Dismetaidentificationism

Recognizing Identity

Forms of Metaidentification

• There are many forms of metaidentification and most of them overlap. Some of them are more likely to lead to great suffering than others. Below, I have listed some of the most important forms:
  • Major Forms
    • These are the forms of metaidentification that are most likely to lead directly to suffering. Unfortunately, they are all implicit forms and thus the hardest to recognize quickly and discontinue.
    • Listed:
      • Mental Identification
        • This is the assumption that the voice in your head is your own, that the "I", "me", and "myself" of your thoughts refer to you. They refer to your identity, and thus only appear to refer to you if you metaidentify. Regardless of whether you metaidentify, your mind creates identity expressed, whether explicitly or implicitly, in the form of thoughts. When you trust your thoughts, you implicitly accept a mental identity.
        • Mental identification is the primary form of metaidentification responsible for suffering. An undesirable situation can't cause you to suffer unless you think about how much you dislike it and trust your thoughts about it. Also, an unpleasant thought is one of the things that can evoke an unpleasant emotion.
        • If you want just one thing that you can focus on to recognize your identity, focus on this form of metaidentification. All other forms of metaidentification, as well as all forms of identity in general, eventually manifest in your thoughts, usually with the one of the following words: "I", "me", "myself", "my", "mine", "should".
      • Emotional Identification
        • This is the assumption that the feelings that you experience are your own and appropriate. This belief and an unpleasant emotion together aren't enough to cause suffering. The cause of suffering in this case is resistance to the emotion, a thought effectively similar to "I don't like feeling this way," and thus emotional pain only leads suffering via mental identification.
        • Thought may be the mother of identity, but metaidentification alone could never lead to suffering without unpleasant emotions. Mental and emotional metaidentification work together in synergy; troublesome thoughts breed unpleasant emotions, which in turn fuel the generation of more unpleasant thoughts, resisting both the emotions and the situation which seems to cause them. Disidentifying from your thoughts and emotions effectively breaks the causal connection between emotional pain and suffering.
      • Corporeal Identification
        • This is the assumption that the body that you seem to inhabit is you. Like emotional identification, this form of metaidentification in combination with an unpleasant physical sensation isn't enough to cause suffering; it is identification with the mental resistance to the physical pain that leads to suffering.
  • Minor Forms
    • These forms of metaidentification can to lead to suffering by feeding troublesome thoughts and emotions.
    • Listed:
      • Passive Identification
        • This is an implicit form of metaidentification as the one to whom things happen, the idea that you are a victim of your circumstance. When you employ this form of metaidentification, you give control of your suffering to other people and often to chance. To recognize most forms of metaidentification you can just watch for the word "I" in your thoughts, but with this form of metaidentification especially, you must watch for the word "me".
      • Identification with Desires and Attachments
        • This is the assumption that the needs, attachments, desires, and preferences that you experience are your own. When needs and desires are unfulfilled or objects of attachment are taken away, suffering results. Depending on how strong a preference is, or how important it seems to you in a certain situation, a preference for the way things aren't can also lead to suffering.
        • You can arrive at the notion that your desires and attachment are not your own by examining the language of desire and attachment: "I need, I want, I desire, I prefer," etc. We have already established that the "I" of your thoughts is not who you really are; the illusion that you are the "I" of your thoughts arises from mental metaidentification. Similarly, attachments to "my thing" or "my idea" betray their egoic nature by use of the word "my" which is short for "of which I am the owner." Thus we can see that your desires and attachments belong to your identity, not to you directly.
        • This form of metaidentification has many subforms, some of which are:
          • Circumstantial Identification
            • This is metaidentification in relation to your current situation. In this form, you derive an identity from your surroundings. If a man is next in line to be served, and then someone cuts in front of him, he may exclaim, "Who do you think you are!?" This exclamation reveals something about who he thought he was: he thought that he was the next to be served, and when this identity was challenged, it evoked anger and discontentment.
          • Orthoidentification
            • This is identification with the certainty of your opinions, the idea that "I am right!" The idea that you are right is one of which you cannot be expected to let go, mainly because nature won't let it let go of you. If for some reason you were to ever realize that you had been wrong, you would change your mind and thus would be right again. The suffering comes in when you identify with the need to be believed, when you cannot bare to think that someone else's opinion may differ from yours. This may also include a fear of being wrong, the unbearable suspicion that someone else has a valid reason for holding a different opinion. Additionally, opinions about the way the world should be, but isn't, can form the basis for a miserable identity as one of few people, or even the only person, in the world with integrity. Opinions are okay so long as they aren't set in stone, regarded as fact, or used as a basis by which to judge others.
          • Existential Identification
            • This is identification with the need to be heard, to have your existence confirmed. This form is in play when you feel the need to contribute to a conversation of which you're not a part or to give your opinion when you've not been asked for it. This form of metaidentification only leads to suffering if you consider the topic to be important to you; however it will more often distract you from your environment and thus interfere with your life in other ways.
          • Respectable Identification
            • This is identification with the need to be respected. Altho' all of the forms of metaidentification here are indicative of an ego, this form in particular is especially recognizable as egotist. This form of metaidentification does not just present the illusion of selfhood, but presents the illusion of self-importance. Whenever one's morality, integrity, importance, etc. is challenged, it is this form that makes discontentment a possible result.
          • Possessive Identification
            • This form is recognized by the words "my" and "mine" in your thoughts. When you think "That is my thing," your thought may not appear to be generating an identity, but it is. The identity is that of the owner. By "That's mine!" you're saying "I am the owner of it!" Attachment to things, obviously, leads to discontentment and suffering when those things are stolen or destroyed.
      • Historical Identification
        • This is identification with memories, the notion that you can define who you are by your past. In combination with other forms of metaidentification, this form allows old emotional pain to continue to cause suffering and discontentment in the present.
      • Group Identification
        • This is metaidentification as a member of a group. This form allows you to define who you are by including yourself in a predefined class of people. This doesn't necessarily have to be a club or organization of some sort; it could just be an adjective. For over a decade, I mistakenly identified myself as a gay man, only to discover a month and a half before my spiritual awakening that I wasn't really gay. When you identify with a group, you open yourself up to suffering by allowing the group's discontentment to become your own. Group identification can also lead to suffering if you are ever kicked out of the group, such as when you lose your job.
  • Inconsequential Form
    • This form of metaidentification will only lead to suffering if combined with a minor form of metaidentification:
      • Intransient Identification
        • This is metaidentification which can not be disproved in this life. This is the class of metaidentification under which beliefs about your eternal identity fall. Beliefs such as "I am a child of God," or "I am an immortal spirit," are not ideas that can themselves lead to suffering. You're not going to get kicked out of the "Children of God" club or find conclusive evidence that you are not actually an immortal spirit. No, this form of metaidentification only leads to suffering in conjunction with one of the minor forms, such as orthoidentification or existential identification.

Last Updated: 2009-05-06

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