You see through one identity and feel free. Then the freedom crystallizes into a new identity: “person who sees through identities.” The insight becomes a position, the liberation becomes a cage.
“Every time you see through an identity that’s limiting you there’s a chance to discover the way that this new identity also limits you.”
This is why the process never ends. There’s no final identity to arrive at. The person who says “I have no identity” has simply formed an identity around having no identity. The spiritual seeker who transcends ego has often built the most elaborate ego of all.
The healthy response isn’t despair but lightness—holding each new identity more lightly than the last, knowing it too will need to be shed.
Related Concepts
- Growth means shedding identities
- The ego resists change in either direction
- Self-improvement is self-annihilation