14 Identification
What you identify with is of course for the most part accidental.
Identifying with the contingent hides both our uniqueness and our unity.
Identity is established both positively and negatively; that is, not only what you think you are, but also what you think you are not.
Nothing is so bad that you could not have chosen it given the right conditions.
To identify with anything is to become false.
Identification seeks security, but finds only isolation.
What is false is separation, what is true becomes apparent when you understand what is false.
If you identify with a set of beliefs you wil1 not understand those who adhere to another set.
Identifications prevent you from realising your unity with others.
The more identifications you have the more divided you are.
Your beliefs govern the way you view the world, and so your vision is always partial, restricted.
Everyone thinks of themselves as intelligent, rational, and free – but is that the truth?
The mind that has yet to realise its origin is a mind still living in delusion.
If you are divided against yourself and against another is that not a form of bondage?
How will you find out what binds you when you are struggling all the time?
When you look closely you will see that the key to the chains that bind you are in the lock itself.
When you realise there is no escape than you have already broken the bonds;
and what have you escaped from? the tyranny of the struggle, of the being elsewhere;
the tyranny of the self that is always dissatisfied;
Freedom cannot be had for nothing – and it cannot bought either.
Freedom exists only when you go beyond division and choice.
When suppression and evasion ends you may gain clarity of mind, and then all that you have been unsuccessfully denying, perhaps it just loses its grip on you.
When you deny something you have not dealt with it, and of course at the right time it simply emerges again.
When the darkness comes into the presence of the light, where is the darkness then?
The light of self-understanding banishes the darkness of self.
We cannot say the darkness has gone here or there, when the light of truth shines then the darkness simply is no more.
Emptiness is very simple, and it comes into being when the self comes to an end.
When empty you just are what you are – without any masks.
Emptiness is a state of great clarity both inwardly and outwardly.
Do not fear to be empty, for this emptiness is freedom itself.