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A Protea -
© Angelika Elvira, Photographer
Each time
you have told yourself, "I am this",
or "I am
that," you kept yourself limited.
You have
conformed to a particular way of thinking
and a
particular way of acting in the world.
You have
restricted yourself to a certain code of behaviour,
dictated
not by true desire of the heart, but by outside influences.
You have
allowed external impressions to determine your identity,
rather
than allowing the spiritual force of your True Self to
emerge.
When you claim, "I am a man." "I am a woman." "I am a
Democrat."
"I am a
Socialist." "I am a heterosexual." "I am a homosexual."
"I am a
poet, an artist or a prisoner," then you have limited yourself.
By these and other definitions you've adopted a role in life
and made
it your reason for living.
It is the
ego's quest for personal power,
its way of
surviving the challenges on earth.
It is how
the ego justifies its existence.
Great
effort is taken to maintain, protect and defend that image.
Any threat
to that identity, real or imagined,
becomes a
threat to survival.
Vincent Cole
Excerpted
from
I Am This
-- I Am That
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