The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. Mahatma Ghandi We too often fall prey to the delusion that our identity is rooted in doing something uniquely or supremely that sets us apart from – or above – everyone else.
Such a foundational fallacy can lead us into a lifetime of anxiety and frustration and failure. The few who do manage to clamber to the apex of this approach to identity become to us a dangling carrot that perpetuates this perversion of who we are and who we are meant to be. And meanwhile, those on top of the world looking down on the rest of us find themselves yet unsatisfied and searching for more.
This strategy is doomed to fail, because it is rooted in the centrality of the ego and its expectation that the world gravitate towards it. Happiness, the ego insists, comes only when things outward flow inward.
And yet the soul – our very ground of being – is never satisfied by what comes from without. It, as we have seen culminating in previous episodes, finds identity only in opening itself to divine presence and allowing that to flow outward to others.
Today, we are going to place these two strategies side by side to see how and from where they originate, what influences us to choose one over the other, and where they ultimately lead.
The goal today is to leave you with your true identity revealed and with safeguards in place to avoid being lost to one of the greatest tragedies you could face in this life: identity theft.
Source Scripture
Who are You? John 1:19-28
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Extras