A Soliloquy on Identity – Part III: This Moment is its Own Affirmation

Or I could borrow Joseph Campbell’s quote, “You become mature when you become the authority of your own life” for the title of this essay in the Identity series.

I could title it, “Who Am I?” or “The Pathless Path”, if I wanted this chapter to be the beginning of the next section of my autobiography!   

The earlier essay, I left off with saying that needing recognition seems to be one of my fundamental patterns.  In fact, this had been occupying such density in my being that it has taken all this time to stay and work with this part of me and arrive at a location to pen it down. 

We all need affirmation one way or another from our people, our audiences, clients, friends, children, parents… I am seeing around me that most of us need affirmation of various kinds.  This plays out in our lives at different levels and intensities, and we make up some of our narratives depending on our experiences with affirmation (or lack of it), how we understand and learn to handle / mishandle / be with, this need.  And so, what if the normal need for affirmation that begins in a child and can regulate itself into a healthy feedback mechanism for coherent functioning as the child grows older, becomes a hidden (even to herself), compulsive seeking of affirmation through various means and ways even as an adult?

The recognition that I wanted / needed from my world is nothing but simple (or not so simple!) affirmation that I did not get as a child.  I had been an adult by age, living and functioning as an adult outside, driven by the child’s need for affirmation, inside. Carl Jung had said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate”.   This is true for me, except that I don’t call it ‘fate’.  This unconscious relationship with affirmation that I have had made my choices, determined much of my action and has also limited who I am up until now. 

The relationship – I sought affirmation from the authority figures in my life (either I set them up so and they colluded, or vice versa).  And my story has been that I don’t get the affirmation that I want / need from them (since I didn’t get it as a child).  Hence I also set up the stage for not receiving the affirmation from these authority figures. Then I don’t conform, I rebel ‘against’ these authority figures and take up causes to do so.  I became the rebel against any system (for me, authority), the angry young man syndrome.  I constructed my identity, my idea of self, out of this relationship with authority and affirmation.  One of my primary narratives had been this: whoever I see as authority will ‘fail’ me by not affirming me in the ways that I need, and I will find some way to be the righteous rebel, try to get out of the web of authority and strike my own path.  There will be a flash of brilliance as I try to find myself, but I will set myself up to fail, because the sense of self was so enmeshed with the idea of being affirmed by authority, that if there was no authority, there was no self.  Who will affirm me? I was trapped in my cyclical story for the longest while.

However, there is more than one story in the unconscious that direct one’s life. In fact, there are several, and we collect more on the way.  I call in Thoreau along with Jung into this essay, “We are constantly invited to be who we are”.   And so, even though I chose the affirmation one as my primary story, there were others whispering and flirting and gesturing and waving for my elusive attention.  I noticed one such when it simply wouldn’t be ignored – my story of practice versus / and theory, also a gift from my family.  My well, rendered dry with intellect alone, was searching for the water of practice. This took me to the practice of asana-pranayama, and the path of yoga.  This ongoing story led me then to many others, and some more, and continues.  They started knocking on my door time and again as seemingly far-fetched opportunities, uncomfortable questions, bursts of colour, myriad meanings and metaphors, insights …

  

The righteousness soon dropped away.  The rebel is a warrior and this part of cell memory doesn’t get erased that easily I find.  However, she has learnt to set down her arms and keep her sword sheathed unless she feels it necessary to fight.  She has also learnt to see that there are ways and ways of putting up a fight.  There is another story in this of course, that of finding the woman, the shakti.  There is no cause or context for rebellion in these tales.  There is also a story of what to fight for, which is a wondrous one, that of Mother Earth, as ancient as she.  

When these masks were removed, I had to face my vulnerabilities: there is no authority to get affirmation from.  There need be none.  I am not that child who did not get the affirmations she needed, any longer.  I am an adult with many gifts, many stories, having a child of my own whom I need to affirm in many ways while giving her space to grow independent.  But where and how is my affirmation happening? How can I design a wholesome feedback process for myself? Do I need such a thing or is it my need for affirmation acting up? What would I be without this need and seeking for affirmation from authority? What would I be owning up to authority where it is required? Is authority even required or is my mind playing games? What am I missing?  

I turned to my asana-pranayama-swadhyayam, practice, as usual, and a question that stayed is, ‘what would I be without this need, free from this cycle?’  The practitioner and teacher in me joyfully announced the experience: that the practice itself is the affirmation – this moment is its own affirmation.  I realised the truth of this somewhat. When I am practicing, and when I am teaching someone for therapeutic purposes, I need no validation for what I am doing.  I am deeply into the process, and it runs the show.  Every step and moment speaks for itself and illumines the next.  My authority comes from my personal practice and the needs of the process when necessary. 

But, what does this mean for my question?  Who am I by myself? What is my process then if that is what I am looking for?  The stories that came knocking now were vague sightings into a dark wilderness that I began to see from the edges but didn’t initially venture into, being fearful of what I may find.  Tentative steps and short trips into the forest revealed more stories. Walking alone in the moonlight breathes energy into this quest.  Walking alone, even more.  Stories of art, aesthetics, writing and beauty rose up from the unconscious.  An avalanche of memory, I remember the numerous instances that I had bypassed when life had been inviting me to be who I am.  How did I not attend these stories earlier?!  

But there is no path prescribed by any authority in that wilderness.  I need to plunge headlong into it. I smell a story of fear here.  Fear holds me back from making that dive.  Fear of what? Perhaps of making mistakes.  What is the question I need to ask now? It strikes me that I am not afraid of making mistakes in my personal practice, or even with a student.  I completely trust the process and the relationship and there is an element of something much larger than merely ‘I’ that I give up myself to.  I believe that this something may be the grace of the universe, god… that is always available to each of us. The “Ishvarapranidhana” that Yoga sutras mention. How do I open myself to receive it? How is it that I can feel this in asana-pranayama and not with this fear that holds me a prisoner? Or am I just trying to escape into a variable called Ishvara and say, this is all I can do, that this is my best? What is the fear holding me?  The fear that I may be wrong about all of this: perhaps I am imagining the stories of creating and writing and art, perhaps I am not this at all. But why does fear stop my action? Can I move despite fear? I see a story of the habit of fear. How do I engage with this? 

I remember the first time I went into Sirsasana (headstand). It was a surprise. Had I known earlier that our goal posture for that day’s group practice was headstand, I would have skipped the class. Just 3-4 postures before our goal, it was mentioned casually that we need to prepare in that current posture well, if we wanted to go up on our heads.  My hands went cold and clammy, thinking of my positional vertigo condition etc. But the environment of my yoga sangha, colleagues and friends doing the practice, the instructor (whose sirsasana is to die for!), and my commitment to improvement in asana-PY practice made me stay.  I still can taste the ramyam of going up on my head that day. 

Perhaps I need to surprise myself out of my fear of being wrong.  How? And even if I am wrong, what other choice do I have?  All I have are these stories and my practice. I have nowhere to escape, no masks to hide behind, and I don't want them.  I am in this space from which there is no going back and the way forward and sideways is a jungle with no path.  Just many symbols and metaphors and ideas and a quest for beauty.

I cannot see the path ahead all that clearly, and I do not know for sure that this is a pattern that has stopped “directing my life” as Jung says. But I can say definitively that my mind cannot even turn in the direction of my affirmation-need without me being aware of it, and pausing to look at it with careful caution and interest, and also keep the wilderness in view.  Perhaps my short forays in, will prepare me to walk straight and deep into the jungle one of these days without returning to safety.