Identity

On today’s post, I want to talk about identity. Sadhguru highlights the importance of having an identity bigger than yourself (‘read here‘). Essentially, your intellect functions around your identity. So the broader your identity is the better it is for you and everyone else around you. How could this be you say? I will break it down into a simpler analogy.

Let’s say you identity with a particular team in a game of soccer. During the tournament, your more likely to be involved in watching the games where your team is playing. If your team wins, most likely you would be thrilled and quite happy. If they lost, the opposite is likely to happen. If you identify with the love of the sport itself or purely enjoy soccer without favouring any team in particular, you could watch any soccer game with the same level of involvement or not.

Now let’s say you were at a game with all 3 of those people next to you and one team won. Next minute the two persons who had opposing favourite teams started arguing and things were escalating towards a fight. Who would be the most likely person out of the 3 to be the mediator or peace maker to help de-escalate things? The 3rd person. The other two would probably be too caught up in their emotions and if left to themselves the conflict would result in a fight until someone or some people got hurt really bad.

So how is this relevant to what we were talking about earlier? A lot of the world’s problems are caused by a limited identity. eg. My country vs. your country or my race vs. your race or my religion vs. your religion. When it comes to sports, it’s just a game and most people are good sports (excuse the pun) so a fight is unlikely to happen. However, you can see how having a limited identity can result in wars, terrorism, and other major problems in the world. Opt for a global identity instead, it will be better for the planet, others and yourself.

I have opted for a cosmic identity (more on this later). What kind of identity will you take on? Choose wisely.