We Are Unique! The Message Is Everywhere, Why Aren’t We Living It?

Everybody is unique. Do not compare yourself with anybody else lest you spoil God’s curriculum.

        Baal Shem Tov

 Every being is an abode of God, worthy of respect and reverence.

Hindu Scripture

If you knew yourself for even one moment,
If you could just glimpse your most beautiful face,
Maybe you wouldn’t slumber so deeply in that house of clay.
Why not move into your house of joy
And shine into every crevice!
For you are the secret Treasure-bearer, and always have been.
Didn’t you know?

Rumi

Some people go through life trying to find out what the world holds for them only to find out too late that it’s what they bring to the world that really counts.

Lucy Maud Montgomery Anne of Green Gables

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

Blessed Mother Teresa

As the above quotes attest, saints, sages and even novelists are telling us that we are unique. To think otherwise is a case of mistaken identity. I particularly like how Dr. Marc Gafni says it . . .

We are each irreducibly unique expressions of the love and intelligence that is the initiating energy of all that is. This energy lives in you, as you and through you.

So why aren’t we all living as fully Unique Selves offering our gifts to the world? Why are we instead struggling with negative self-images – heads full of self-criticism and hearts full of self-loathing? More pervasive than the message of uniqueness is the message that we all carry deep inside . . . there is something terrible wrong with us. How can this possibly be?

While we can’t prove it scientifically, theorists believe that the origin of the negative and by the way, false, ideas we hold about ourselves is related to what is called the Realization or Shock of Separation (See Marc Gafni Your Unique Self and Steven Wolinsky The Way of the Human Vol. 2). I think of it as a one-two punch that hits us as we arrive on earth. The first shock is finding ourselves in a body, no longer part of the timeless and eternal dimension and second when the fusion with our caregivers dissipates and we realize we are separate beings.

We don’t remember these two shocks on a conscious level nor the fear and anxiety that go with them. Nonetheless, the transition into separate human form engenders a profound sense of loss. On a pre-verbal level it feels like we’ve lost our core.

This seeming loss of our core is experienced by the nervous system as chaos. Something is terribly wrong. In order to make sense of what’s happening and calm the chaos, we each draw a conclusion that interprets our experience. For example, “I have no core because I am worthless” or “I am all alone.” This conclusion is called the False Core Belief. The void of loss feels like something is missing and it’s because I’m inadequate, alone, stupid, too much, imperfect, a burden . . . the list is long and its hallmark is it feels true.

Because this is happening at such an early age, the False Self Belief gets pushed into the background of our consciousness. We forget not only that we are deeply connected to Source but also the conclusion we drew about why we are no longer feel connected. However as we being the “identity project” of growth and change, what emerges is a persona. Unbeknown to us, our patterns of thinking, feeling, posturing and behaving are built on the lie of that original erroneous conclusion.

Assisted by the experiences and injunctions of our family and culture, we develop a persona or False Self Pattern we present to the world as if it was a true picture of who we are. For most of us, it takes years to realize that we are pretending to be someone we aren’t. Sadly we spend many years living in fog of our mistaken identity, assuaging the void inside in various unhealthy ways . . . eating, drinking, shopping, working to name just a few. Because at some deep level we know our identity is built on false scaffolding, we feel like an imposter.

And though we have tastes of our Essence or True Self, it will never become a permanent part of our awareness until the belief and pattern that developed around it is dismantled. It is imperative to remember that the False Self configuration cannot be resolved, healed or transformed. The key is to see it clearly as “not you” and with that realization your persona crumbles allowing your own uniqueness to emerge.

Hardly any wonder then that our negative sense of ourselves is far more prevalent than truth of the words that began this blog. In reality we are each irreducibly unique expressions of the love and intelligence that is the initiating energy of all that is. We’ve forgotten who we are and we’ve forgotten that we’ve forgotten. Dismantling the False Core is the path to remembering.