Accepting my Identity
My true identity is a child of God.
This is the identity I have come to accept. Once I've claimed it and settled in it, I can now live in a world that gives much joy as well as bring much pain.
I can receive the praise as well as the blame that comes to me - as opportunities for strengthening my basic identity, because the identity that makes me free is anchored and found beyond all human praise and blame. I belong to God. And it is as a child of God that I'm sent into the world.
I am always in the need for spiritual guidance. I need people, community who keep me anchored in my true identity. The temptation to disconnect from that deep place in me where God dwells and to let myself be drowned in the praise or blame of the world always remains.
But I haven't always saw myself as a child of God. In fact, for most of my life, I did not. I know I'm leonard. I'm a student. I am from the Koh Family. I'm baptised a Catholic and will probably die one. But as a child of God? To know it in the deep places of my heart? It was an identity that was unknown to me for a very long time.
So those people who were able to touch me, come into my life or whom I let into the deepest depths of my heart often had a sudden and overwhelming power over me. They become a part of my identity. I could not live without them. It was painful to lose them. I felt like a part of me died. And, turns out - it did.
But that's because they could not fulfil that divine role, so they left, and I felt...abandoned. But it is precisely that experience of abandonment that called me back to my true identity as a child of God.
"There is one Love left, Leonard.... My Love."
Only God. Only God can fully dwell in the deepest places in me and give me a sense of safety. But the danger remains that I will let other people run away with my sacred centre and throw me once more into anguish. And confusion.
It will take me a great deal of time and discipline to reconnect fully to my deep, hidden self and my public self, which is known, loved, and accepted but also criticised by the world.
But...gradually..I will begin feeling more connected and become more fully who I truly am - A Child of God.
And therein..lies my real freedom.
-reflections from 'Inner Voice of Love'
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