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Sedona, Arizona — Saturday, Aug. 28, 2004


Who Do You Think You Are?

In my most recent newsletter [8/11/2004: From Fear Knot to Fear Not], I wrote about discovering that my father was not who I thought he was, that the man whose name I bore was not my biological father. What I really discovered, of course, is that I wasn't who I thought I was.
 
That was not the first major assault on my self-identity and self-image, nor would it be the last.
 
We carry many aspects of ourselves many dimensions of ourselves through this and every lifetime. We are, in effect, many people, beings, ages and energies housed, not always comfortably, in this single, physical body.

On some days and in some situations, we present one face to ourselves and the world. In others, another rushes to the surface.
 
Sometimes, we're conscious of these aspects. Sometimes we're not. Sometimes, we keep parts of ourselves so well-hidden from the world, we keep them hidden from ourselves as well.
 
In these times of integration, of bringing all parts of ourselves back into the conscious fold of who we are, we are called to do more than acknowledge all aspects of our beingness. We are called to embrace and love them, to open our hearts to them. Fully.
 
For until we open our hearts fully to all parts of ourselves, we cannot open our hearts fully to anyone else. And until we open our hearts fully and unconditionally, we will always be in lack of some sort.

Why is that? For better or worse, we can only receive to the extent that our hearts are open to receive. That includes opening our hearts to receive love from all those parts of ourselves we would rather not acknowledge and all those outside of ourselves whose love we push away because we don't feel worthy to receive it.  
 
Have you ever received a compliment that made you uncomfortable?
Gratifyingly often, one of you calls or e-mails me with a heartfelt message of thanks me for the powerful impact I have had in your life through my writing, through a private session or through some other point of connection.

Most days, I feel honored to receive your love. Some days, though, the outpouring is difficult to receive. It makes me fidgety. It causes me to wonder how it's possible for me to have that kind of impact.

On those days, I'm not able to receive your love...perhaps any love...in any form.

Everything in our universe is either love or lack of love. I'm not talking about the romantic I love you's of Hollywood and Valentine's Day. I'm speaking of a frequency and resonance that is the truth of all creation.

When we are in that frequency, we are open to receive all that is in our nature to receive. That all is infinite in its nature, which means there is nothing that is not possible for us to receive.
 
So open your heart. Open your heart to all that is. But begin by opening your heart to yourself. To your selves. To all parts of you from the tiniest to the largest, from the most fearful to the most fearless. Open your heart to them that they might step, once more, into the family of your beingness in full acknowledgment and acceptance.

Open your heart even to those parts of you that you have refused to acknowledge, those parts of you that remain hidden. Open your heart to them and free yourself by removing them from hiding.

There is no protection in hiding. There is only fear. There is no safety in secrets. There is only dread. There is no weakness in vulnerability. There is only strength.

When I was a few months shy of 21, I came out of the closet as a gay man. Neither the evolution nor the psychology of that self-acknowledgment is relevant at this moment. What is relevant is that from that moment forward, my sense of self in every way was never truly fixed again. Even my sexual orientation would be revisited and redefined again in the years ahead.

Imagine waking up one morning in the realization that little of how you related to the world was valid anymore...that little of how you related to yourself was valid anymore.

I know that many of you have, in your own context.

Since that moment 29 years ago, I can't tell you how often I have woken to that uncomfortable feeling, how often I have shuddered into a new status quo, only to have it shaken up again...and again...and again. It shakes up again, even as I write these words to you...because I write these words to you.

It's in these moments, when the onion skin of our beingness peels away to reveal to ourselves another layer of who we are, that the act of opening our hearts to ourselves is most important. It's in these moments that it's important to remember that the only true grounding is the grounding of our hearts, the only true safety resides in our hearts and the only true self is our God Self.

I could have chosen to keep that persona secret 29 years ago, if not to myself then to the world. I did not. With a certain degree of trepidation, I shared that integral part of my beingness with my friends and family and was gratified to find myself still held in their embrace.

Eight years later, within weeks of my mother's death, came the revelation about my father.

It's not that my father and I had been close. He died when I was 13 and had been ill for years before that. Our relationship had always been distant. Yet, learning that he was not my natural father once more deeply altered my sense of self.

There is little that we take more for granted than our roots, little we accept more unquestioningly than our parentage. When that is taken away, our grounding dissolves with it. When that is taken away, large chunks of who we think ourselves to be vanish as well.

Note that it's who we think we are that shifts. Who we think we are has little to do with who we are at essence. At core, we are greater than all the various bits of who we think we are. A spiritual life, a life consciously lived, is a continuous integration of those bits into a true realization of the depth of our multifaceted, multidimensional selves.

I wasn't living a particularly conscious or spiritual life when I learned the truth about my father. Yet those revelations of deeper layers of my beingness became part of the spiritual alarm clock that, a few years later, began my awakening. It was an awakening that brought more shocks more rapidly to my self-image than any I had previously experienced.

