The search for our true identity is a long journey that at times seems to fade into the opaque fog that cuts off our vision. Sometimes our identity seems so clear, sometimes completely blurred. I realized how the name, the label we put on ourselves, changes not our being, but the way others see us. Am I an anthropologist or a nomad? These names are like revelators that must tell the other how to be with us. But that is just the look of the other. In the end it is not us.
So who are we? Since I have been on the road again, I have noticed an interesting transformation. I had noticed it before, but this time it is even clearer. In my way of life, there is hardly any mirror. I can’t observe my reflection at every moment. Try to count the number of times your face or body appears in a mirror in a day.
This mirror shows us the outside, it teaches us to look at our body from the outside, and often to judge it. It is so tempting to attach an appreciation directly to it in an emotion that becomes either comfortable or uncomfortable. On the road, sleeping in a tent, the mirrors are absent. No reflections for days. Instantly, the gaze changes. It turns inwards. The question of “how do I look” becomes “how do I feel?
How do I feel this morning? Beyond my appearance, I can feel my body from the inside, feel the imbalances, the tensions or on the contrary the lightness that emanates from my heart in joy. There is no judgment on the outside, there is simply the acceptance of what is. And in this welcoming, there is a true respect for the body for what it allows us to live. It then becomes the place of human experience, this sacred temple that opens the way for us to experience a whole range of sensations and emotions. By listening to our body from the inside, we open ourselves to feel what lives inside us. We step out of our beliefs, out of the code of society and fashion, out of the limitations of our family lineage to simply experience this body, our perceptions, our sensations, our emotions. We are the experiment.
Yet beyond this inner look, I also feel the many identities within me, as if I could separate myself into a puzzle. I had the impression while being in Switzerland, that certain people or places made vibrate a part of my identity, a part of me, leaving the others to sink. From one place to another, my identity seemed to transform to reveal only a part of myself. Nayla also felt these parts asserting themselves and being silenced, as in a theatrical mosaic in which we do not really control the roles. Yet even if parts of us are revived by a person or an experience, we are not that single experience. I felt then how important it was for me to bring together all these identities that create me into who I am today. It is only by unifying all these parts that I am this multidimensional being. And in the vibration of this multidimensional being, I am fully me in the present moment. I am fully me in this physical body, connected to the depth and power of my being that reveals itself beyond space and time. Then I feel my true presence in the greatness of the universe, of a personality that fades away in surrender to what is.
