On Being Me

I won't lie, I'm 34 and it feels a little immature to be going through the angst of "finding myself" that we generally associate with the tumult of being a college student. The questions I'm asking about what it means to be me aren't the same as they were when I was 10 years younger. In my early 20's I still had a ton of handed down, pre-conceived notions of who I was supposed to be, and what I ought to expect from the world.

I spent a good part of my 20's discovering my own shadow. I discovered that the things I feared and called evil and tried to distance myself from were in fact part of my own shadow side. The more I began to come to terms with my shadow, the more I realized that I was in fact not so different from every other living being. The more I began to draw self-identity from an honest look at who I was, not who I wished I was, or from who I was afraid to be, the more I stopped comparing myself to others.

For all 2 of you who read this, I'll admit that I continue to be tempted to compare, rank and rate myself by a measurement system based on people I both admire and loathe. I doubt that temptation will ever not be there.

The struggle I'm in now, in my mid-30's, is this: just how much am I willing to sacrifice to continue to be the real me? How much self-integrity would I trade for convenience, job-security, relevance or success? (I hate the idea of relevance, isn't being human relevant enough!?) Can a person forever resist the lure of power, status, novelty, and security as the world defines it? Conventional wisdom would suggest everyone has a price. What's mine? I don't know. Hence the angst. I can only hope that the price of being anything less than the true "me" not driven by ego, or bound by fear is so high that I'll never sell out.

Mysticism

To say something sounds "mystical" or "sounds like mysticism" means that you don't need to take it seriously. It sounds like something vague, fuzzy, ungrounded, perhaps otherworldly and irrelevant. There are various definitions of the word. In the academic world for instance, the word is not so much dismissive as it is ambiguous. The word mysticism is often defined as "union with God", and there are many religious scholars who define it that way.

Many religions have a "mystical" aspect involving meditation, prayer and contemplation. The Jesus of the Gospels certainly falls into this category. He spent extended periods in the wilderness, fasted for long periods and went into states of consciousness where he faced his demons. He spent extended time in solitude and prayer, and once some of his disciples even saw him transfigure before their eyes.

Humans throughout history have often conceived of God as being "up" in heaven; out of reach, aloof, often angry and needing to be appeased. The message of Jesus was so radical it's hard to overestimate just how earth-shattering it must have been for its time. Jesus said, "I and the Father are one." The idea that a human being not only didn't have to go to a temple, ritually cleanse themselves, and appease God with sacrifices, but that a human being could incarnate God and be in unity with God was about as radical as it gets. No wonder he was always under death threat.

The earthquakes don't end there however. In the New Testament of the Christian Bible we follow a story that shows God coming "down" to dwell in humans. Apostle Paul writes that "you are all sons of God", just as Jesus was the son of God. Our bodies are described as Temples of the Holy Spirit. Mystical? Perhaps.

The significance of all of this for me is that if God lives in me, and you, and all of humanity, then how does that change how I value human life? Does it mean that every human can show me an aspect of God if I open my eyes to see and ears to hear, as Jesus so often challenged his followers? Does it mean when I dismiss, insult or worse, become indifferent to others that I dismiss, insult and become indifferent to the God who lives in them?

If God lives in me, then I can probably hear God if I'm willing to listen. If I can be one with God, that means the creative energy of God flows through me too, if I dare tap into it.

The implications of this radical idea are endless. It means radical equality of all humanity. It means God is readily accessible. It means all of us have the divine flowing through us, and we can choose to give voice to the divine, or we can allow it to be drowned out by the voices urging us to be more productive, work longer hours, be skinnier, make more money, be more popular, be sexier, to be more rational, be more shrewd, to be less of a push-over, to be more concerned with the bottom line...

I wonder if we dare believe any of this? How would it change how I viewed myself? If I didn't need to impress anymore? How would it change how I view and treat people? If there was no more "them" and "us", but just "us"? It's no wonder that they killed Jesus, Paul and many of the first Christians. What a threat to our human way of ordering and assigning worth to each other and thereby justifying our exploitation of each other. What a threat to sexism, patriarchy, slavery, ethnic and racial superiority, social elitism, undemocratic governments, violent empires, repressive regimes and religious exclusivism! It's no wonder that we humans have "toned down" this message for the last 2000 years. But, what if it's true?