Twelve Facets of Reality

Author(s): Chitrabhanu
Publisher: New York Dodd Made & Company

Page 77

In Search of the Incomparable
55
It is a process of separation. You are not that with which you have identified. Your real Self cannot be identified with anything. It is unique.
Ask yourself, “What are those things with which I have identified?” You can know what they are by observing your reaction when you are required to live without them. If you have created identity with something, and that something is taken away from you, you experience great pain. In that loss you feel loss. In its destruction you feel destruction. In its decay you feel decay. In every dependency you are inviting pain.
Observe what happens when you identify with something. You turn it into an idea. Then you become a prisoner of the created idea. You want to maintain it at all costs. And that is what people do. They kill for an idea. Not only that, they die for it. All the isms, patriotism, sectarianism, dogmatism, are nothing but a camouflage for self-punishment. Holding onto ideas, we punish ourselves. But we have not come into the world to punish ourselves. We are not here to be angry and separate from other human beings. Being angry, we hurt ourselves. The idea behind this philosophy is to be free from pain, to be healthy.
So contemplate how many things you have bound yourself to: racial, cultural, or religious labels, possessions, sensory objects, relatives and friends. See that by holding onto them, instead you are caught. By trying to make them yours, you become a prisoner to them. Stop punishing yourself. Disidentify, untie, and free! Why create attachment to things which are on the road to decay? Ultimately they depart from us or we depart from them. When this happens, there is inner pain. Why? Because identifying with them, we keep them deep down in our subconscious, and when they go along with the process of nature, our clinging mind feels the loss.