You-ness, Uniqueness

Reframing “Who Am I?”

From deep Expression, “Who am I?” becomes the in-your-bones feeling and knowing of your own uniqueness. And the practice of living from your uniqueness changes the question to, “Where am I looking from?” with the ability to consciously choose the perspective through which you are experiencing yourself and the world.

Let’s explore deep Expression from its aspects of uniqueness and perspective, and how this impacts the way you experience yourself and move through the world.

The Many Facets of Your Unique Diamond

When I think of Expression, I often envision a little creation myth. I imagine a single radiant multifaceted diamond of pure potential, of pure awareness. Now this is pretty sweet because within this pure potential is everything…I mean everything. With infinite potential, life can’t get much better than that! Right? And yet, I can’t help but imagine that this pure consciousness might feel lonely and maybe even a bit bored. Potential and awareness are awesome but when there is only one…well, that’s it! Who do you play with? Who do you high five? How do you evolve and grow and experience something new when you are already everything?

I imagine a moment of longing, an impulse of desire and possibility that erupts from this diamond of consciousness, and in a big bang it shatters into an infinite number of diamonds. Each is still a diamond, and still contains the stuff of everything while each is unique. Each has its unique cut of facets, its unique windows to experience the world through. Of course, it is a magical diamond. Each new experience, new perspective adds a new facet, and the diamond grows, expanding its possibilities and evolving.

Not only are there now playmates, each diamond can now see itself in the reflection of the others.

You-ness, Uniqueness

You are unique.

Take a minute and think about what that means.

Look around you right now.

How you are experiencing the world is a unique moment in time and space. As each moment passes, something changes. Perhaps it’s the light as the time of day moves forward. Your body constantly transforms itself, creating new cells and others dying. From where you are sitting or standing right now, your view of the world is unlike any other view that was or will be.

Each perception and experience adds to the collective experience of you. You are the rich accumulation of all of your experiences, thoughts, emotions, and beliefs from the past, and you are being recreated with each new moment of experience.

Imagine yourself sitting around in a circle of people discussing a multisided, multicolored object in the middle. Even though it is common to say that everyone’s experience is the same, because we are in the same room and having the same conversation, it is not.

What each person sees is a different side of the object, and thus a different color. Each person looks from a different aspect of the room depending on where they are sitting. Each person is experiencing their body, and how they feel in their chair differently. Each person is interpreting what is happening according to their beliefs, past experiences, desires, and filters. We think we are having the same shared experience, and then we’re surprised to hear such different recounts of what happened in a conversation, meeting, or event.

No one else in the world or through time has ever or will have your combination of experiences. You are a singular perspective unlike any other. How could you be anything other than the perfect version of you?

Perhaps you could argue that past experiences have been painful and maybe you even have shame about past actions. Yet, when we let go of the labels and reframe the story of what it means (a Purpose skill,) and embrace our uniqueness and our past as important, the past becomes the rich experience that informs what we want to create and experience in our present and future. We learn, expand our sense of self, and refine our desires based on our experiences. All of them.

There is no part of you that is not valuable. There is no part of you that is unnecessary. All of it makes you uniquely you.

Special Versus Precious

Even though you are unique, so is everyone else! Special is a distinction that qualifies something as more valuable than something else. A billionaire, genius, or saint is no more valuable than anyone else. A homeless person, psychopath, or terrorist is no less valuable or special than anyone. Even though you are not special, you are precious. Like a one-of-a-kind piece of artwork, you are not replaceable or insignificant. Without you, life is less.

How would our treatment of each other change if we were able to really know our own preciousness at the same time as acknowledging everyone else’s?

Uniqueness Is Ordinary

When you live deeply from your uniqueness, it is a habit and a normal way of life. You are just as unique if you are washing dishes or getting the Nobel Peace Prize. You can even be bored when your uniqueness is not fueled with vitality (Growth,) and given direction with intention (Purpose,) or not engaged with rest of life (Connection).

When you shift out of old patterns of using identity and external forms of defining yourself without having a sense of your uniqueness yet, it can create what some call “dark nights of the soul,” where you lose all motivation and drive. The external “should” and drivers that you have used are no longer there as your motivation, but you have not yet learned how to move from your core and uniqueness and inner desire.

I remember one such period after my business crashed and with it my purpose. Up until that point in my life, I was singly driven by the idea that my value was in helping people and changing the world. For several years I had been producing the Whole Health Expo, an event that usually drew from 2000 to 5000 people and that I had grown to take place in four cities. While I felt good about where I had brought the business after a lot of trial and error, I sold it to launch what I saw as my bigger purpose and a new kind of event.

