I came across a quote by Eckhart Tolle and I thought I would share it with you along with my commentary. Eckhart's words are bold and italic type.
The first thing to remember is this: As long as you make an identity for yourself out of the pain, you cannot become free of it. As long as part of your sense of self is invested in your emotional pain, you will unconsciously resist or sabotage every attempt that you make to heal that pain.
What we identify with holds us in a prison. It is what I was describing in last Sunday's message about "selfies and Spiritual Growth." Attached to our suffering or any picture that has us ego conspires unconsciously to keep us there.
Why? Quite simply because you want to keep yourself intact, and the pain has become an essential part of you. This is an unconscious process, and the only way to overcome it is to make it conscious.
These pictures are an unconscious identification until we become aware of them. We don't know we are in them and we go about our life. They have us until we become aware of them. We become aware that they are not who we are.
To suddenly see that you are or have been attached to your pain can be quite a shocking realization. The moment you realize this, you have broken the attachment.
The attachment to the picture is broken on the realization that it is a picture. The picture is not who I am. But it is so easy to slip back into the picture or another picture.
The pain-body is an energy field, almost like an entity, that has become temporarily lodged in your inner space. It is life energy that has become trapped, energy that is no longer flowing.
This pain-body or this picture or this network of error thinking and habits is energy. It can't not be energy. Everything is energy.
Of course, the pain-body is there because of certain things that happened in the past. It is the living past in you, and if you identify with it, you identify with the past.
Yes, some we owned and identified ourself as something/character we encountered in out past.
A victim identity is the belief that the past is more powerful than the present, which is the opposite of the truth. It is the belief that other people and what they did to you are responsible for who you are now, for your emotional pain or your inability to be your true self.
In our pictures we might be the victim, but we might be the hero. Whatever the picture is, it is NEVER the truth of who we are!
The truth is that the only power there is is contained within this moment: It is the power of your presence. Once you know that, you also realize that you are responsible for your inner space now — nobody else is — and that the past cannot prevail against the power of the Now.
In this moment of realization ask yourself, "Who am I?" WHO AM I? Every time you answer I am "something" (and it can be anything: doctor, father, daughter, victim, hero) that "something" is a picture.
They are all pictures. When we are no longer in a picture the only answer is: I AM. It is simply being. I Am.
I AM
(words above in BOLD ITALICS are the words of Eckhart Tolle)