All Identity is Illusion

Introduction 🔗

I’ve longed since stoped identifying by political or ideological labels after realizing how false they are. They morphed my world onto their particular truth (which they aren’t even consistently honest about). This caused the rest of my experience of reality to be swayed because of that frame.

I’ve questioned how far this goes; what else renders One unable to see Oneself for what One is?

Radical Abandonment 🔗

Am I an engineer?—It is my profession, and how my problem-solving capabilities manifest, but it is not I. Am I a philosopher? No. In the act of philosophizing I assume the role, but that is not I.

Am I Swedish?—Of course. Do I feel Swedish though?—What does that even mean to me? Likewise with being European, while it is certainly true, the European spirit is only a fragment of the essence of my soul. In certain moments the feeling might be true enough to earn the label, but nor is this I.

Am I a good person? Am I an evil person? Having performed sufficiently many good or evil deeds, that is how one will appear. But consider too that the one who is good or evil at their core is predisposed to these acts. No, I am neither.

Am I a man? On occasion, I understand what that means, but I would struggle to formulating the experience of being man. Am I masculine, or am I feminine? No, these essences have a place in my soul, but it is not I.

Even more radical: am I truly the particular individual, Rune Rasmus Sten? This person has a name, but it, too, is a description of an outward appearance.

The world which is being experienced by the soul need not these filters to be real, what one is is evident from the experience in itself. Tat tvam asi.¹