During those early days of my spiritual unfoldment, it seemed that everything about who I was and how I related to myself and my world came up for reevaluation. One of those, once again, involved my sexuality.

Generally, when one redefines one's sexual orientation, it's a once-in-a-lifetime event. Yet here I was, having lived as a gay man for more than a decade, being confronted with profound inner questions about my sexuality and about the nature of sexuality in general.

Over the next few years, it was an issue that emerged again and again. Each time, I allowed myself to go deeper and deeper into who I was, who I thought I was and how I had found myself where I was.

By the time I left Toronto in 1997 on the open-ended spiritual odyssey that would ultimately carry me to Sedona, I had been celibate for some years. It was not through any conscious choice, but through an inchoate need to come more clearly into a sense of who I was in both sexual and other terms.

By the time I landed in Sedona three months and 14,000 miles later, I had moved into a field of infinite possibility. I considered myself neither gay nor straight, but a sexual being open to love in whatever form it presented itself. Labels and categories, I determined, limited our ability to move through the world in the fullness of our divinity.

A good theory, but a disconcerting one to contemplate in practice, given how I was feeling increasingly guided that I would fall in love with a woman in Sedona, get married and have children.

It turned out to be more than a good theory, and the practice was considerably less disconcerting than had I feared.
 
In May 1998, in one of those explosive Aha! moments after which nothing is ever the same, I connected with the woman who, seven weeks later, would become my wife. Sixteen months after that, on the rainforest slopes of an active Hawaiian volcano, our daughter was born.
 
This experience had nothing to do with curing homosexuality. There is no need to cure something that is not a disease. Nor was it about denying my sexuality.

On the contrary, it was about opening more deeply to higher aspects of my God Potential, a potential that makes it possible for anyone to love anyone fully, completely and unconditionally, regardless of preconceived notions about what is possible or how others might judge it.

In a peculiar twist to my original coming out story and with similar levels of trepidation, I shared this newly emerged potential-in-expression with my gay friends. Once again, I found myself largely embraced in acceptance and love.
 
Likely, many of you already know from personal experience how marriage and children alter your sense of who you are. That was true for me as well as I adapted, not always smoothly, to intimate relationships beyond my most fanciful imaginings.
 
I had never seen myself as married, as a father, as a U.S. resident, as living in either Sedona or Hawai'i. Brought up Jewish, I had never seen myself with a powerful Christ connection. Yet that, too, had become an active part of my persona, as had a name that bore no connection to the one my parents had chosen for me.

As each of these individual aspects and characteristics demanded my attention, not one had anything at all to do with who I had thought I was. And in most instances, I had initial resistance to surrendering fully to it.
 
Early in my spiritual awakening, one of my greatest sources of resistance came from a fear that I would undergo transformation that would render me unrecognizable to everyone, including myself.
 
As it turned out, my fears were well-grounded. There is little about me today that bears any resemblance to who I was at 21, 31 or even 41. Whoever I thought I was at those ages has been altered beyond recognition to me and others.
 
Guess what... There is no part of who I was at those ages I would choose to reconstruct.
 
Meantime, the transformations keep coming and my sense of who I am keeps shifting.
 
Once again, though, it's not who I am that's shifting. It's who I think I am.
 
Who do you think you are?
 
Has your self-definition shifted? Is it shifting now?
 
We are all moving rapidly into higher vibrations, vibrations that allow us to be more of the God That We Are in every moment.
 
Every time your vibration increases be it through a God Activation, by making a choice for the God That You Are or through some other means, aspects of your highest potential become activated. This God Potential, as I call it, then finds its way into your daily life, often disrupting your status quo and self-image.
 
Sometimes, it's a minor disruption. Sometimes, it's as though the earth beneath your feet has lost its solidity.
 
Your call is to open your heart both to the parts of you that are emerging into the light of your awareness and those that are receding from predominance. Your call is to open your heart to all of you.

Nothing of who I thought I was is gone. Nothing of who you thought you were is gone.

All you have ever been and will ever be exists in the energy matrix of your beingness. As an energy, it cannot be destroyed. Yet it can be transformed through the alchemy of your soul, the alchemy of light.

It can be transformed from fearfulness to fearlessness, from disempowerment to empowerment, from secret to sacred.

Whoever you think you are in this moment, allow it the fluidity to morph into whatever God Potential is activating within you. As it does, free it to breathe the clean, clear air of openness.

Walk the Earth, clothed only in your truth. Recognize the strength in your vulnerability. Be the God That You Are for all to see.

Be the God That You Are as you dance the Dance of Seven Veils of your beingness and, in so doing, free others to do likewise.

Step out of the shadows of your fear and be the radiant light that you are as you rediscover who you are. Not who you think you are, but the God-filled, God-fueled beauty of your Divine Purpose in expression out in the world.
 
You are the God That You Are. Open your heart to that within yourself. Share your open heart with the world. Be the God That You Are.

Be the God That You Are. In all ways. Always. Now.