Whether I am needing you, or you are needing me, it is not really a need arising for you or for me as in form. It looks like it is for different things, for different purposes; but in truth, it is all just a need to become. Whether it is: I need you to fulfil something in me, or you need me to fulfil something in you; it is all the same as both needs have nothing to do with you, but only with me. That is all.
My need to become – anyone or anything at all – is what propels me to keep searching, yearning, hoping and doing. Even if I may not find that I have a need anymore, or I may not need you to need me anymore; you will come forth to show me that I am needed in your space despite my thinking otherwise. And for that, I will be compelled to think that since I am in the role that both you and I perceive me to be in, I’d have to play that role and hence become somebody that you had expressed that you need. So even though you think that you are the one who has expressed your need to me to be someone that you need me to be, or I might think that you need me to be someone to fulfil your need – the truth is that it has entirely nothing to do with you at all, but me – for they are all still, only telling me my need to become – whether the expression of need comes from you, or me.
But does that mean that I am nobody before I become a somebody? If I am resisting to play a role as in to be a somebody to fulfil a need expressed, then I am already a somebody although I may think that I am a nobody, or a no-thing-ness. As long as I cease to move and dance with you, or anything else, it is already telling me how I have identified myself with the current state that I think I am in unconsciously; putting meaning into it hence already becoming or more rightfully, already became and attached to a state which I think I can identify with. This need causes me to classify myself once again in a specific category out of the many categories found in society, and in this identity is what makes it difficult for me to move along with you because I am clinging on to what I think I am at that moment – someone spiritual, an enlightened person, a healer or whatever when I am unable to recognise how ignorant I am at this state. The “I am” is the identification with the “I” misunderstood.
It is ironic, indeed.
I was having a conversation with my partner a few nights expressing concerns about where our marriage was heading as we seemed to be threading different paths. Not that I love him any less or more but it seems hard to meet each other eye to eye since what he says I find it mundane and what I share he finds it boring. He was very wise to observe that we will never come to an agreeable discussion about this since our perception differs. And I wondered at that point in time, who was I?
Was I, G – the wife? G – the seeker? Or G – the one who knows? Or just… not even G, watching how this storyline unfolds by itself?
It is obvious, the concern towards the marriage was from G the wife as she believes that she needs to do something to improve the marriage so that this marriage is not threatened and by that she gets to retain her “I am”-ness as a wife; followed by the need to stay on the journey resulting from the identification as G the seeker due to the need to satisfy the deep desire for truth and freedom; and to share what she had realised with her partner is the identification or “I am”-ness with G, the one who knows. All are but personalities, facades turned from the need to become arising from conditionings – all part of nature unfolding, unconsciously – simply needs to be fulfilled – the need to do something, to be someone for a purposeful purpose. An identification if you will. Nothing is a miss. Otherwise, how will life be worth living?
How do I live if I do not identify? If I am not a mom in the presence of my child, then what role will I play and how will I treat her? If I am not a wife in the presence of my husband, then what role will I play and how will I treat him? I don’t know. Is there a need to know? Why know? Because I have accumulated knowledge of how it should and should not be – a family, a marriage, a friendship – all but ideas that I had not yet inquire. But if no one had ever taught me the meanings of all that, no media has ever shown me how a family, marriage or friendship is supposed to function, then would I be less stressed, merely being, instead of needing? Being in the sense that whatever act is being performed is an inspired move without questioning, without the fear of judgement, without the whys, the hows, the whens… without the need to be validated as someone.
Is it not possible to just be instead of do? Is it not possible to do with inspiration, of what we are being moved to do, rather than the need to? We can become, but how about just being an instrument for that moment, ceasing the role when the task is done through us, and then allowing it to arise again when the conditions warrant? Why the need, especially one that prolongs a moment to another binding ourselves to become?
Allow me to share my mong-cha-cha relationship with my son and the experience I had with him. I make it clear to him that I am his father and he is are my son, and I have no problem with that. But within me I’ll question the belief on how a good father should and should not be in the way the society expects.
In another word, in the level of the world I am his father but in the level of the mind I can choose not to believe in the story and the identity of how a good father should be.
In the mind, the identity of a father exists – and that can be experienced – in the form of thought and emotion; and both of them supplement one another to form the deep attachment and strong belief of the identity of a father. What makes the thought of a father very real is when the emotion envelops and feed the thought.
It occurs to me arising thoughts of a bad father seem non-local (and keep recycling in the mind like passing clouds in the sky) but the accompanying emotions of a bad father seem local (that are trapped or suppressed and merely want to be expressed freely to be released).
Whenever feeling arise, I get it as what’s within me is expressing naturally what is true and what is not. The already always story of the not-good-enough-father is just an honest and natural expression of an imposter within.
Question the thought and stay with the feeling that comes along. After all, who would a bad father be without his emotion or feeling about it?
“The process of awakening looks like it’s about destroying ego, but that’s not really accurate. You never completely rid yourself of ego—the false self—as long as you’re alive, and it’s not important that you do. What matters is the emotional tethers that anchor us to the dreamstate; that hold us in place and make us feel that we’re a part of something real. We send out energetic tendrils from the nexus of ego like roots to attach ourselves to the dreamstate, and to detach from it we must sever them. The energy of an emotion is our lifeforce, and the amount of lifeforce determines the power of the emotion. Withdraw energy from an emotion and what’s left? A sterile thought. A husk. In this sense, freeing ourselves from attachment is indeed the process of awakening, but such attachments aren’t what we have, they’re what we are.”
-Jed McKenna, Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment
Hi Jamesy, thanks so much for sharing from your perspective.
Identity is not the problem. It is the attachment to the concepts of the identity as what JK rightfully mentioned which then ‘translates’ to what we are; thus the invitation to investigate why the attachment to identities happens.