If one has never had an identity and must find the one God intended one to have, that is a huge struggle for an adult. This painful journey ends in glory, however, as one finally comes into the role God had given that person from conception.
If one had an identity and lost it, the journey may be as easy as leaving the place where one is in order to find one's self again. This place could be physical or spiritual.
One thinks of the book The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy, taken into a completely foreign world of her imagination, came back a changed person. She learned to love "home". But home was not just Kansas. Home meant relationships with Auntie Em, Hickory, Hunk, and Zeke. She cannot fantasize about place and is happy to be just Dorothy.
Notice that the lion stands for courage against fears, the scarecrow for the brain, which includes memory an understanding, and the tin man for the heart. Do we not see in the spiritual life that the memory, understanding, will, heart and virtues (the opposite of fears) give us life if these are purified?
Note also that the yellow brick road did not bring Dorothy home-someone pointed this out to me when I was thinking of this book. The yellow brick road does not go home, does not lead to identity. She only had to find out what was in her own heart, memory, understanding, will and virtues to go home.
That is what the Wizard told her, basically. Dorothy had all she needed to go home in the red slippers and in the real, true desires of her heart.
The red slippers represent love and once she realized the love she had for home, Dorothy could go there. She already had what she needed to go home all the time in the story. So it is with us. We have all we need, unless we never had an identity, which is a much harder journey. But, if we did and lost it, we can find it through the heart, the head, and the virtues.
What if a person has not experienced love or is closed to love? They keep choosing false yellow brick roads, like cults, false identities, drugs, drink, or money to dull their senses and wills.
How many adults have fantasized themselves into a role in the world which is based on false premises, and without relationship? The idolization of consumerism has created a sub-cultural of adults without identity, those who merely live for the day, for things, for status.
Those people who have had a keen spiritual life may also have lost identities. I think of those who have desired to be spiritually something they are not. Or worse, not attempting to become the saint God has wanted them to be from all eternity. Can one not accept being a "little one" for God instead of a great saint.
This is what St. Benedict Labre teaches me. He was a pilgrim who could not find a home on this earth. But, his love led him to Rome, which became his spiritual as well as physical home. He found an identity contrary to the world, but simple, hidden, until the miracles at the end of his short life and after his death.
His obstacles were other people who could not see his worth. But, there are other obstacles.
The obstacles to regaining identity may be listed as follows:
1) fear, fear at losing a false identity for the real one;
2) family, fear of either embracing the past for healing or lack of forgiveness, even hatred;
3) false sense of duty towards something constructed or someone who has been an influence-one man I knew did not convert to Catholicism until he was 72, until his mother died, as she hated Catholics. Obviously, he was denying a call, an identity larger and stronger than her hatred;
4) pride, the biggest obstacle, as one may have to admit one has been mistaken in one's identity to the point of having a thwarted, unfilled life.
5) other people, especially if one is in a cult, as it is hard to break away from perceived love and a false reality;
6) fear of discovering again the pre-cult, pre-trauma, lost identity without a support group, without love;
7) the lack of a support group or counselors who understand the need for finding the pre-cult or lost identity; some counselors play along with the game of false identity, which is continuing a lie;
8) a lack of understanding that prayer and healing, the sacramental life, and confession especially, help find the lost identity.
Sometimes it takes a tornado, or at least a psychological one, to uncover our true selves.
One cannot completely deny one's past and heritage in order to find identity lost. God has a plan by putting us among a certain people, and for some, that may be a people not one's own, but called into being by God Himself. There is a mystery about identity which defies definition.
Those who persist in deceit if it is their own doing, and not something done to them, may need purgatory to find out who God wanted them to be. Purgatory purges the imagination and will, the heart, the mind, the soul and leads one to the truth of sin and falsity.
This purgatory may be accomplished on earth, with the help of a loving support group, who are steeped in the truth themselves. Plus, they may be healed enough to accomplish the good thing God wanted them to do on earth, by being themselves.
to be continued....