“You People always hold onto old identities, old faces and masks, long after they’ve served their purpose. But you’ve got to learn to throw things away eventually.”
–Neil Gaiman
Let’s try an exercise just for the heck of it. Take a piece of paper and in big letters make a list, one per line of all the ways you identify yourself. Use both the ones that you love and the ones that you find troubling . Then tear the paper into strips, each strip holding one face or identity that you use to identify with. Put all the strips into a big glass bowl and burn them. As you burn each one, imagine yourself being freed from that identity. When you’ve finished, take three deep breaths. Repeat the exercise using whatever new identities have come up for you and the old ones that still feel attached. Tear the paper into strips and burn it, imagining yourself freed from each of those identities. Do it all a third time. As you burn the papers this time say out loud. “I free myself from all preconceptions of who I am and who I will be. I am now free to make my own way.” Take three deep breaths and start thinking of the person you’d like to be, the identity you wish. Picture yourself doing what that person does and behaving in the way they behave. Open your eyes and realize you’re free to choose. Realize that there is nothing wrong with choosing the same identity you felt trapped in before. At the very least now you are taking it on by choice
Blessings, G
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Falling To by G A Rosenberg
