Harm: Identity Wants can create harm to self and other

[Excerpt from Unachievable]

This is the saddest chapter of the book to write. Because Identity Wants are unrelated to current reality, because they are unfulfillable, because they look vital to survival they can result in a whole spectrum of harm to our own bodies, to other people, to animals, to nature.

There are no limits to the damage and devastation human behaviour can wreak in an attempt for the individual mind to find peace and wholeness. This is what we call having a lost mind: a mind that is unconsciously living an experience of resentment, inadequacy, shame and desperation in a reality that continually mirrors that belief system.

When the mind is captured by its own belief system, the more powerful the individual or the individual’s weapons, the greater the damage done. We can see this insanity play out in past and present horrors. We can think of suicides, school shootings, genocides, and these extreme manifestations can look as though they are very removed from our own lives – as though they have nothing to do with us.

But let’s see all mental illness for the spectrum it really is. Let’s notice our own narrative of separation, fear, need, shame and insecurity, and let’s see how it plays out in the reality experienced and the behaviour that results. Let’s consider the harm we may have ever done to our own body in the attempt to find some relief from the mind. Or the angry words or actions we have ever said or done to someone else because we felt ashamed, insecure, confronted or scared.

Identity Wants can create harm to self and other.