Escape The Labels That Define You

The moment we label something, it is limited. The label isn’t the truth, it is a representation of, it’s a finger pointing to the moon, it is a suggestion of possibility that always falls short of reality.

In this Reality Check Podcast episode I share the following poem and muse about its implications, leaving you with the spiritual practice of looking beyond the label, to see what it is pointing to, pulling it all the way back to the core, to consciousness.

"all labels, are an abstraction of form, baring one; consciousness"

Transcript

All labels are an abstraction of form,

Barring one,

Consciousness.

That short poem came to me during a meditation session where I was contemplating the idea of labels,

And labels pop up everywhere.

We label ourselves,

You know,

I am this,

I like that,

These are the conditions I have been afflicted with.

But I have a problem with labels,

And the main problem is this,

A label never quite encapsulates the totality of someone's truth.

I talk in the mental health space a lot,

And the idea of labeling is a controversial topic.

If you have a condition,

There is a risk of being labeled,

Depression,

Anxiety,

Autism,

BPD,

Whatever it is.

But the problem is,

Is that that condition doesn't express your truth.

You may be living with that condition,

You may be afflicted by it,

But you are more than it.

And beyond that,

Other people with that condition present differently.

No two people are the same,

No two presentations of a condition are the same.

But when you are labeled,

You are lumped together.

Society,

Doctors,

Medicine,

All of these things lumped the same people with the same condition together.

You treat someone with this condition with this treatment.

And what's worse,

Or what's more rather,

Is that the individual labels themselves.

I have this condition,

Therefore I am X.

I have this condition,

Therefore I can't do Y.

Growth is not possible because I am this.

I'm sure you can start to see the potential ramifications or issues of a labeling-only approach.

Yes,

There are benefits.

You are able to communicate with mental health professionals,

With doctors,

With governmental organizations to get funding and supports that are needed.

The only way to get that is if you have the label.

Someone that meets the criteria gets the resources.

I get it.

But it is limiting and it is by definition non-personal.

You are more than your condition,

More than your label.

And in fact,

The labeling might be restricting you to a certain range of mental,

Psychological,

And physical movement because you may feel trapped by your label.

But this problem of labeling goes well beyond mental health,

And it goes into every aspect of life.

And we'll pull it back to the idea of non-duality.

But it's important to see where labels go everywhere first.

Look at the labels of sexuality,

Of gender,

Of politics.

I'm left-wing,

I'm right-wing,

I'm libertarian.

What do these things actually mean?

Because if you ask someone if they're left or right or somewhere else,

Often that means they typically lean in those directions.

But if you actually ask them about their politics,

They will say that they believe this about this topic,

That about that topic.

And whilst they may all be in one direction,

They won't be in the same intensity to the same level as other people that are in that direction.

What's more,

They may have seemingly contradictory beliefs.

They're right-wing in one aspect of life and they're left-wing in other aspects of life,

But they get labeled.

And if you tell someone your label of where you lean politically,

Well,

Now you're either in agreeance or in conflict.

And in a two-party or maybe three,

Four,

Five-party,

A very small amount of optional systems that we have in a lot of Western countries for our votes,

It's very easy to get labeled into one of these small options.

But each person,

Once again,

Is unique and different.

If you investigated them,

They would say what they fully,

Truly believe.

Same thing as gender,

Same thing as sexuality.

Let's say we take away some of the politics out of this discussion and just look at just the regular experience of someone.

Someone's experience of being a man or being a woman will vary from day to day because your experiences and interactions vary.

You may feel manly,

Very manly,

Doing a certain activity,

Sport,

Work,

But then you come home and you interact with your family and you let your guard down and you soften a little bit.

Are you less manly?

It's an interesting thing to consider that people will label themselves as this or as that,

But the interactions they have with people in the world will change who they are in that moment.

Continuing down that masculinity example for a little bit,

Most everyone isn't rigidly stuck to one projection of themselves.

Indeed,

Most people don't label themselves as one thing.

They're not thinking about it.

They're allowing that free flow.

But once people start considering and labeling and focusing on one particular topic,

One particular issue,

One particular identity,

They become stuck.

Now,

Obviously,

It becomes political when the identity you're feeling internally is at odds with the body presentation or how the world sees you.

Bust the conflict down those spheres.

But that's not really where I want to go with this conversation.

What I want to suggest is that we label ourselves as a man,

As a woman,

As non-binary,

As something in between.

We label our sexuality straight,

Gay,

Queer,

Trans,

Et cetera,

Et cetera.

But I would argue that everything is on a spectrum and everything is fluid because even your attraction to another will alter,

Will vary with times of the month,

With times of the day,

With mood,

With substance,

With a variety of different things.

So you're not static.

But the moment you label yourself as static,

You are closing off possibility.

You may be mostly down one path,

But if you're open to connection down another path,

Perhaps you will find and meet someone that fits the bill that isn't down the traditional route of attraction for you.

Talk about labeling the self.

Who are you?

Oh,

I am this.

This is my job.

I am a worker,

A teacher,

An employee,

A business owner.

Well,

Are you?

Or is that just one of the roles that you put on?

You are more than the label,

More than your sexuality,

More than your job.

You know,

You can talk about personality traits.

I'm introverted.

I'm extroverted.

I'm outgoing.

I'm risk-averse.

All of these are statements and labels that sort of point towards a truth,

But not the truth.

They are all abstractions of form.

They are all not quite there yet.

There's a meditation saying that all instructions are a finger pointing to the moon.

As in,

I can suggest all of these things,

But there is a gap that needs to be taken internally,

Conceptually,

Theoretically,

Introspectively,

To allow you to make the attainment possible.

And all of these labels that we give ourselves in everyday life sort of point to something,

But they are not the something.

