Can you talk about identification, what it is, why it happens?

Identification is a force, a pressure. It is the psychological gravity behind the tendency for awareness to be unwittingly drawn to and into thoughts, sensations, feelings, objects, and the visible world at large, and to attach itself to all of them. The power of conscious being is that it can override, resist, and neutralize this pull, and the miracle of the human form is that we can be a vehicle for pure being to actualize this possibility by realizing itself within us. We could stop here and explore what I just said for a long time because this is the whole thing, really. We are talking about the transformation and transmutation of divine matter consciously realizing itself through the conduit of a human being created for this purpose. This human form is a profound hinge in creation. We are a gateway that gives awareness the possibility of being transformed as it passes through this gateway of human existence.

QUESTION: But a less identified mind is still the mind, isn’t it? Just with a different point of view?

Your question is coming from the mind thinking about non-identification. Yes, non-identification has an effect on the mind, but ultimately it is not about the mind because the mind is not what becomes identified in the first place. Consciousness is what gets identified and being less identified is about consciousness becoming conscious of itself. The mind can think about being in the universe whereas consciousness realizes itself in the midst of the universe. The more consciousness retracts itself from the pull of identification, the more profoundly you realize your existence on earth, in the solar system, and within the universe. The mystery of creation starts to reveal hints about itself.

QUESTION: Why do we fall into identification so easily?

Partly because it is a habit, partly because we like it, and most of all because it is supposed to be that way. It is a universal law that governs unconscious human beings. Sometimes you can feel the energy of consciousness pouring into one or more centers with a certain ferocity. To someone who does not know about identification, this can feel good. For those who do know, it becomes unpleasant and disappointing to find that we have again fallen into the lake of identification. We look for the ladder of awareness to swim to as soon as we can.