Can I be blunt?
The world is kinda fucked up in a lot of ways. You know this. I know this. We know this. There is a lot of distortion, a lot of lies, a lot of misplaced energy and attention.
And, yes, there is a vast and wonderful and near infinite amount of beauty, truth and goodness too.
Nonetheless, the mess of the world is a tricky one. Because to be a person, to be a self, to have an identity, one must also recognize that one is connected to the world. For better or worse.
(Vitruvius Man: self/world axis—Leonardo DaVinci)
To be a self, to have an identity, to know thyself, as the old wise beings used to say, takes a lot of time. It can take decades. An entire lifetime.
It is not a process that occurs only at puberty and into adolescence. Or at age 21. Definitely not at birth or only during childhood. It can be extremely aggravated during puberty and adolescence, as one navigates inner change, inwardly and outwardly seeking answers, guideposts, compass points, landmarks and more, on this journey, this long long long journey of becoming human.
(Sketch: Leonardo DaVinci)
Identity is a vast and multidimensional process-ing. It is not fixed. It is not stagnant. At least, it is not intended to be so, and yet many things can make it feel fixed or stagnant. Trauma. Lies. Difficult conditioning. Fill in the blank.
It's like the life we have all chosen to step into in these times
is a choose your own adventure
and we have an enormous amount of freedom
ENORMOUS!!!!
to handle in this lifetime
freedom beyond freedoms
in comparison to ages, histories, epochs before this one.
In this lifetime one can change pretty much anything. One can change their name, their style, their hair, their hair color, their pronouns, their physical body can undergo any number of changes. You can tattoo your eyeballs or your entire surface of your skin. You can implant vampire teeth into your jaw and demon or goat nubs into your skull. You can make your lips and your breasts more plump. You can tuck your tummy. You can remove your penis and make a vagina and vice versa. You can change the color of your eyes. You can remove your freckles. You can whiten your dark skin. You can darken your light skin. You can be a dog in Japan, instead of a human, and spend thousands and thousands on a dog suit and go out on walks by a leash in a dog suit if you want to.
You can change your partner, your marriage, your sexual orientation, your residency, your country and more and more and more. Your diet, your thoughts, your patterns, your habits...
Identity is a massive conglomeration of moving parts and pieces, inner and outer quests, visible and invisible things, of which the world is also an integral part. If you are a plant, you are connected to the world through soil, or pot, water or rain, sun or light, weather and seasons. If you are an animal you are connected to the world. As a human you are connected to the world -in all its visibility and invisibility.
Alexandra Dvornikova
We are a self, and we are separate, but also, we are a Self and we are connected. Through breath. Through the invisibility of many many things. For better or worse. Not everything that happens in the world directly impacts us in a major way. But we cannot fully quantify the way in which it impacts us in subtle, invisible ways.
The world is messed up in many ways, in too many ways. In terrifying and evil ways. In self destructive ways. In ways that go way way back to all kinds of weird conditions imposed upon beliefs and systems and fill in the blank. and this can impact one's search and understanding for meaning or identity too.
Our ancestral inheritance plants a lot of unusual things inside of us too--of which we cannot fully ascertain, but which can be called epigenetic trauma. We are so flipping multidimensional. It is a lot of work to be a human on the planet at this time, in terms of the amount of sorting and sifting, listening and learning, becoming more and more aware and becoming more and more human.
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