The Real Problem You Are Having: Misidentification
Who is left when you are stripped of everything you thought was you? How Boundless became a journey back to the True Self. Plus, practices for coming home to the True Self
In Boundless, my memoir that publishes in the fall of 2024 (Atmosphere Press), I am stripped of all I think to be me. I am empty-nesting, but for me, as a single mother of twins, it’s an extreme sport with a snowboard-level thrum of danger. Two-thirds of my family will leave at once.
Goodbye, being an active mother, the leader of a household, someone who has a family life.
Midway through the book, I can proudly say that I achieved the most-emptied empty nest in America. After moving across the country and back in one summer, I got spit up back at the shore of the house where I raised the twins. All that remained for me there was a leaky air mattress, my diploma from my MFA in Writing and five matching bar stools that stayed with the house because they felt more loyal to it than me. For three weeks, I waited for all of my worldly possessions to find me again as Atlas Moving took its sweet time.
Goodbye, all my things. I had a lot of things. Some of them were useful, like a bed. Most of them were useless, like me.
At the outset of the story, my career as a journalist is in a death spiral. Only to receive a great opportunity to break the glass ceiling that turns out to be a death blow.
Farewell, noble career. I had so many dreams about you.
At the crisis point of the story, I am at the brink of losing my house and my retirement savings. A wild adventure that I call “The Two Dimitris”—more about that in the book—brings the threat that I may lose my car.
Post-it notes that remind me of my True Self
Boundless is available for pre-order!
My memoir about how we are always becoming someone new is arriving with perfect timing -- on a day of rebirth, Winter Solstice, which happens to be my birthday. Mark the date -- 12.21.2024! Read about it here. Get on the mailing list here.
Order it here!
BOOKSHOP - proceeds go to Bookworks, an independent bookstore in Albuquerque
Come on over to carolynflynn.com and sign up for the mailing list to get news about Living Boundlessly, Story Catalyst writing craft classes and Uncommon Hours productivity for creatives. Get a free downloadable book club discussion guide for Boundless at carolynflynn.com.
And now, a conversation with the False Self
The False Self cares a lot about cars. It cares about furniture and coffee makers. Beds and houses to put them in. Careers and salaries and banks to put the salaries in. It cares about roles and resumes.
The False Self likes containers.
The False Self is not merely the ego, but it can be helpful to begin talking about it that way.
The False Self will tell you that you are your looks, your career, your house, your car, your body, your family, your friends, your country.
It will tell you that you are the things you own, and you need other things you don’t own and now must buy so you can continue being the False Self that you have constructed.
It will tell you that you are your thoughts. Your beliefs. Your feelings.
It will tell you that you are your reputation, what people say about you and what they know about you. It will tell your resume is you.
Also, your followers. Above all, your followers.
Congratulations on becoming you, the False Self says, then warns: This all falls apart if you don’t have followers.
It will tell you that you must maintain all of this at all costs.
Here is where great suffering lies.
The good news: If you know where the problem begins, you can know where it ends.
It takes a lot of effort to maintain something that is False.
But then…when I’ve got nothing, there still is something left. The True Self. The Self to which you can do no harm. It is the essence of you. The light that will never go out.
Left only with the True Self, suddenly it all feels so sturdy. In one scene in Boundless, I start posting sticky notes on the wall, replotting my novel. I am these words. Words and breath and soulfire. That’s what is left when everything else falls away.
The True Self is the pure life energy that is always in you, animating you, making you you. It is the ray of light of Creation. It holds you as the Eternal Loving Presence. It’s your soul, if you want to think of it that way.
The great suffering is misidentification.
Who would you be without your hair, your lips, your eyes? Who would you be without your house? Without your family? Your friends? Your reputation? Your clothes, your car, your mobile phone case that announces your personality? (My phone case has sunflowers and red roses, which may or may not say I’m spicy and sweet, and may or may not matter.)
We choose what we identify with. That choice can elevate us or destroy us.
Misidentification is the problem.
Antique pink roses and a contemplation candle
Practices for getting back to the True Self
Practice higher energy frequencies—love, compassion, tenderness—because they dissolve your lower fear-based energies. In the moment, this practice can release you from suffering thoughts.
Emanate it. When this becomes a practice, it becomes a way of being in the world. It is how you show up. It’s what you give to others. It’s what you emanate. Now, you are emanating the True Self.
Let yourself see your vanities and judgments. Allow yourself to see how petty they are. Are you astonished that you gave power to these thoughts and beliefs? Right now it’s so perfectly clear how inconsequential they are. Act from that new awareness.
Get rid of some things, many things. Err on the side of radical shedding. Lean into a maniacal delight at watching it all go away. Trust you can get by without these things. If you truly need them, they will find you again or you’ll find them on Amazon.
A meditation practice, paired with this new understanding of the True Self, False Self and the suffering of misidentification, will sustain you through the difficult tests the False Self will throw at you.
Fundamental to a mindfulness practice is establishing that there is a consciousness that is observing your thoughts.You are not your thoughts. If you can observe that you are having a thought, something else must be doing the observings. That is your consciousness, and you cultivate your awareness of it when you practice meditation, even if you practice clumsily, as I do.
You and the Eternal Loving Presence are witnessing those thoughts. That’s your True Self.
And remember, you can do your True Self no harm.
Contemplation is a way of life, and this is how it is distinct from meditation practice. Contemplation is the embodied practice of a heightened awareness of God. Recent research about mindfulness meditation has yielded a new term, “trait mindfulness,” and this comes close to what contemplation is.
Contemplation deepens the practice of mindfulness. It is living into the intention to share with God the work of creating your true identity. As Thomas Merton wrote in New Seeds of Contemplation,
“Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.”
