Dismetaidentificationism

Overcoming Identity Addiction

Realization

• In order to overcome identity addiction, you must realize that your identity is not who you really are. This realization is the key to the escape from suffering.
• Realization vs. Knowledge
  • I chose the word "Realization" intentionally because of its root word: real. Knowing or believing that your identity is not really you is not enough; it must seem real to you. Knowledge of spiritual concepts is a good start, but ultimately, it is not enough. The history of my spiritual growth is littered with instances in which spiritual truths that had just made sense to me before finally seemed real to me. After reading through the information on this website, you will "know" about spirituality, but it probably won't seem real to you yet. There are a few techniques and forms of meditation that will hasten realization, but ultimately, you must come to it in your own time via contemplation.
• Realization Techniques
  • Mental Focus
    • This technique is useful for realizing that you separate from your thoughts and emotions. To practice this technique, you find a comfortable position and sufficient time in which to remain still and you focus on watching what goes through your mind. If you find that you've become lost in your thoughts instead of watching them go by, just return to watching them go by. There is no need to judge yourself for not practicing this technique perfectly; after all, judging yourself is defining yourself through an identity as a "novice" or a "failure". With this technique, you realize that your thoughts and the emotions that they occasionally evoke are independent of you and thus not yours.
  • Experiential Focus
    • This technique is useful for realizing that you are separate from your body and emotions. It is unfortunate that what you must do in order to overcome physical and emotional suffering is the opposite of what your natural inclination most likely is: that is, you must accept your pain and face it instead of running away from it.
    • Whenever are in physical or emotional pain and remember to practice this technique, do so by:
      • relaxing and accepting the pain. Just allow it to be, because you can't make it go away immediately. Surrender to the fact that is it there and to whatever situation seems to be causing it. This is not to say that you should allow a problematic situation to go unresolved, only that you should accept the situation until you've handled any suffering of yours that resulted from it.
        • Of course, this is not to say that if you need first aid or other medical attention, that you shouldn't seek it; you should seek it! Experiential focus is an effective way to cope with the pain if one has the hang of it, but it isn't a substitute for medical intervention.
      • focusing on observing the pain directly to the exclusion of thought. Where does it hurt? What hurts? How does it hurt? These questions are meant to focus your attention; they are not meant to be answered in words! Observing is simply that, observing; the mind is quiet. Simply experience and explore the pain with curiosity as if you'd never experienced it before. In this way, you realize that, altho' pain is unpleasant, it doesn't necessarily lead to suffering or discontentment. There are two major types of thought that are likely to interfere with your attempts to focus on the experience of pain:
        • Explanatory
          • These are thoughts about why you are in pain. Dwelling on the reasons for pain is especially damaging in the case of emotional pain. If you are identified with your mind and emotions, your thoughts will amplify your unpleasant emotions, which will in turn make your suffering even worse. Even if your pain is physical, your thoughts about why you are in pain can generate emotional pain in addition to the physical.
        • Consequent
          • Consequent thoughts can either be descriptive or judgmental. Thoughts which describe the pain are problematic because they reinforce the notion that the sensations that you feel are pain. By failing to describe them to yourself or others, you may find that the sensations, as unpleasant as they may be, don't seem as bad as they once would have.
          • Judgmental thoughts about pain are reactions to it. Often these thoughts are about how you hate "feeling this way", or how you "shouldn't have to" go through something. Thoughts such as these only serve to make emotional pain worse or add emotional pain to physical pain.
      • It is likely that even if you try not to think about your pain, such thoughts will cross your mind anyway. This is okay so long as you do not dwell on them. Do not let them distract your practice of experiential focus. Let the thoughts happen, then let them go and return your focus to the experience of pain.
    • You may wish to do this a little at a time at first: wait 15 minutes before opening the medicine cabinet; wait an hour before drowning the pain in alcohol, or whatever you usually do to kill or temporarily avoid pain. Use a stopwatch, and while you're waiting for it to sound, practice this technique.
    • It is important to note that even if you practiced this technique successfully, the painful emotions and/or sensations would still be there and you would be just as aware of them, if not more so. You wouldn't have fought them and won; you would've just realized them for what they are: sensations and nothing more. However unpleasant they might be, they would no longer bother you.
  • Rethinking
    • This technique is useful for realizing that you are not your identity. Whenever you think a sentence with the word "I", "me", "myself", rethink the thought again, but replace the first person singular pronoun(s) with your name, or even just "it". Similarly, "my" and "mine" can be replaced by the possessive form of your name, of even just "its". In this way, you realize that you are not who your thoughts suggest that you are.
  • Sapir-Whorf
    • One of the more idiosyncratic techniques that I used to hasten my own realization was to invent a specialized language for that purpose. The language had a simple grammar and a small vocabulary and thus was very easy to learn, but not very useful for communicating. But it wasn't designed to facilitate communication, it was designed to facilitate realization. During the translation process, a number of implicit misconceptions which perpetuate an illusory view of reality are removed (along with most of the substance of the sentence) and a number of conceptions which could facilitate realization are explicitly introduced. Thus, the energy put into translation is redirected into generating realization by the structure of the language itself.
    • I don't suggest that you use this technique, but rather I present it as an example of how diverse realization techniques can be and to encourage you to create and use those techniques which work best for you.

