A lot is made these days about thieves who steal the identity of others. As well it should be, when you consider that Americans who were victims of such crimes suffered more than $24.7 billion in direct and indirect losses in 2012 alone. That’s more than $10 billion more than the losses incurred due to burglary and car and other property theft that same year. More than 16.6 million Americans were victims of such identity fraud. Two thirds of these people suffered direct financial loss: on average $9,650 per person when personal data was misused, $1,003 on average when credit card fraud was involved. These statistics were supplied by dailyfinance.com.
However, there are no statistics compiled on the direct and indirect losses suffered by people because they have ignored or misrepresented their identity, but the number is far greater than 16.6 million. I know that some of you are scratching your head and asking yourself, “Whatever is Cary talking about?” What I’m talking about is actually very simple - namely, your true identity, and the remembering of it, or more specifically, the living from it.
Put another way, you’re the one stealing your identity every time that you say that you are father, mother, husband, wife, employee, entrepreneur, tennis player, etc. In other words, every time that you cite your religion, political affiliation, or one of your social roles as who you truly are, you misrepresent yourself and ignore your real identity. I’m not suggesting that you’re not a wife or mother, or husband or dad; sure, you are. Clark Kent was a mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, but he was also Superman.
Who You Truly Are
You might be a mild-mannered reporter or a banker, baker, or candlestick maker, but you have a super self, too. It’s your higher nature, your higher Self, and it’s beyond your perceptions, your thoughts, your feelings, your ego - it’s the Transcendent within you. Or as the old Coca-Cola television commercials used to say, “In the back of your mind/what you’re hoping to find/It’s the real thing.” This “real thing” is your true nature, your reality, your secret identity. I say “secret” because at the moment, you’re not aware of it, so that your identity is a secret to you. The experience of your identity, even for a second or two in meditation, for example, brings deep peace, serenity, and bliss. Living out of this higher Self on a 24/7 basis, which is what we call Enlightenment or awakening, or liberation, or Self-Realization, brings a peace that lasts long beyond those few seconds - it’s a peace that doesn’t go away, ever.
So you steal this identity every time that you say things like:
“I’m nothing.”
“I’m stressed out.”
“I’m military.”
“I’m ADD (alcoholic, anorexic.)”
No, you’re not. You might have attention deficit disorder but, I assure you, are not those diseases. Consider the Spanish language and its more intuitive understanding of my point. If you’re living in America and your stomach gurgles, you say, “I am hungry.” But if you’re Hispanic and hungry from Barcelona to Bogota - you say, “Tengo hambre,” which translates literally as, “I have hunger”. Spanish might have an intuitive realization of a higher “Life 101” teaching - namely that what follows the words “I am” is profound.
When Moses stumbled upon the burning bush and confronted the Higher Power of the Universe, he asked Him/It what Its name was, and the answer came booming back, “I AM.” (Exodus 3:14) In the Vedic wisdom of India, there’s a well-known expression, “I am That”. That, in this case, refers to the unbounded consciousness that is your true nature at the transcendental level of your mind. Popeye himself seems to have grasped this deep spiritual point. When asked to identify himself, the great hero says, “I am what I am and that’s all that I am, I’m Popeye the Sailor Man!”
It’s important to know this but it’s more important to experience this, to be this. That’s where spiritual practices like Transcendental Mediation and Higher Self Healing Meditation come in, because they bring about such contact. I cite each of these because I know from experience, having taught the former from the ‘70s through 2010, and the latter since then. And because your true Self is your essential nature, experiencing it, in truth, should be simple to do. For what can be simpler than to simply be who and what you are? For as my favorite poet, Walt Whitman, wrote, “What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me.” Note the capital M for me. And the experience of your true identity, your true I, and my true Me, occurs in meditation absolutely effortlessly and absolutely delightfully. Oh, and one other thing: this identity can never be stolen from you.
