IDENTIFICATION WITH THINGS

The people in the advertising industry know very well that in order to
sell things that people don’t really need, they must convince them that those
things will add something to how they see themselves or are seen by others;
in other words, add something to their sense of self. They do this, for
example, by telling you that you will stand out from the crowd by using this
product and so by implication be more fully yourself. Or they may create an
association in your mind between the product and a famous person, or a
youthful, attractive, or happylooking
person. Even pictures of old or
deceased celebrities in their prime work well for that purpose. The unspoken
assumption is that by buying this product, through some magical act of
appropriation, you become like them, or rather the surface image of them.
And so in many cases you are not buying a product but an “identity
enhancer.” Designer labels are primarily collective identities that you buy
into. They are expensive and therefore “exclusive.” If everybody could buy
them, they would lose their psychological value and all you would be left
with would be their material value, which likely amounts to a fraction of
what you paid.
What kind of things you identify with will vary from person to person
according to age, gender, income, social class, fashion, the surrounding
culture, and so on. What you identify with is all to do with content; whereas,
the unconscious compulsion to identify is structural. It is one of the most
basic ways in which the egoic mind operates.
Paradoxically, what keeps the socalled
consumer society going is the
fact that trying to find yourself through things doesn’t work: The ego
satisfaction is shortlived
and so you keep looking for more, keep buying,
keep consuming.
Of course, in this physical dimension that our surface selves inhabit,
things are a necessary and inescapable part of our lives. We need housing,
clothes, furniture, tools, transportation. There may also be things in our lives
that we value because of their beauty or inherent quality. We need to honor
the world of things, not despise it. Each thing has Beingness, is a temporary
form that has its origin within the formless one Life, the source of all things,
all bodies, all forms. In most ancient cultures, people believed that
everything, even socalled
inanimate objects, had an indwelling spirit, and in
this respect they were closer to the truth than we are today. When you live in
a world deadened by mental abstraction, you don’t sense the aliveness of the
universe anymore. Most people don’t inhabit a living reality, but a
conceptualized one.
But we cannot really honor things if we use them as a means to selfenhancement,
that is to say, if we try to find ourselves through them. This is
exactly what the ego does. Egoidentification
with things creates attachment
to things, obsession with things, which in turn creates our consumer society
and economic structures where the only measure of progress is always more.
The unchecked striving for more, for endless growth, is a dysfunction and a
disease. It is the same dysfunction the cancerous cell manifests, whose only
goal is to multiply itself, unaware that it is bringing about its own destruction
by destroying the organism of which it is a part. Some economists are so
attached to the notion of growth that they can’t let go of that word, so they
refer to recession as a time of “negative growth.”
A large part of many people’s lives is consumed by an obsessive
preoccupation with things. This is why one of the ills of our times is object
proliferation. When you can no feel the life that you are, you are likely to fill
up your life with things. As a spiritual practice, I suggest that you investigate
your relationship with the world of things through selfobservation,
and in
particular, things that are designated with the word “my.” You need to be
alert and honest to find out, for example, whether your sense of selfworth
is
bound up with things you possess. Do certain things induce a subtle feeling
of importance or superiority? Does the lack of them make you feel inferior
to others who have more than you? Do you casually mention things you own
or show them off to increase your sense of worth in someone else’s eyes and
through them in your own? Do you feel resentful or angry and somehow
diminished in your sense of self when someone else has more than you or
when you lose a prized possession?

Structure of the Ego

The egoic mind is completely conditioned by the past. Its conditioning
is twofold: It consists of content and structure.
In the case of a child who cries in deep suffering because his toy has
been taken away, the toy represents content. It is interchangeable with any
other content, any other toy or object. The content you identify with is
conditioned by your environment, your upbringing, and surrounding culture.
Whether the child is rich or poor, whether the toy is a piece of wood shaped
like an animal or a sophisticated electronic gadget makes no difference as far
as the suffering caused by its loss is concerned. The reason why such acute
suffering occurs is concealed in the word “my,” and it is structural. The
unconscious compulsion to enhance one’s identity through association with
an object is built into the very structure of the egoic mind.
One of the most basic mind structures through which the ego comes
into existence is identification. The word “identification” is derived from the
Latin word idem, meaning “same” and facere, which means “to make.” So
when I identify with something, I “make it the same.” The same as what?
The same as I. I endow it with a sense of self, and so it becomes part of my
“identity.” One of the most basic levels of identification is with things: My
toy later becomes my car, my house, my clothes, and so on. I try to find
myself in things but never quite make it and end up losing myself in them.
That is the fate of the ego.