We idealists may have unintentionally wandered off toward irrelevance, but we can turn around and head back to the empowering fold of community and take up our important mission at any time.

Yes, it is important to understand the drawbacks of labels, how they can limit and reduce, and how the ego often craves them for its own purposes.  And it is certainly true that the need to belong to a group is often based in ego.  But far more egoic is the idea that we are too unique to belong in any group at all.

Our decision to reject the New Age emblem -- an emblem with the potential to unify and galvanize us as a group and move us up the spiral of development-- has proven to be terribly shortsighted.  The further we have drifted away from a common identity, the greater we have drifted into fragmentation and narcissism.

Of course, this step away may have been a necessary step in our collective evolution.  Spiritual development happens through differentiation and integration -- we start from a thesis, create an antithesis, and then integrate the two into a synthesis.  It is possible, even probable, that abandoning an organized movement in order to discover the limits of individualism was exactly what we were supposed to do. But we’ve been hanging out in differentiation, hanging out in antithesis, for a long while. 

And as we have seen, the costs are disastrously high: spiritual stagnancy, isolation, invisibility, and ineffectiveness within the culture at large.  Clearly, it’s time for synthesis between individual and community. 

It’s time to establish a spiritual identity.

The magic of knowing who you are

Idealism is based on the principle that everything that exists, including ourselves, is a manifestation of a greater spiritual reality. Thus, from the idealistic perspective, salvation quite literally lies in the recognition of who you are. 

This essential truth has been repeated throughout history by Hindu sages, Taoist monks, Zen masters, Greek idealists, mystics and storytellers.  (Remember the story of the Ugly Duckling?)  We have been taught over and over that learning who you are -- and owning who you are -- is the path to salvation, the path to authenticity, the path to power.

In the New Age we learn who we are by learning to see through the ego to the soul, the true self, which is one with Spirit.  In other words, we learn to identify with the soul instead of the ego. (See Riddle of the Self)  This sounds like it should be a simple switch in perspective, but it is actually fraught with great difficulty.

After all, the illusory ego which escorts us into the world is quite certain it is the true self -- and it works very hard to maintain that illusion and keep us identified with it.   Plus, as we’ve already seen, our attempts to deflate the ego by banishing all identity has inadvertently had the opposite effect.  Our aggressive individuality has only left us more in thrall to our own egos, and stalled on the spiral of development.

If we want to get unstuck, if we honestly want to discover our true selves, our souls, we are going to have to learn to transcend the egotism that has trapped us in place.  We are going to have to basically start all over, and move again through the stages of spiritual growth -- from egocentric, to ethnocentric to worldcentric.

Spiritual identity is key

In the effort to transcend the ego, it would at first glance seem counterintuitive to feed the ego with a particular identity.  It would seem we should follow the example of those Buddhist hermits of old who dropped all identities and retired to their solitary cave to meditate non-stop. 

I’ve always wondered how many monks actually achieved enlightenment by abandoning community, or how many just went crazy like so many of the hermits we see here in the West, muttering to bushes, lost in a world of their own creation.   I don’t know the answer, but I do know that solitary cave-sitting for enlightenment is not all that popular anymore. 

Today, when seekers from the East are serious about transcending ego, they don’t head for a cave, they join a meditative school or monastic order of some sort.  They accept an identity and join a group that provides a context for their search for self.  Whatever boost their egos may get from the identity is more than offset by the ego-humbling dynamic of being just one among many.  Meanwhile, the discipline imposed by the group, with all its schedules and rituals and mundane activities, helps dissolve the ego far more effectively than any activity one could undertake on his or her own.

The soul, of course, doesn’t need the identity.  The soul is a simple moment of consciousness that exists beyond identity.  But in order to be able to connect with the soul, we have to get the ego out of the way.  By subsuming the ego in an identity that explicitly reduces its importance, we help make it more permeable, and increase our ability to see through it to the soul.

I remember feeling my first inkling of this as a newly-baptized Christian.  By taking on the identity of Christian, I surrendered my sense of self, my ego, up to Spirit, for the first time in my life.  Being able to set aside the oppressive ego worked like a bellows on the tiny flicker of my soul, which I felt expanding within me. I was able to burn brightly with peace and acceptance for quite some time.

Yet however much I enjoyed the release from ego that Christianity provided, I eventually grew out of my ability to hold to the blind faith in dogma that just didn’t feel “true” to me, dogma I believed was required to stay a Christian, and I left the church.  For awhile I worried I would never feel that closeness to Spirit again. 

Fortunately, I found books that taught me that the ego can be dissolved by any number of paths and identities.  Which is not to say that the particular identity we choose isn’t important.  As I learned from unsuccessfully trying to talk myself into holding to Christianity, it does no good to adopt an identity that doesn’t ring true to you, or requires you to take positions you recognize are not good and loving.  If the identity is not the right fit, you will simply wander away from it, ego still fat and unthreatened.

To open up to the awareness of the true self, we must work to dissolve the ego as much as possible.  We must move through each stage of growth, from egocentric to ethnocentric -- for it is the ethnocentric stage, the “I belong to a group“ stage, that helps break down the ego enough to transcend it. 

No doubt it is possible for some people to sit alone in a cave long enough to be able to skip identity.  But any sense that I am so special that I can get to worldcentric without the ego-dissolving help of an identity seems to me a sure sign that one is still languishing in egocentricism.

 “The New Age is about self-discovery,” writes David Spangler. “But it is also about self-definition and incarnation.  It is about making choices, setting boundaries, defining limits.”  Claiming an identity that holds true and helps dissolve the ego is the only sure bridge from egocentric to worldcentric, from individual to community.  Century after century, spiritual seekers have found this to be true, and it remains true today.

The right identity

We are fortunate to live in a time when all the great wisdom traditions of history are available to us simply by heading down to the bookstore or clicking onto the Internet. When searching for a path that feels “right,” we have a great many expressions of spirituality available to us.

However, this plentitude of paths also makes it difficult to find one any more “right” than the other.  On one day I might feel most attracted to seasonal pagan rituals that take me closer to the rhythms of nature.  On another day I might prefer the simple silence of Zen.  Still yet another day I might feel in need of the Christian symbols of my childhood as expressed by the great Christian mystics. 

We “spiritual but not religious” folk have been enjoying such freedom for a long time, and we are not about to forsake the riches wisdom of all the great wisdom traditions in order to choose one narrow path.  And yet if we commit to none, we won’t get the ego-dissolving effect of any.

What we need is an open and flexible identity that will accommodate disparate beliefs and practices.  And that is exactly what one gets with a New Age identity.  Like a masterpiece of music which allows all manner of instruments to play a wide range of notes in harmony, the New Age supports the great range of beliefs which rise from the core principles of the Perennial Philosophy.

The New Age offers us the best of both worlds, a community which soothes the isolation of individuality without undermining its freedoms. It allows us to surrender the ego to common ideals at the same time it allows us to enrich the soul with individual epiphanies.  It allows us to better become ourselves without having to undertake the risks of getting lost.

In taking on a New Age identity, we are better able to find our balance between solitude and society, between self and other, between ego and soul.  But this benefit is not ours alone.  Anything that benefits the individual also confers benefit on the whole.  Anything we do to lift ourselves up automatically uplifts the community to which we belong.

Go to The Social Field.