Living at the "Edge Of Identity"

Freedom is the most valuable thing in the world and the price of freedom is to be a rebel.

As we grow up, we go through a shift in our identity. When we are young (5-18), our identity is mostly formed by our environment. And the identity that takes shape is optimized for survival and resource acquisition. This is not you in control, but the human DNA in control, looking for ways to replicate itself as much as possible.

Before 5 years of age, we are innocent and helpless. Studies show that children start lying at the age of 5 because that’s when the ego forms. The perception that “I” is different from others and “I” needs to behave in a certain way to manipulate others to giving us what we want and need.

The society is made of adult people who are still stuck in their identities and that results in making the cyclical problem worse through generations → the problem of making the ego stronger, instead of diluting it.

Children are not taught to humble down. In fact, they are encouraged to not be humble. Through generations, we see more arrogant kids because they are raised by arrogant parents. Arrogance is desperation for relevance. The competitive environment makes you do things for survival, driven by the fear that you will die.

A child doesn’t have reasoning capacity. When parents and teachers are disappointed in you for not scoring high marks, be great in sports, and have a bunch of (useless) extracurricular activities - such as learn and do abacus calculations… the child doesn’t think “No big deal, it’s ok to disappoint them.” The child actually fears death because that’s how the subconscious mind processes it. For survival, we used to please the people around us as children.

The biggest gift of adulthood is that we can finally think about it, ponder about it and understand that if we still try to please people around us, it is not for survival. It’s just the momentum from heavier (less enlightened days).

We have the means to survive as an adult, and the whole point of being an adult is to be a rebel - to live life the way you want, by your own terms and conditions, the way you see fit, the way of life that nourishes your soul (and not the ego). There is no need to please others. Savings technologies (like Bitcoin and Gold) enables you to trade what you want with other people and there is no need to manipulate others. When there is no need to manipulate others, there is no need to have an identity that does the manipulation.

To let go of your identity and ego is a scary thing to do, but once done, you are born again new. Everyone has to live two lives on the planet earth. One life is what you think you are (which is a derivation of what you think people think you are). And the next life is when you think nothing of yourself and just exist moment to moment, just experiencing life. Unfortunately, the negative cycle of ego and identities makes it extremely difficult to snap out of the cycle and be born again.

That way, major life events such a death of a family member, a divorce, alienation from a offspring, or an accident shatters your ego and your image of yourself, humbles you down by force if you don’t do it by yourself, or have mentors, parents or teachers who can guide you on that path.

But you might ask - why do you need to drop the ego in the first place?

What’s wrong with success, ambition, being competitive, and making other people happy?

There is nothing wrong in it to be honest. What’s wrong is that you are sleep walking through it without awareness.

If you have total clarity and awareness of the drama that your life is playing out as, you will not hesitate dropping the ego. In fact, it becomes a huge headache to carry around the ego. It’s a fiction and you need to keep propping it up. The moment you feel you found some stability, it collapses again and forces you to work on it. Where there is time for relaxation then? Politicians, actors, celebrities are notorious for trying too hard to maintain the identity. And the harder they try, harder people attack it. Scandals, embarrassing situations, shame and so on.

When you are aware that time will take away everything that you cherish today… people, relationships, health, possessions, fame, name, legacy and whatever is that is you think is real… death will do it apart from you.

And as death and time does it apart, you will feel that “YOU” becomes “you” and shrinks, and you will not be able to tolerate that pain. End of life is coming to all of us.

A mid-life crisis or a quarter-life crisis is like a vaccine with a half-dead virus that makes you immune to the ultimate crisis… the death of your entire self, which you know for sure is coming - but you don’t remember it all the time.

This realization need not come to you at 80. By that time, life would have passed by chasing stupid things. It will be too late to realize that you played stupid games and won stupid prizes.

Realize it now, as you are reading this and set down in the path of minimalism… not just minimal possessions, but minimal you.

Just because you have a bigger car, a higher degree, taller house, more name, more fame… and so on - doesn’t make “you” into “YOU”. Doesn’t make you more of anything - you are still the same weight, going 6 feet underground in the cemetery.

Born naked in this world and going to die naked, stripped of everything. The very desire to gain more things, is a way to fight with the grim reaper. It’s the desire for immortality and a fear of death. Remember, no one wins a fight with the grim reaper.

