Ernie Thayer

Who do you think you are! No, really, who do you think you are? Who are you without any idea of who you are? If you hold no image of yourself, what are you?

I can see that if I have any self-image, I can be hurt. You can say I’m not who I think I am and I’ll get my feelings hurt, then run away from that pain and either blame you or myself or find some other escape. I’ll ask my friends to support me so I can strengthen the image I hold and hope I’ll be less vulnerable. I can generate an awful lot of drama around me. But I’m not happy. It’s the same on the world stage. One wants to be right and make the other wrong.

What if the image itself is causing the problem in the first place? If I had no sense of myself as this or that, if I don’t know who or what I am in such a way, how could you hurt me by what you say or think? You may hurt my pocketbook, my reputation, convince others to think as you do, but how can you hurt me inside? That’s only possible if I have a particular sense of myself and you contradict it or if I secretly doubt it. Then I’ll fall into the peculiar fear we experience when our personality feels threatened or under attack. My dear pup Tilly (see Photos page) has no such problems…she remains what she is no matter what I think or tell her. I don’t believe there’s a self-image bone in her body. How does she do that?

So is it possible not to have images of myself? From childhood on, I’ve held images of one sort or another – nice boy, good Catholic, smart student, good guy, helpful therapist, shameful drunk, recovering drunk, commitment-phobe, spiritual seeker, a man trying to be good, etc., etc. I can see the pain these have caused me and others and the mess they left me in. Besides, they require so much work and attention to keep up! I have to do all manner of things to support my belief about me, to protect my ‘look-goods’. And when a lover or boss or anyone says I’m not who I think I am, I ache. Worse, I relate to others from my image of myself and not from who I really am, so I’m constantly isolating myself from others and from life. What sort of relationship is that?

So can I let go all such ideas about myself, effortlessly? Do I really need them? Don’t I exist whether I have any ideas or not? What will be left of me without some sense of who I am? Will I then just let people walk all over me?

Go into this in yourself and see what you discover. How can you find out what images you hold? When you meet someone, what do you want them to think of you? Watch carefully. What you want them to think is your self-image. There you can see what operates in you. If you really want to know yourself, it’s visible in your relationship to others. We’re uncomfortable knowing about ourselves this way, but it’s there to see. If you pay attention to all this without judgment and don’t run from it, what happens? It may feel embarrassing. Yet if you’re curious and willing to watch without any motive whatsoever – just to see the truth of your images, then you can learn something new. What happens to those ideas or images? Do they remain? Who are you then?

Maybe what’s left is a human being living free of any ideas about herself, someone without a center point of identity, simply someone real, alive and part of life. Maybe even her past hurts would no longer bite. Janis sang, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”. It always rang true…

If you look carefully you can see that images like this are the source not only of our personal conflicts but, collectively, of war. We participate in war when we live this way. To end the war in Iraq seems so daunting; one feels helpless. But can conflict end, here & now, inside of you and me? Can you & I be human beings who are incapable of making war? That would be a truly new kind of person.

To really look at ourselves in this way may be more than enough…