The Better World Festival was to be the vehicle for people to cross-pollinate, learn, collaborate, and envision an amazing world together (sound familiar?). It was the first time that the Four Forces were put into writing as the foundation philosophy. What unfolded was a series of bizarre and unexpected events. Shockingly, only 300 people attended. This was after the police had called the week before to make sure we were prepared for 25,000 people because the event was getting so much buzz. And vendors were congratulating me the night before, because everyone they knew said they were coming. The lack of attendance resulted in canceling my seven-city, two-year tour of the festival that was already booked and had sponsors. It also meant the end of my business.

This happened in between several other bizarre life events that left me reeling. I remember defiantly yelling out loud, “F*** you! I’m done. I’m not playing anymore!” to the universe. While I saw it at the time as a crisis of purpose, the interesting part was how it changed my experience of myself. I gave up any idea that I had a purpose, and even more profoundly, I let go of any thought that I should be doing anything. I let myself be ordinary.

It took about a year, but then an interesting thing happened. I started to feel a desire to create again. In fact, the same desire that had fueled the creation of the Better World Festival returned in a much more clear and untangled way. The desire now flowed as pleasurable and fun rather than as a “should” accompanied by a sense of pressure. The desire came from my uniqueness, and not from an external (or internal) pressure of who I should be.

Uniqueness Is Enough

From the position of uniqueness, you don’t need validation or to prove anything. There is no need for recognition or for people to like you. Being deeply in this version of Expression, comparing yourself to others as better or worse is silly. Instead, comparison becomes an appreciation of each person’s qualities and a way of knowing ourselves better through the contrast of another person, without the judgments attached.

Whenever I feel insecure, jealous, or not good enough, I’ve found it doesn’t work to try to think of all the good things about myself, rationalize why I should feel okay, or try to see the bad things about the other person. Instead, I have developed the practice of taking a moment and shifting perspective to my uniqueness. I’ll admit, it can take a while to get there, but I’ve found it is the only way that shifts these feelings at their core rather than a quick but superficial fix. It is impossible to feel inadequate when you are anchored in your uniqueness.

When we know ourselves, our interactions with others become a way to feel and know our uniqueness through the contrast and differences of others. Comparison becomes appreciation and learning about ourselves through each other.

Uniqueness Is Easy

I often asked, “How can I learn to be myself?” Of course, there are many skills and experiments you can use to explore and expand your experience of self, and you will learn about a few in the next chapter. However, I have found that none of them work unless there is a fundamental shift: Stop trying, and instead relax into yourself.

Expressing yourself in the world is a relaxed, easy stance. When you know who you are, there is no need to be anything other than yourself. Your unique expression is life experiencing itself through the lens of you. Without your uniqueness, life is less. There is one less diamond; one less reflection for the universe to find pleasure and learning in. Your unique perspective is your contribution to evolution itself.

Sometimes your perfectionist part or creative self gets blocked or stuck. I’ve found that the more I can relax and feel my uniqueness as I write this book, for example, rather than worrying about how to get it right, the more my writing flows. Creativity and flow become enhanced when your expression flows without effort.

When we are relaxed in our uniqueness, it is not static. Our sense of self is creative, evolving, and fluid. When combined with the other forces, we experience flow.

Uniqueness Is Always Evolving

You are never done becoming you. As we saw with authenticity, it is an easy thought to point to the feeling of uniqueness and say, “this is me,” but that you-ness is constantly in the process of becoming (Growth). You are constantly creating new perspectives or aspects of self and evolving. There are also an infinite number of ways to experience yourself. Different aspects emerge as we have new experiences in life.

For example, from the perspective of many communities that I have been a part of, guns are considered a thing to be avoided and banned. When I had an experience of shooting one, I found myself completely surprised by the enjoyment of it. I loved the feeling of it in my hand, and the satisfaction that came from seeing the target come back with holes in it where I had aimed. I enjoyed it so much that my husband and I both applied for and received a license to carry for going to the shooting range.

Many of my more liberal friends have a hard time understanding my choice. For me, it’s very clear that I can both enjoy consciously the aspect of myself that enjoys using a gun, and also have a perspective that we need to be more conscious as a society in how we handle the use of guns.

Uniqueness Is a Paradox

In our uniqueness, we are separate. We are distinct and different from everyone else. No other human will ever have your set of you-ness. If you sink into this reality, this inherently means, that no matter how much you try to get someone else to understand you fully, you will never succeed. Rather than struggle to try to be understood, you recognize that it’s impossible for someone to understand all the nuances of your experience without the wholeness of you. Likewise, you can never fully experience the other person’s reality exactly.

As we saw with Connection, we are not separate. We can also experience ourselves as everything, oneness, as boundaryless, and pure consciousness. Mystical traditions speak of a state of ego death, where all sense of self drops away. We realize we are not separate at all. In fact, there is no you in you-ness.

We are both of these through a shift in perspective. Seeming opposites are both true, only differentiated by where we are looking from.