When you live moment to moment with the total clarity and realization that life is temporary and you are here for a few days, something strange happens.

What you don’t want anymore chases you. Life becomes abundant. God gives everything to the man who wants nothing. To want is to beg for scraps of pleasure, to not want is to have everything.

Now do not try wanting nothing expecting to have everything. That doesn’t work and God can see through your BS manipulation tactics. The goal is to become truly free of any desires whatsoever… and that’s not a decision to make. It comes to you when it comes to you, this lifetime or the next.

If you are reading this, you have lived several lifetimes of desires and acquiring those desires.

Yes, the universe conspires to get you what you want, and you eventually get it, only to realize that it slipped away the moment you held it.

It’s still there, but the happiness of it slipped away because your mind which wanted it is an illusion and illusion cannot hold on to real things.

You will have everything that you desire in an attempt to make yourself more real, but the problem is that you are not real and something that’s not real cannot own anything.

That’s why the most depressing day of Olympic athletes is the day they win the medal, because once it is acquired, you realize that the prize is real but the person who acquired that medal is not real and everything comes crashing down.

I truly bless everyone in the world achieve what they want in life - so that they can realize that nothing can be acquired or achieved because there is no one to achieve it.

You are end of the just star dust and you will become star dust again soon. That’s the problem with manifestation. Manifestation only works until you manifest it. Once you manifest it, a part of YOU dies with it because you realize - who did I manifest this for? Me? Who is me? Look inside and there is no one.

Until now the ego survived because you looked outward chasing something. For a short while you look inward after acquiring it. The nothingness inside scares you - and off you go to achieve the next desire, always moving the goal post ahead, until death asks you to stop.

The moment of clarity is when you look inward. You become time. Looking backwards into what was. And the was is not IS anymore. The entity that wanted things, now has it, but in the past. And the past is just a memory. A memory cannot want anything or have anything. Memory is fiction.

A comet flies in the sky. You see a dot and a trail. You are the dot, this moment. The trail is the ego… and it is dissolving as you move forward.

You can never become truly the dot, because the moment you become the dot, you become everything - one with the existence, one with God.

It might be too early for us to do that, that’s why it’s better to be at the edge. And that’s the title of this post. Having an identity as long as you are human is unavoidable.

I am “Deepak”… more like “Digital Deepak” and this much name is needed for you to understand who is mailing you. Because I cannot mail you from the from name “Universe” and expect you to think of me as a sane guy.

Being at the edge of identity means that you be a minimum viable identity on planet earth. Through a minimum viable identity, you become a minimum viable entity.

You become so minimal that the world hardly notices that you are there. This means you are a feather, not a rock. You lighten up. That’s what en-light-en means. Remember, it is en-”light”-en and not en-dead-en.

Become light. Because on the way to nothing, the start point is “YOU” and the next stop is “you” and the next stop is “y…o…u…” and eventually, you dissolve into everything.

Like a drop that mixes into the ocean, the dew drop doesn’t die, it becomes part of the ocean, in fact the ocean is made of all the dew drops. This life with a dew drop that’s you is just the cosmic cycle of evaporation, cloud formation and rain.

If you do not start on this path down, the nature of reality and time will force down that path on you. When you try to become the maximum “YOU”, you are failing to realize that it’s temporary. And it’s stupid to work hard so much to attain something temporary.

It’s stupid because it is rooted in the fear of death. You are stupid because you are afraid. You are intelligent when you are not afraid. And the most intelligent when you are not afraid of the worst thing that is death itself.

Anyone calling themselves intelligent because they have a achieved a lot of things - but still are afraid of death is nothing but an intelligent fool. You don’t want knowledge, you want wisdom. The wisdom to realize that everything is temporary.

Everything you try to grab on to, will slip from your hands, not eventually, but the moment you hold it. Everything says that the world is an illusion. I disagree with that. The world is very much real. What’s the illusion is us. YOU are the illusion. What you hold on to is not the maya. What tries to hold things is the maya.

Realize this and the whole universe is yours. You own it, because you created this universe.

The moment there is no you, everything is you. The universe is you and you are the universe. All that is in the universe is yours because you are literally the universe.

Psyched?