HAVE YOU TRULY MET YOURSELF…

In these times, there is loud and widespread encouragement to transform ourselves. To transcend ourselves, even. But I find myself wondering…

Are we being asked to *change* before even knowing who we are?

The personal development arena hands us a formula something like this:

• Identify your limiting identity.

• Break the old pattern.

• Release the former self.

• Install the new identity.

• Become the person you were meant to be.

I do understand the appeal. I myself have many times been enamored of the idea of “presto-change-o” becoming someone else, someone superior, someone more mastered than I actually am.

Truth is, I am endlessly fascinated by human potential. I adore contemplating what we might become, via igniting capacities we have, but which we haven't yet discovered or developed.

And yet… methinks it’s also worth asking: have we ever actually met the person we're being asked to change?

Because we humans are already remarkably capable of living at an arm’s length from ourselves. Many people reside in a state of subtle rejection of self, as a default. 

We have ideas about who we are, but also of who we “should” be. We perform a version of self that appeals to us and that pleases others. We live out a story about why we are the way we are. We have taken on identities we've inherited, adopted, defended, or outgrown.

We can become so accustomed to thinking about ourselves that we mistake it for knowing ourselves. But how well do we actually know ourselves?

And then, before we've had any real, meaningful opportunity to become acquainted with the person who's actually here, we're invited—or more like cajoled—to become someone else.

What if the self we're trying to transcend is a self we haven't even met yet?

What if some of the very things we're being encouraged to overcome contain information for us that we haven't yet taken in? What if we’re being asked to let go of adaptations we’ve made that we haven't yet understood? What if we’re being asked to reinvent ourselves prior to claiming capacities we have within us, but haven't yet recognized? What if we’re being enticed by gurus to walk away from bounty we don’t even realize we have?

Of course, within all of us, there are habits worth breaking. Patterns worth changing. Identities we've genuinely outgrown.

But I find myself wondering… whether a desire for personal transformation might sometimes begin somewhere other than dissatisfaction with who we are. Yes, surely it could begin somewhere other than rejection of who we are.

Perhaps it could instead begin with curiosity.

Or deeper self-recognition. Or deeper self-love.

Or at the very least, with a willingness to encounter ourselves more fully, before deciding what needs to change.

Because accepting ourselves need not be the opposite of transforming ourselves.

Acceptance may, in fact, be one of the conditions that rightfully precedes transformation.

And what if it turns out that we don't have to diminish the person who is already here in order to honor the person who might emerge?

So before asking: Who do I need to become?

Perhaps there's another question worth spending a little time with.

Have I truly met myself?

🗝️🌀

Love + Oneness,

Naomi