Awareness Development

• In order to overcome identity addiction you must not only be able to recognize your identity, but recognize it in time to prevent it from interfering with your life. This requires awareness. The below techniques of awareness development are just suggestions; ultimately, you must discover which techniques work best for you, whether they are on this list or not, whether they are someone else's ideas or your own.
• Techniques of Awareness Development
  • Ritual
    • Pick an activity that you do daily, and at that time, check to see if your identity is influencing your life by practicing one of the realization techniques above.
  • Regular Interval
    • Set your watch alarm to go off every so often, and when it goes off, check to see if your identity is influencing your life by practicing one of the realization techniques above.
  • Buddy System
    • If you have a friend who is also developing awareness, you can remind each other to be more aware of identity, especially at those times when one of you can easily determine that the other has slipped back into a state of unawareness.
  • Planned Awareness
    • If you find that a particular type of situation causes you to act egoically on a frequent basis, you can plan how to handle it with awareness. You might not succeed the first time, but you will have plenty of opportunities to improve, and to reflect on how to improve.
  • Red Flag
    • You can plan to let unpleasant emotional and physical sensations alert you to when you need to be aware of how your identity is influencing your life.
    • The good thing about this technique is that it enables you to build the ability to become aware at those times when you most need to.
    • The unfortunate thing about this technique is that it's difficult to practice: when you're in pain is when you are most likely to be completely unaware or to simply not care about awareness.
• Stages of Awareness Development
  • Never
    • This is the initial stage of awareness development, mainly because it is the lack of awareness development. In this stage, you never see how your metaidentification affects your life. However, if you're reading these words, you're probably already past this stage.
  • After
    • This second stage of awareness development can be discouraging. In this stage, you only see how your metaidentification has affected your decisions in the past, and not how it is affecting your decisions in the present or how it could affect your decisions in the future if it continues.
  • During
    • This is the hardest stage of awareness development to get through because it is at this stage that you start to confront your identity addiction. In the midst of identity induced action, you realize, "Oh my gosh! I'm letting my identity determine my actions!" Now, do you continue on egoically, or do you stop and ignore what your identity demands?
    • If you haven't reached this stage yet, you'll be surprised how often you'll continue to let your identity call the shots even tho' you realize that it's not in your best interests to do so. There is something about pain that makes you want to suffer. This is the addiction. You may deny this and say "But why would I want to suffer? I don't!", but this thought just adds to the pain you are feeling which in turn continues to fuel your suffering while blinding you to how your identity leads to your suffering. This is the illusion you must see thru. This is what you must overcome.
  • Before
    • Once you get to this stage, you are ready to overcome your identity addiction once and for all. You can recognize your identity before it influences your actions and you can decide to disidentify from it, but it's not enough to simply recognize your identity and realize that metaidentification isn't in your best interests; you must commit to disidentifying from your identity every time you recognize it!
  • Instantly
    • This is the final stage of awareness development. At this stage you recognize your identity as soon as it manifests and you are capable of completely and permanently escaping from all suffering and discontentment.

Commitment

• Overcoming identity addiction is harder that overcoming most other addictions, but overcoming most other addictions is easier than most people think. In order to overcome an addiction, you must realize that any thought or feeling that suggests exhibiting the addictive behavior in the future is the voice of the addiction. Then, you must commit to ignoring this voice by pledging, "I will never _ again, and I will not change my mind."
• The reason that identity addiction is harder to overcome is because learning to recognize the voice of identity addiction takes longer than learning to recognize the voice of other addictions. The voice of identity addiction is any thought or feeling which suggests future metaidentification, which is almost all thoughts and feelings, and thus, they don't stand out like the voices of other addictions do. This is why awareness development is necessary. However, once you have built your awareness to the point where you can recognize your identity before it interferes with life, you are ready to commit to ignoring the voice of identity addiction by pledging "I will never metaidentify again, and I will not change my mind!" And then you will be free of suffering and discontentment!
• It often helps to think of yourself as only your awareness of your environment, both external and internal, and to think of the thoughts and emotions that form your sense of identity as some sort of parasite that feeds off of your pain and suffering. I want to stress that it is not necessary to believe this; just pretend that this is the way it is. By monitoring your thoughts, you can often detect this parasite. Any thought containing the words "I", "me", "my", "mine", or "myself" are thoughts in which the voice of the parasite is particularly loud. These thoughts are not yours, but its. By making you believe that the "I", or "me" in these thoughts refers to you, the parasite can make you believe that you are the one in pain, and thus you will suffer, and it'll feed.

Last Updated: 2009-05-06

The author, Marq Thompson, wished the content of this website to be uncopyrighted after his death.