You Are Eternal Spirit
Moving Beyond 3D Definitions Of Ourselves.
The other day, I was listening to a spiritual podcast when in the intro the host named a bunch of celebrities the guest had worked for. That put me off, and it was not the first time. When a spiritual teacher or healer whose work they say is to help people recognise themselves as divine beings, beyond our 3D facades, and then list a bunch of celebrities, it is a contradiction. I continued to listen since I liked the guest’s voice and found the content to be good. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, thinking it must be the host or the people running the show who had insisted on a certain type of bio for their guests. Halfway through, the guest himself rattled off names of celebrities. Immediately, I felt myself crashing down; from soaring with the glorious angelic vibrations down to grey concrete slabs of defining souls in a very 3D way. The rest of the interview was peppered with name dropping, taking away from the otherwise good content.
If even the folks who claim to be lightworkers, wayshowers – who share their gifts for activating our light bodies – are reverting to identifying souls through social status and external accomplishments, we are in more trouble than we think, as far as collectively moving on from the dense reality of egoic struggles.
The Sickness of Labelling Individuals
Our innate worth is not defined by our social status, job, age, appearance, how much money we have in our banks, or any other external things. In society, we tend to measure and judge people according to a set of socially agreed upon standards:
A man in suits is more worthy than a homeless man.
A woman in a relationship is more worthy than a single woman.
If you have a multi-million dollar house and a fleet of luxury cars, you must be successful and worthy of attention.
Having 200k followers on Instagram means you are someone special.
A Hollywood A-lister is more worthy than a nurse or a painter.
Our society has simply decided that these external and material achievements are defining factors for who we are, when we are so much more than that. I call these ‘false power’ – because if the thing that defines them is lost tomorrow they would lose their illusory power. We’ve all heard about individuals who overnight lost a high-paying job, a relationship, a fortune, an empire – and suddenly they are completely lost and powerless, because they have assigned all their power to something outside of them. But those who spend time cultivating their inner power, their connection to something else besides the material world, would continue to thrive no matter what external things they lose.
On the flip side, there is the obsession to put labels on people. Most of these labels are used to define and limit us for life:
So-and-so suffers from alcoholism.
Are you a depressive?
That kid is ADHD.
How many of you are recovering addicts?
A few years ago, I had a client whose daughter’s school had labelled her as “borderline autistic” or some other ‘challenged in learning’ label. She was also badly bullied in school. As a parent, he was worried and struggled to make sense of it all. I told him that she would be fine. Recently, he happily shared with me how well the daughter is doing: from outstanding academic recognitions, athletic achievements, to her social life.
Academically and socially, she is well and thriving. But those labels could potentially have become part of her identity and like a self-fulfilling prophecy she could have ended up in the box they wanted to put her. This is what labels do: they are used to control and subdue people, capping our full potential.
For many years, I suffered from depression. Yet I will never call myself a “depressive”. I was addicted to many kinds of substances, but I am not a “recovering addict”. I used to be so damaged inside that I acted out in rage and rebellion; my family tried to convince me that I had “borderline personality disorder”, years after I had stopped exhibiting any of those behaviours.
I no longer have depression, nor am I addicted or have rage. Just as my client’s daughter no longer feels awkward and unaccepted by her peers in school. But I might still be all those things, if I had bought into the labels society tried to slap on me, like a branding iron searing those labels permanently into my soul, sealing my fate for life.
Façade, Public Image and Personas: Damaging Effects
Let’s turn again to the subject of celebrities. Having worked with numerous celebrities, I discovered to my dismay that I was actually one of the very few among my peers who truly kept confidentiality and genuinely treated them like normal human beings. A famous person sitting in front of me is a soul in need of healing and guidance. My success does not lie in how many and which celebrities I have worked with but the transformations my clients have achieved and how happy they are today.
I don’t talk about who I have worked with, but those who have an inkling would urge me to use it in my branding efforts. I’ve been called stupid for not recognising what an “asset” it is and for not milking it for my business. I get the marketing logic, I just won’t do it. Not only is it not my style, it goes against my teachings.
Some may think it is flattering for a celebrity to be known for their celebrity status. Most often than not, their status is a trap. Like any other professionals, one can feel so overly identified with their profession that they feel lonely and trapped by their success. It can amplify their separation from their souls. This separation can lead to major psychological problems if unaddressed. Therefore, in therapy and spiritual work, the last thing they want/need is to be seen as their façade and not the soul behind the façade. They crave for a chance for others to relate to them not as their public persona but with genuine interest for the person beneath. After all, the pressure of maintaining one’s public persona is what reinforces the feeling of being trapped, stifling their growth, celebrity or not.