They point to who and what you are,

But you are more than any of those labels,

Or even the sum of all of those labels combined,

Because there are labels that aren't even going mentioned.

If you have kids,

You'll notice that they very much oscillate between great levels of maturity and total immaturity.

They bounce back between their current age and older age and a younger age as they move through and flow through life.

Your job is to help encourage them to get through life in a way that prepares them for the rest of their life when you're not there.

But to label them as child,

As seven-year-old,

As whatever,

Is to do them a disservice because they are more than that.

They are the process,

The flow,

Just like you are.

We tend to sort of sit in this fixed identity.

We wear our identities like they're our clothes.

We put them on.

You go to work,

You put your work identity on.

You go to the gym,

Your gym identity.

You catch up with friends,

Your friend identity.

Other friends,

Other identity,

By yourself.

Maybe,

If you're lucky,

If you've practiced,

You allow all those identities to drop and you just be you.

The point is,

Is these labels aren't you.

They're just ways to communicate different aspects of you.

There's a distinction there.

You are more than any label.

Let's go a bit broader here.

Words themselves aren't real,

Aren't true.

They are abstractions of truth.

If I say the word happiness,

Jealousy,

Joy,

Rage,

I'm evoking something that goes far beyond the words that I'm saying.

I can't express,

No one can express,

No word can express the nuance of emotionality.

As it transmutes the biochemical signals throughout the body,

Throughout the brain,

As it triggers the memories,

As it brings you back to a different time,

A different place in your life.

I can hint at that,

And good words and poets and authors and all of these things will do that job as best possible.

But ultimately,

It is up to the listener,

To the reader,

To the person receiving the message to take and tweak those words,

To deconstruct the code and turn it into something more.

The word happiness doesn't mean what you think it means.

It is a label on a collection of expressions,

Symptoms,

Conditions.

Yeah,

That's the feeling you want to have.

You don't want to have happiness,

You want to have the thing that happiness is talking about,

That it can never quite explain.

So this poem that came to me during meditation,

All labels are an abstraction of form,

Barring one,

Consciousness.

My mind went through in a few heartbeats what I'm sharing with you here,

What I'm trying to deconstruct,

But it feels like poorly here,

This problem with labels.

Because we take this a step back and we go to the distinction between life and not life,

Me and my cat,

Me and the inanimate objects around the house,

Me and the plants,

And it feels like there is a distinct difference between whatever I am and whatever those things are.

But we can even look at the label of life.

Life is a very broad term,

And what defines life?

We're getting fairly metaphysical here,

But that's where this quote is taking us.

The fundamental nature of reality is constructed of atoms,

And the things that construct atoms,

And the things that construct them.

How different am I really from those things?

Maybe there's an innate soul,

Maybe there's something more to humanity,

Maybe we're very special,

Maybe we're not.

But whatever makes the physicality of me up,

Thus allowing the expression and the contemplation of these thoughts,

Is the same thing that is in the microphone that's sitting in front of me.

It's the same thing that is in my cat that's sitting on my lap.

It is the same thing that's in the grass and that causes the wind to make that grass move.

So then I ask myself,

Well,

What is the overall thing that we have here?

What is the broadest category of label that we can look at to describe everything?

Subatomic particles,

Perhaps.

But the meditator in me went with consciousness,

Went to that non-dual space where everything and everyone is one,

Is all an expression of the source,

Of the universe,

Of God,

Of the outward expression of an inner state,

Of Shiva wanting to see itself as itself,

Expressed through itself.

Now we're getting quite metaphysical here,

But really what is there bar consciousness?

That one label encapsulates everything because everything can fit into that label and that label holds much more space than anything else and everything else combined.

It is everything.

And without the expression of consciousness,

Nothing is observable.

None of those other labels can be seen or understood for there is nothing,

No ground to stand on to do the understanding.

The analogy that I'm giving you now sits in consciousness.

The words that are coming out of your speakers are flowing through consciousness.

All labels are an abstraction of form barring one,

Consciousness.

Every thought you have floats in consciousness.

Every conception,

Every moment.

Now is consciousness the same as the fundamental particles of reality that make up the rock,

The wind,

The grass,

And the person observing it all?

Maybe.

I don't know.

But I do know is that when we try to label things,

When we try to put things into smaller boxes,

They lose something.

Yeah,

They're not a full total representation.

Is the grass grass or is whatever grass is so much more than the label that we give to grass?

Because my cat is so much more than just a cat.

My cat has a personality.

She has an essence,

A being,

Desires.

I am so much more than me for whatever I am is so much beyond my ability to conceptualize myself.

There is depth to the soul that is worth exploring and expressing.

I can't help but extrapolate these feelings to consciousness itself,

To the universe,

To everything,

To the moment.

It reminds me of the poem,

Auguries of Innocence,

By William Blake.

You're probably familiar with the first few lines,

Which I'll share with you now.

To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower.

To hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.

Perhaps by observing one aspect of reality,

One aspect of eternity,

One aspect of consciousness,

We can see the whole.

So I encourage you to observe the self,

To observe the grass,

The cat,

The rock,

The wind,

Something,

And look beyond the label.

Look beyond and see what the label is and look beyond the label.

Look beyond and see what the label is pointing to.

See what that label points to and pull it all the way back till you get to the source,

The core,

To consciousness,

To whatever lies beyond.

Sit with that as a spiritual practice,

Meditate on that and beyond that.

And perhaps during just your everyday life,

When you notice people labeling you,

When you notice yourself labeling others,

Just recognize that the label isn't the truth.

It's a representation of,

It's a finger pointing to the moon,

It is an abstraction of form.

And perhaps from there,

You'll be able to see and connect and resonate deeper.

Because all labels are an abstraction of form,

Barring one,

Consciousness.

All labels are an abstraction of form,

Barring one,

Consciousness.