According to the spiritual traditions of India, not knowing your identity is the basic cause of suffering. The Greeks also thought the same and that may be the reason why the words—Know Thyself—were inscribed above the entrance to the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Before we ask any other questions about life, this fundamental question must be honestly answered, if we want to thrive in life. People will tell you who they are by stating their name, their occupation, their ethnicity, their achievements, etc. Our identity is often associated with the roles we play or the stuff we have. Eckhart Tolle calls it our form-identity, an identity based on external forms.
A re-cognition needs to happen in our perception that we are neither our positions nor our possessions.
The best way to re-cognize who we are is, by remembering who we are, something we forget to do when we get busy with life. Let me use the story of the famous Disney movie, The Lion King to explain this point.
The movie begins with a dedication ceremony for Simba, the baby lion born to the current king, Mufasa and his wife Sarabi. When his father dies, Simba would be heir to the throne. But Mufasa’s brother, Scar, wants to be king too. So he looked for an opportunity to eliminate his nephew Simba, from the scene.
One day, he tricked Simba by taking him to a place caught up in a wild beast stampede. Mufasa rescued Simba but he was killed by being pushed off the cliff by Scar. Simba was heart-broken and traumatized,