Overtime, the individuals themselves learn that their worthiness is linked to their celebrity status, thereby increasing their sense of separation from their inner self.
What’s more, it reinforces something that is often not real, or even fake. I can tell you that most famous individuals’ public image is nothing like the truth (positive or negative).
This problem is compounded by the fact that many celebrities are deep souls, as most true artists are. The creative process is a very spiritual process, entailing: wild trips into our dark subconscious, riding the waves of creative impulses, connecting the dots of intuitive sparks, and being a channel for a voice whispering through from hidden realms. Therefore, the over-identification with public persona can cause a conflict between what they yearn deep down and the superficiality of being identified by the façade. This conflict, along with the pressures of maintaining a public image (especially when there is great discrepancy between what’s real and not), can then lead to the soul fragmenting.
I am not against the existence of celebrities, being an ardent consumer of entertainment myself. I am not against the use of big names in marketing. I get it. Businesses need to thrive. But spiritual workers? We’re not selling fashion. We of all people need to move away from entrenching false identities.
Let’s move on from defining ourselves in a superficial way. Our jobs, status, financial wealth, physical attractiveness, do not define us. We have to move beyond this. It is time for humanity to really let go of depending on external things to define us, to make us feel like we are worthy.
How to Sense Your Eternal Spirit
Our souls have been neglected in human interactions. In this digital age, making a real connection with someone – heart to heart, soul to soul – is not common anymore. It contributes to more disconnection, and we’re in danger of being further away from knowing who we truly are.
Who you are is eternal spirit. I know some of you have a visual of all these things I say don’t define us being stripped away and you balk at what appears to be Nothing, a dark void, without them. Stay with me. I want you to stay with this apparent nothingness and really look for the spirit that exists within it. We have been so conditioned to see only the dense and physical that we’re not giving ourselves a chance to sense the beautiful, multidimensional world we exist in. How will you know when you have sensed it? You will feel a knowing. Stay here until a knowing clicks in. It is not that far away.
Remind yourself that you are eternal spirit. This means:
You are not your body.
You are in a temporary suit, in a joy ride the 3D experience is. One day, your suit will be worn out and discarded, but your true essence, who you really are, will live on, freed from the structure of limitations.
The physical body only seems to be alive because we witness the animation that takes place; how the body is able to move, how our faces can break out into smiles, how our vocal chords produce sounds and words. But these movements and expressions are powered by a conscious spirit. Our body is merely the machinery through which our spirit expresses itself in the physical dimension. This conscious spirit is who you really are. It is the thing that animates.
You are not your age.
We give so much power to the body that we judge a person by how old they are. No matter what the age is, we’re deemed too old or too young, whatever society decides is “age appropriate” for certain activities.
Our eternal spirit is ageless. It defies degeneration. We may see someone with a withered body and forget that beneath that body is the same swirling vortex of consciousness that is behind every individual, pulsating with beautiful lights, incapable of being diminished.
You are not your accolades and status.
Defining your worth based on external achievements creates the illusion of separation and lack. Transcend this restricted identity and relate more to yourself as the infinite divine presence that you are. Who will you be if tomorrow you are stripped of all the accolades and status that until now have defined you?
Your false self can be obliterated overnight, but your divine self cannot be destroyed.
You are not your financial wealth.
You are more than what a few numbers say you are. Your true, divine self is fluid, unrestricted, expansive.
Financial wealth means nothing if you are disconnected from your true essence. At best, it can give you the illusion of safety (true security comes from inside) but it does not make you more worthy as a person.
You are not your relationship.
No relationship should have the power to diminish your sense of worth. If you’re in a relationship you have heavily invested yourself into, cultivate the habit of knowing yourself deeply. Sense the presence within you: a breathing, pulsing, intelligent energy.
You are not your history.
You are pure awareness. In essence, you are beyond being identified. Connect to the beautiful, undying spirit you are inside. Nothing can corrupt your true essence or diminish your true being.
What you can perceive through your five senses is only a very small tip of the iceberg. This physical reality is only one of the infinite perspectives your soul is simultaneously experiencing. The way we relate to materialism is a valid part of this dimension of existence, but we can get lost in over-identifying with it and forget that we are more than our dense bodies, struggling to make it in this linear, limited 3D world.
