If one of your intentions is to experience more happiness, inner peace, joy, love, and fulfillment, you will find that dis-identifying from the mind and its recorded content can be a very helpful stepping stone to achieving this worthwhile intention.

Knowingly, or unknowingly, we’re conditioned from birth to identify with our mind and the thoughts and emotions that the mind creates as the mind is programmed to.

Meaning, that when we feel anger, we think that we are angry.  When we feel sadness, we believe that we are sad.  This then leads us to become identified with the feeling of anger, sadness, or any other emotion that we feel from moment to moment.

How many feelings, thoughts, and emotions do you experience in every one day? On average, at least 70,000.  What does this mean about our process of self-identification?  And, who is it really that’s experiencing these thoughts, feelings, and emotions? Is this the ‘real’, conscious you?  Or just a part of yourself that you’ve become identified with?

For the most part, this process of identification leads to a lot of confusion, fragmentation, feelings of being lost or overwhelmed, and constantly jumping from part to part, thought to thought, emotion to emotion, etc., throughout the day, identifying and reacting to each, and feeling like we’re on a roller coaster ride.

Of course, if we had no judgment or didn’t project the implications of being angry, sad, overwhelmed, dissatisfied, etc., then it might be much easier to simply become aware of these parts, their thoughts, feelings, and emotions, what brings them up, when, where, how, and why they get triggered, and therefore to manage them optimally with the intention of ultimately releasing the more detrimental ones.

That said, for most of us, we have yet to learn to consistently live in a non-judgmental, all accepting, unconditionally loving, and fully present state.

Because we don’t usually live in this harmonious and balanced state, this means that, for the most part, we spend a lot of our time identified with our thoughts, feelings, and emotions, judging each one as it arises, projecting the implications of thinking or feeling what we think or feel, and reacting to our own judgments and projections without realizing that this is all happening when it is.

Transcending our tendency to judge ourselves and to project future negative potentials about what we think and feel is very useful and can give us the creative energy, bandwidth, and capacity to reflect more deeply on the process of identification itself.

Why are we identified with our thoughts? Why do we feel that we are our feelings and emotions? What do we project – consciously or subconsciously – we will get from identifying with our thoughts and emotions?  Is this helpful to us and our process of achieving deeper happiness in life, or not?  Is there another way that would be more supportive of our ultimate intentions and goals?  What happens when we actually use a conscious process to dis-identify from our thoughts and emotions?  Do we have more energy?  Do we feel better?  Does it become easier to quickly let go of thoughts and emotions that would otherwise disempower us and distract us away from our true and most meaningful intentions and goals?

When we start redirecting the energy and time that we used to invest in self-judgment and fearful projection towards understanding ourselves better and becoming more self-aware about the true source of our thoughts and emotions, and we consciously choose to dis-identify from them from moment to moment, we become filled with creative energy, a deep sense of wellbeing, and self-empowerment.

This process of dis-identification with the parts of ourselves (thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations, beliefs, fears, expectations, judgments, etc.) that we used to be identified with gives us the opportunity to become ever more present, peaceful, joyful, patient, compassionate, loving, and to experience deep personal freedom and  fulfillment beyond what our mind could ever imagine or perceive.

This process can be achieved in many different ways, such as analytical meditation, journaling, and many other self-explorative and healing techniques that have been designed to dis-identify from our ego self (parts) and to get in touch with the deeper aspects and dimensions of our being – our soul – which operates outside of thought, belief, fear, expectation, judgment, or any dualistic perspective and reality.

We hope that this short self-introspective article on ways in which you can dis-identify from ego realities that are not optimal for you helps you feel better and better, supports you in your process of self-awareness and self-exploration, and empowers you to achieve your most meaningful life intentions and goals, including that of experiencing deeper happiness from moment to moment.