Discover Your True Self

The importance of knowing who we really are might not be immediately clear to us, since we often hear about different types of problems and crises the world faces on an ongoing basis.

There is talk of economic crisis, military crisis, political crisis, environmental crisis, energy crisis, as well as conflicts, depression, loneliness, addictions, and other maladies that affect our lives. What goes unmentioned is perhaps the crisis that gives rise to all others: the identity crisis.

A Course of Love’s stated purpose is precisely to help us recognize the identity crisis we face and to guide us along the way to not just know the true Self but also to express it authentically in the world. It says,

The purpose of this Course has been stated in many ways and is stated again here: The purpose of this Course is to establish your identity.

The importance of this purpose cannot be overestimated. How difficult it is to believe that you need not change the world but only your own self. How difficult to imagine that this one change could bring about all the changes you would imagine that even an army of angels could not bring about.

You may think you already know yourself. You know your name, nationality, occupation, talents and skills, family history, and you are aware of your personality traits, strengths, and weaknesses.

If that was the full answer to Who am I?, you would live life free from suffering, guilt, shame, doubt, regrets, feelings of inadequacy, worries about the future, mood swings, and a sense of emptiness. You would live at peace with yourself and in certainty. You would feel the power of creation flowing through you, so you would never have to blame people and circumstances for what you experience in your life.

Is that how you live and feel about yourself?

This establishment of your identity that we seek to do here is not just so that you can better understand yourself or your world, or even so that you can bring Heaven to Earth.

Just as you can look about and see that no two bodies on this earth are exactly the same, the Self you are is a unique Self. A Self of relationship does not imply a Self that is the same as all the rest. But it does imply a Self that is integral to all the rest.

You matter, and you matter as an interactive part of the relationship that is life.

Who you are is love, and all things brought to love are seen in a new light, a light that keeps what you would learn to help you remember who you are, and in that remembrance transforms the rest, leaving you with nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to keep hidden, leaving you with nothing but the truth of who you are.

Salvation is simply your return to your Self.

A Course of Love

Get real: Restoring awareness of our true identity

There is much more to us than just a perishable body and chaotic thoughts. There is a formless, eternal dimension to us, an intelligence or consciousness that unites us all within the realm of connectedness or Oneness, sometimes referred to as “Christ-consciousness.”

This is the Being dimension of life, an aspect of us that is sorely lacking in our relationship with the world, with others, and even with ourselves. When we expand our consciousness beyond body and mind, we awaken from the dream of living in separation and realize our true identity.

We return now to what your being is. Being is. As love is. You have attached being to being human. In your quest to identify yourself, you simply narrowed yourself to the visible and describable. There is no being alive and being dead, being human or being divine. There is only being. Being is. Yet being, like love, is in relationship.

Thus, your purpose here, rather than being one of finding meaning, is one of coming to know through relationship. It is in coming to know through relationship that you come to know your Self.

Living in relationship is living in love and is living as who you are. Living in relationship is living in the present.

How do you learn to move from living in separation to living in relationship? To live in relationship is to accept all that is happening in the present as your present reality, and as a call to be in relationship with it. It is the willingness to set aside judgment so that you are not contemplating what “should” be happening rather than what is happening. It looks past perception of “others” to relationship and wholeness.

To live in relationship is to live in harmony even with conflict. It is an understanding that if conflict arises in your present there is something to be learned from your relationship with conflict.

Everything that has ever happened in your life has happened as a learning device to help you remember who you are. Those things about which you feel guilt and shame are simply the remnants of lessons unlearned. While you hang on to them by keeping them hidden, no learning occurs.

You cannot realize your true identity while you hang on to wounds of any kind. The choice for many has seemed to be “Would you rather be right or happy?” Only the ego would choose being right over happiness.

A Course of Love

Ask yourself, “What choice may have led to this situation or event?” For choice is always involved before the fact. . . . This observation will help to put the responsibility of your life back into your hands, where it belongs.

You are not helpless, nor are you at the whim of forces beyond your control. The only force beyond your control is your own mind, and this need not be.

Your mind might still prefer to be right rather than happy, so it is important that you let your heart lead in making this new choice. When you find yourself in a situation you do not like, again offer your willingness to find some happiness within it. These instructions to your heart will begin to make a difference to your state of mind.

Being serious about life is a major strategy of the separated self, which recognizes its own seriousness as necessary to maintain its separation. Joy is truly the greatest threat to the separated self, for it comes from union and reinforces union’s appeal at the expense of the appeal of separation.