of my potential already present in the tiny bundle of form called ‘Samantha’. An infinite spirit manifested in finite form.

So what did I ultimately find after all of this? What was the simple answer that I found to the question of ‘Who am I?’ Two simple yet powerful words.

I AM.

I am…here.

I am….alive.

I am….a ghost in the machine.

I am…endless love.

I am…connected to the source of perennial wisdom.

I am….part of infinite consciousness and awareness.

I am…a reflection of the feminine aspect of the divine in earthy form

I am…the little boy in grade school that used to get teased.

I am….the homeless person on the street corner.

I am….the woman that died while I was taking care of her as a nurse.

I am…a starving child in Africa.

I am…the abused children here in America.

I am….compassion, mercy, and grace.

I am….you.

I am….a single drop from the vast ocean we call the universe.

I am…a spark of the divine.

I am…a ray of light.

I am….truth.

I am….whatever I need to be.

I AM.

Now I certainly don’t mean to imply that I am claiming to be the Creator of all the heavens and the earth. Not at all. Yet I know that I come from this source. However you wish to define the infinite and source of all that IS. I am part of it all. I am connected to it. I do not have an all knowing conscious understanding of this power and presence in this earthly body. I cannot tell you anything about before I came here. I cannot tell you anything about what will happen to me after my body dies. I can only say with complete confidence that right here and right now.

I am.

And so are you.

You can read more of Samantha’s reflections on the power of vulnerability and leadership at her website, TweetConnection.com, or follow her on Twitter at @Samantha_S_Hall.

[Image by Samantha S. Hall]

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