Dogs don't "know" who they are. They're dogs. I bet they don't think to themselves: "I'm a terrier. I'm black and white. I'm gaining weight and need to go on a diet. I live with some nice people in a good part of town. I've been to Obedience Training and have a certificate that says I'm a good dog. And I AM a good dog. I come when I'm called, unless I'm chasing a squirrel. I sit, I stay (for a little while) and I'm a good companion."
Dogs are, well, dogs engaged in the act of being dogs.
We are another story. We don't know who we are either, and that's because we believe in our labels.
Often we let them define us. Our color, our clothes, our income, our education, our religion, race, country of origin, country where we live, people we work with, people we socialize with, etc. etc. all are often used as personal definers. If we cling too much to our defined identity, we can become rigid and closed off from all the other possible ways of living and being.
An extreme example might be a person who says they are a vegetarian, and are so militant about it that they starve to death instead of eating an animal. They are so tied to a mental construct of what the "right" thing to be is, that they ignore the life events that surge around them that might makes their choice "wrong". Or, for example, the parents who won't let the medical establishment help a sick child because they don't believe in doctors, and, as a result, the child dies.
These are very extreme examples, but in small ways we, too, might be sabatoging our best choices at the moment because our ideas about who we are are in opposition to that choice. We are not flowing with life, we're trying to live life based on mental constructs.
We might fall in love with someone of a different race and/or religion, but be unable to marry them because of our, or our families, prejudices. We may agree with a presidential program, but be so vested in our party's beliefs that we ignore our better judgement for the good of our political group. We may shun another person that we secretly like in order to please the peer group that we identify with and yearn to belong to.
All this is self-sabotage. When we do this, we teach ourselves that we can't trust ourselves.
In order to truly know who we are and live our truth, we have to ignore what we've learned to be and follow our hearts to our true nature.
Lose your ID tags; the ways you define yourself, and find your heart. Get to know yourself as you would a new friend, and find our for yourself, without outdated identifiers, who you really are moment to moment, now and now and now.
Ask yourself, "Who am I?" and answer that question without using some sort of label. This takes practice, but as you do this you start to feel firmly grounded in the essense of yourself. When you feel comfortable in your own skin, ask "What does the I that I am at this moment want to do, be, or have.
When you answer the first question, you've truly found YOU. When you answer the second, you'll experience exactly what it is to flow with life.
Love, Kristine
