If you are thinking, ‘I need help finding myself,’ you are at a transition in your life. You have just become aware of a larger horizon that you were not aware of before. Also, possibly you were aware this larger horizon was there but earlier you had no means to explore it. For whatever reason, you are at a crossroads between staying in the old or expanding into a larger realm of who you are. But who are you?
Life is dynamic, as is spiritual growth, it is not static. Therefore, it happens in seasons and eras. Since we are spiritual beings, we are continually growing through seasons, and living through eras. For some of us, as we mature and we are ready to leave home, we may go back and look one last time at the old haunts we had where we played when younger, there we will say our goodbyes before we leave. There will be times of transition as adults when we look one last time at a place of residence we had before moving on. We will briefly remember all the meaningful things we did or said and the loved ones we shared life with there.
Some transitions are insignificant, and others are deeply meaningful as we move on. What never changes are we always take ourselves with us. Over time as we move through seasons and eras, we can lose a sense of who we really are. Most people think they are just a person placed into a sea of chaos and randomness and whatever happens will be because of how they can figure out things and use their wits to survive, making their place in life by their own hand. That is exactly how life seems, but it is far from the truth. To get help to find ourselves we need to see our full selves the way God created us. We are not just a person separated from the setting we were born into and which we live. We were placed where we are because of what this setting can teach us, lessons we need to learn, and because of what gift we have within us that will make our world complete for others in it. There is a connection between us and our world. Looking into our world will reveal something about us, and looking deeply within us will reveal something our world needs from us.
The connection between us and our world does not stop at the location connection, there is also a time in history connection. You were placed in Humankind specifically now because history is ready for your contribution to it. You were placed in time where the most needful ones whom you are to meet or have met need you the most. We are more than just a person, we are also a setting provided, gifts and talents endowed, and with a life plan to discover as we live through life. That is more than just being an isolated person on their own to figure things out. Your picture of who you are to find is bigger than just you the person!
Since these other things are a part of who we are, that means our life settings we are in are exactly like a topographical map. Once we accept that we also consist of our life setting, our place in time, and our gifts and talents, and all this is structured with a good purpose, then we can use a compass within us to find ourselves. There are seven activities we all do that will help in our search for who we are. They act as a spiritual compass. They will tell us exactly where we are (ourselves) and where we are exactly to go (our talents).
Our normal reaction is for example, if we are fascinated with woodworking and always have been, then woodworking is what we find out about ourselves. But finding ourselves may be deeper than that, in which case other spiritual activities below may be involved in finding who we are. Almost everyone who has had this difficulty have all shown one strong characteristic, and that is their sense of personhood, or sense of self has, by circumstances, been shut entirely off. What we mean by that is there are seven spiritual activities that we all naturally do, much like breathing. If through some traumatic circumstances over time we have shut these things off to emotionally survive, we need to start using them again. These seven things are as necessary to our spiritual growth as nutrition, water and sleep are to our physical growth.
Your Seven Spiritual Activities Are:
Seeing Things Through Your Own Eyes
Feeling Your Own Feelings
Thinking Your Own Thoughts
Making Your Own Choices
Finding Your Own Dreams (Talents)
Building Your Own Dreams (Talents)
Sharing Your Own Dreams (Talents) in Celebration
If we have experienced traumatic events and losses, these activities will have been shut off. What that means is we have been flying in the dark of life with no radar to guide us. That is probably the feeling you have about yourself today. everyone else knows who they are and where they are going, and you do not. Moreover, they seem to be having better luck at locating resources and opportunities and even finding friends to help them. They also may seem to have no difficulty making deep relationships. The lack of all those things you are experiencing are all caused by the same thing. Not seeing, feeling, thinking, choosing, etc. When you consciously start to practice these seven activities, then that is where you will find the answers you are in pain for not knowing.
Somewhere in your deep past there have been forces that have robbed you of your right to do them. Perhaps it was caregivers telling you how to see things or shaming you for feeling the loss of a puppy or criticizing you for making, to them, a bad thought or choice. That is a spiritual boundary violation of the worst kind. Give yourself permission to see it that way. Now venture further into feeling, thinking, choosing, and so forth. After a while with a lot of practice, you will start to feel yourself again. Farther along you will start to feel even deeper things, not just in authentic response to the outside world you live in, but to energies within you, the energy of who you are. You will think of something you would like to try or do. Something enjoyably interesting from your past will occur to you. There will be a memory of a favorite hobby you forgot about.
Maybe perhaps, and this is how it happened for me, I spotted something in a scrap metal pile where I was picking up metal for my employer and it fascinated me. I asked the crane operator to bring it down so I could look at it, and I was hooked. It was an old radio play wagon, perhaps sixty years old and I discovered my passion for antiquity and have been ever since. When you allow yourself to become more sensitive, then you will find both from without and from within things you will love and who you are. Do you know how joyful you feel when you meet an old friend or relative you have not seen in a long time? That is how you will feel when you meet something about yourself you just discovered! The help you need to find yourself is locked safely away in the above seven activities. The more you let yourself live in those seven activities the more you will start to be in your personhood and not feel like a shadow anymore. As you experience yourself doing those seven activities, the more of who you are will emerge!
Just for the record, this is an emotional and spiritual encouragement ministry. We are selling nothing here and are not at the present time even set up to take donations, and probably never will. Your healed life is our reward enough, and we are very pleased with that. If you want to, please share your strength with others in your future so our nurturing can live on.