Releasing the Layers of Our Identity
“Who are you?” was the first question Hilary Nicholls asked me over a dozen a years ago as I lay on her treatment table for the first time. “Who are you independent of being a mother, wife, daughter, businesswoman, and all the other roles you identify with?”
As an extremely busy working mother of two with a father in the late stages of Alzheimer’s disease, I was dumbstruck, unable to respond. But I never forgot her question. Pondering it illuminated how tightly my identity was entangled with my roles and responsibilities.
Fast forward all these years to when an email from Hilary arrived in my inbox with the subject line, “Good Morning Mantra—Waking Up in the Peace of Being.” It included a recording that also started with questions: “Do you have a morning ritual? What’s the very first thing you do in the morning when you wake up? Do you reach for your cell phone to see what time it is? Do you look at your texts or your emails? What mode is your brain in?”
Hilary Nicholls
Hilary describes how the moments right after we wake up can be a sacred time to access our true nature and tune into pure awareness. “Just as our senses are beginning to wake up—before we start engaging with our narratives about who we are in this life and our to-do list for the upcoming day—is a very special time.”
While the stories about our lives can be meaningful, Hilary teaches that it’s important to feel connected to our pure spirit, independent of our subjective beliefs and experiences. Her morning mantra that day was, “I am awareness before I am anything else,” and she explained that this awareness comes before duality—before the perception of opposites, like inside and outside, or self and other.
Hilary teaches a practice of “un-layering” as a way of accessing this state at any time. One by one, in coordination with our exhale, she encourages us to release our stories about ourselves, letting them float downstream. “Let go of your story about who you are, where you are, and how you got here. Let go of all your concerns about the people and projects in your life. Let go of your age. Your true nature is ageless. Let go of your name. When you were a very young child, you didn’t know your name yet. Experience everything around you with this same curiosity and innocence. Take in a breath, and when you exhale, let it all go. Come into this moment. Experience yourself as pure awareness.”
Next Hilary encourages dropping even the concept of awareness. “Just be,” she invites. “Pure awareness is spacious and delicious. It brings incredible relief and freedom. No more burdens, only peace. Simply enjoy it.” She also suggests trying this practice of un-layering in bed at night, just before falling asleep. “It’s a wonderful way to let go into a deep state of peaceful regeneration.”
Hilary believes that resting in pure awareness allows for more light, love, creativity, insight, compassion and beauty to enter. “You become more curious, open and flexible, with a natural inner confidence that’s completely independent of what’s happening in your environment or any external validation. You naturally begin to express your true nature—the being that you came here to be.”
Enjoy Hilary's guided journey through the process releasing the layers of your identity in this 9-minute teaching and guided meditation:
Please join us online via Zoom this coming Tuesday, December 17 at 5:15 Pacific, where Hilary will be leading our free 30-minute “Circle of Light”—a beautiful nature-based guided meditation to tune into the healing energies of the winter season.
