Who are YOU?

Reclaim your born identity, your original nature, the part of you that has nothing to prove or hide or protect, where you are at peace with being fully yourself. This is your true face, the one that radiated with pure potential and light when you were a baby, before the thief called time and the thugs named judgment and conformity, left you clutching at the sculpted masks of who you think you’re supposed to be.

We tend to do our own form of faceoff when it comes to conformity. We spend so much time wearing the masks of who we think we’re supposed to be, or mindlessly wearing the masks that will gain us approval that pretending becomes second nature and we easily forget who we really are. The desire for approval is insatiable in any case. Once you decide you need it, you seek it out like a drug. There are so many stereotypes and expectations vying for your loyalty that it’s easy to forget that true joy in life is found in authenticity. One day you look around your workplace, school, family, church, neighborhood, species….and realize you’ve lost yourself in the crowd. It’s like looking in a mirror. Only not.

 It always pays to be yourself. Think of it this way. Life has so much in store for you by way of gifts and blessings, but if you make it hard to find you because you’re busy pretending to be someone else, then you can’t be surprised that you miss out. It’s like complaining about missing out on the winning lottery ticket if you put someone else’s name on the ticket.

The problem is that a lot of the time, some people don't know who they are. You have to KNOW who you are, in order to BE who you are.  You have to take some of the masks off to remind yourself who you are. Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with wearing masks. They serve an essential purpose if you use them skillfully; the parent’s mask, the sibling’s mask, the helper’s mask, the teacher’s mask, the listening friend’s mask, the competent achiever’s mask, the passionate activist’s mask, to name a few. There are healthy masks and unhealthy masks, like the ruthless “don’t get in my way” mask and the “I don’t need anybody” mask. The unhealthy masks hide your essential nature behind a façade of protection, fear and self loathing.

 None of the masks, healthy or not, fully define you. They change constantly, and are easy to mistake for the real you. So you end up spending all your time behind masks and forgetting who you are at your essence.

So who are you? And I don’t mean what gender, religion, ethnicity, class, personality type, sexual orientation, profession, enneagram combination, star sign, age or stage in life are you.

Who are YOU??

Your identity and roles change all the time. Your essence never changes. Your essence is not about what you do. It’s about who you are.  We all have our challenges, where our usual roles are taken from us, and they become opportunities to find deeper strength and identity. 

  Strip away some of the layers of who you think you are, what you do, and who other people expect you to be. Some of them are amazing skills, and fine qualities. They are awesome expressions of who you are, but they aren’t in themselves YOU. Some of them are protections and delusions. You have been wearing some of them for so long that it’s hard to tell the mask from the face. Step outside of as many identities and roles as you can, even for a few moments and you will see beyond them to your essence. You may need to go to great lengths to recover this true identity but you will survive. In fact you will thrive once you realize that most of the struggle is within yourself. But it’s worth the effort. The reward is authenticity, your born supremacy.

The incredible thing is that as you reconnect with your true essence, you discover mastery at knowing which roles to play and why; you become more natural and less attached to your changing identity. So start digging a little deeper into your essence today so that you can rediscover the agreement you made with your true nature long ago; your born ultimatum that the more authentic your life, the more joy you will experience. Authenticity is the primary quality you will look back on at the end of your days to measure the impact of your life.

When we die and go to Heaven, our Maker is not going to say, "Why didn’t you discover the cure for such and such?" The only thing we’re going to be asked at that precious moment is, "Why didn’t you become you?"