Imagine buying a brand new iPhone—shiny and new and in its original factory settings. It runs smoothly and efficiently without any effort on your part. Now, imagine that, unbeknownst to you, every night when you turn off your iPhone before you fall asleep, someone secretly adds apps to it. The apps are hidden so you have no idea they’re there. But, over time, the phone capabilities slow down a bit. There are little glitches that don’t make sense. It’s almost as if the phone is tired or sluggish. It’s struggling to do what it once did easily. The apps—hidden from view—have put kinks in the once-free-flowing system.
That’s kind of how I think of humans. We come into the world in our original factory setting. Nothing has been added to us yet so we run smoothly and naturally. There are no programs or beliefs yet; no should's or shouldn'ts, so we do whatever arises to do in the moment. No thoughts about it. No regrets of the past, no anxiety about the future. We are simply the effortless Presence of Life itself, wrapped up in a baby blanket.
But as we grow, the world begins to add things to us without our notice, just like apps on the iPhone—things like what we must do or be in order to have worth and value; unwritten rules and policies that must be followed in order to be loved and accepted; and an endless supply of elusive finish lines that must be crossed in order to finally be OK.
We are like fish in water, completely unaware that we are identifying with programming and beliefs as who we are rather than as something added to us.
We wear these identities like invisible coats. They become unquestioned truths: Being productive makes me worthy. I need praise and accolades in order to have a sense of value. My physical health is what makes me secure and OK. Other people's opinions of me must be positive in order for me to be OK. Being thin and in-shape makes me loveable and acceptable. It is important to appear outwardly happy and outgoing. Showing unwanted emotions is a risk not worth taking. I am safe because I am vigilant. I can relax as long as I am in control of all possible outcomes.
In our innocent attempts to feel a little less constrictive in these invisible layers of added skin, we learn to perform and pretend.
We keep our external image perfectly intact, even if it means abandoning our internal world completely. We accumulate masks. We people-please. We break our necks to shine more brightly than the next person. We chase goals and bucket list items as if we're running out of time. We forget how to truly rest; how to let go; how to fall into the perfect peace of sweet surrender.
After all, there is a fortress to protect, an image to manage, and life to control.
And then, thankfully, at some point, the exhaustion of all of those survival adaptations becomes too much. The people-pleasing, performing, and chasing no longer work. For many of us, the physical body begins to break down. For others, the habits and addictions that helped hold everything together begin to take on a life of their own.
Ready or not, those false identities are ready to be SEEN fully in the bright light of day, and the YOU that was there all along is ready to be remembered.
So if you are lucky enough to find yourself in the midst of a storm that no amount of pretending, performing, distracting, or numbing can fix, CONGRATULATIONS. The seeming chaos and turbulence that has crashed into your life is not here to hurt you—it is your opening. Your portal. Your opportunity to see who and what you are beneath a lifetime of added layers.
None of us were born believing ANYTHING. None of us were born believing IN anything. Our factory setting was simply Presence. Being. Aliveness.
We were the effortless flow of a river moving downstream; a tree blowing in the wind without worrying about the depths of its roots or how many leaves were falling to the ground. Before anything was added to us, we simply were. And that was enough.
So, let’s hold hands, and courageously take baby steps, one kind and compassionate baby step at a time, and let's see what is there that is native to us. What and who are we without the identities that have been added? Without the hidden “should’s”? Without the beliefs that have masked as TRUTH for generations?
What are we when we go back to our factory setting, before the world told us who we are and who we are supposed to be?
I think this quote from Alan Watts captures beautifully this factory setting…
“Perhaps the greatest illusion and the source of all anxiety is the idea that you are separate from Life; that you are a skin-encapsulated ego tossed into a world not of your choosing, doing your best to survive. But who told you that? Where did you get this idea that there is a little you inside the head, pulling the levers, thinking the thoughts, and directing the action like some spiritual CEO? You were not born with this notion. It was taught to you. And so you learned to spend your life defending this boundary between you and other; between you and Life itself. What if you are the universe expressing itself as a person…as a you…for the moment. The air being breathed, the thoughts being thought…the heart beating—these are not possessions; they are processes. When you give up the notion of control, what you are left with is not chaos but peace.”
And so we begin here. We begin in what may feel like and look like pain and suffering. We start here, IN it, being open to the possibility that it is IN the discomfort that the miracles happen—that the scales are scraped from our eyes and the layers of false identity are peeled away from our being.
Could we just notice THAT those added layers of skin exist, and that they are NOT native to us?
Our job is not to do battle with these identities, but rather to notice them and allow them to continuously point us back to the truth of our factory setting.
The goal is no longer to become the best version of yourself. That is bondage. That is anxiety. Now, the goal—if any—is to allow the worst version of yourself to be loved. It is to acknowledge that every single version of yourself deserves tenderness and grace. When every version of yourself, including the ones that your programming calls shameful or wrong, can be seen through the eyes of compassion, you are more aligned with your truest identity—with the YOU that has been there all along, just waiting to be remembered.