walking the sacred spiral
walking the sacred spiral
Think about contentment for a moment. If you could find your way to contentment every day, no matter what the circumstances were around you, would that increase your experience of freedom?
We identify ourselves with our roles in life: parent, employee, engineer, dancer, jock, geek, teacher, wife, and so on. We also identify ourselves as our bodies, our thoughts, and our emotions. But what if none of those is really your identity? Who are you if you aren’t any of those?
Identity is the first mastery I’m exploring in my December online class, the 5 Masteries of Freedom. I want to give you an advance taste of what I’ve discovered and what we’ll be exploring, so I’ve created a short video about Identity that you can watch as soon as you’ve finished reading this blog.
What happens to your identity when who you think you are disappears?
When I graduated from the school of ministry I knew I’d be leaving my hometown to take a church somewhere, but I hadn’t been hired anywhere yet. I wasn’t a student any more, but I wasn’t a minister yet.
I’d gotten divorced that year, and I knew that my small son would be remaining with his dad for first grade, since registration had to be completed before I knew where I was going. I wasn’t a wife, and soon I wouldn’t be a mother in the way I had been.
I knew, too, that I would be leaving my job, my friends, and the rest of my family in Seattle. All my roles were disappearing and new ones had yet to be revealed, but I was still there.
Who was this I? This person who couldn’t be described in any of my familiar ways was clearly someone, but who was she?
This is something we’ll be looking into in our first session of the 5 Masteries of Freedom. Who are we? And how does exploring our identity contribute to our experiences of contentment and freedom?
I want to be sure that I address your questions about identity in this first session. What are the two most important questions you have about this mysterious thing we call our identity? If we were to sit down together for coffee, what would those identity questions be that you’d want to talk about with me?
You can post them to me on my Facebook page in the Comments section under the link to this article, or email your questions to me at revmary@revmary.com.
I’m really looking forward to reading them!
The 5 Masteries of Freedom begins on December 1st and will run for the 5 Mondays in December from 6:30-8:30 PM Pacific Time. It will be a great opportunity for us to enter into greater life contentment and freedom together.
You’ll find information about the class and how to register for it in the class article in this week’s newsletter.
If you don’t yet receive my weekly e-newsletter, you can add yourself to the email list on the Home page of this website.
Now go and enjoy watching Video 1: If I’m Not My Body, Who Am I? And in a few days I’ll send you a link to Video 2: Can I Avoid Forgiving?
Who Are You...Really?
Wednesday, November 19, 2014