Are You Assuming You Have No Choice?
Naming Your Identities
You might think you have no other choice but to act as you do. You might create this illusion for yourself by thinking you have an identity that is real, permanent, solid and cannot shift, and which has a fixed set of “needs.” But this is all internal politics! Whichever “identity” happens to be in power in this moment gets to determine which “needs” are “real” and must be met.
To wreck the Identification Game, do the experiment of “Naming the Identities.”“Naming” is a powerful alchemical act. By giving a name to something that did not have a name before, you change the thing from invisible to visible, from subjective to objective, from unconscious to conscious, from background to foreground. By clearly naming an identity, you bring people’s attention to the option of shifting to a different identity.
By changing the identity of the moment, you change the “needs” of the moment. For example: You can name your own identities in order to catch yourself in the act. You may identify characters such as The Whiner, The Judge, The Complainer, The Victim, The Glutton, The Perfectionist, The Head Chopper, The Sneak, The Miser, and so on.
Or, you can use naming to open doorways through which you can then step, and thus shift your identity in that moment. One way to open a doorway is to say something that the new character might say, such as: “Enter The Dragon”; “May I present The Goddess”; “Jamison at your service, Madam”; “Which way to Kilimanjaro?”; “Choose your weapon!”; “What have we here, Sherlock?”; “Has anyone seen my Ferrari keys?”
You can also open doorways through which to shift identity without saying anything.
For example, if you are going to bed with your partner at night and you feel the same old evening pattern arising, shift identity. For example, change the timing of your entry into the room. Take a different physical posture – crawl in, strut in, limp in, come in backwards, come in with your eyes closed. Use a different breathing pattern. Put on or take off different pieces of clothing. Change your mood. Beat up the teddy bear. Sing. If, while you are practicing shifting identities, your partner thinks that you have gone nuts, tell them that before now you were only pretending not to be nuts, and that you think they will get used to it.
The idea is to reveal yourself, rather than waiting around for your partner to reveal themselves first. It is crucial to remember that revealing yourself does not involve complaining, gossiping, blaming, or talking about other people. Revealing yourself is about getting present and letting yourself be authentically known. You may not be able to manage this the first time you try it, so plan to keep experimenting.An Exploration by Israel Kairos
This is the first time my hands have written a website.
I do not need to have written a website before to be a Website Writer. Right now, I declare: I AM a Website Writer.
That is what shifting identity is all about.
When about to take a new actions, most human beings are faced with two barriers.
Barrier #1: Learning Something New.Barrier #2: Your Box's Beliefs that tells you what you are and what you are not or what you can and what you cannot do.
Human beings are designed to learn things. As a child, you are faced with a whole world of new things. You quickly adapt. You learn. But Learning seems to become much slower as you grow older… even though you have more knowledge, tools, and insight. Why?
What I am discovering is that at some point in our lives, we limit ourselves to what we believe we know how to do.For example, I have experienced many time - and it is still extremely curious - that in our childhood, we make decisions that change the way we relate to the world, and then we completely forget these decisions. We put them in drawers at the bottom of our unconscious and we never return to check if these decisions still make sense.
These decisions have shaped who you think you are, what you think you know or do not know, what you think you are able to do or not do. You might have heard from your parents: "You are very good at this." or "You are not good for that.", and then you go on living listening to those voices in your head telling us what you can and cannot do.
Shifting Identity is an experiment. An invitation. I don't ask you to believe me. I invite you to try it. Experience what else is possible when you remove Barrier #2 from your Learning process. What happens to your learning process when the only challenge you face is venturing into something new? Instead of fighting a big battle against what you think you can and what you think you can't do.
Being very direct I would say this: Shifting Identity is declaring what you ARE in a small NOW.
As you are the space you inhabit, declaring what you are is also setting the context of your own space. Context defines space, and space defines what is possible. Shifting Identity defines what is possible for you.Do all the E.H.P.s that are necessary for you to Shift of Identity so that you can become the necessity asks of you and what the E.C.C.O. invites you, without ceasing to be You, because what your Being is has nothing to do with what you can or cannot do.
You Have Parts
Human Beings have parts... many parts. We don't know when we shift from one identity to the next, but if the phone rings and it is our boss, our mother, or our child, the person we were just speaking with won't know who just showed up. And when we shift back to being 'ourselves' with our friend, we won't even know we shifted. You can make this whole shifting thing conscious. Then things start getting interesting.
We start again with the eternal question, “Who am I?”
You have now, and have always had, the complete freedom to choose who you are being. It is true that you have been raised in certain circumstances and in a certain culture and time. It is true that there exist powerful forces to try to sway your decisions in one direction or another about who to be. But those circumstances and forces are now, and always have been, outside of you, incidental, and not causative. The final decision – even down to the finest minutiae of your quality of being – has always been yours alone.
There are of course consequences to the decisions you make. Your assumptions about these consequences make it seem like you actually have no choice and that you are squeezed into our way of being like warm plastic is squeezed into a steel mold. Cultural “being shaping” machinery is indeed powerful, as is family tradition. That is why the vast majority of us surrender our capacity to shape our own being to fit the illusion that it was never our decision in the first place. Nevertheless, the “vast majority” does not have to include you.
“Who am I?” is one of the first questions we are driven to answer. Once you find workable answers you usually don’t change them for the rest of your life. You don’t even wonder if your answers are the most useful or interesting. You would assume yours answers are true and consider the job finished. Once you have built your Box, you forget that your Box is something that was built. Unconsciously, you know that if you reconsider the “Who am I?” question it could drop us back into a liquid state – one that you assumed you had permanently left behind. The Box is quick to produce the terse comment, “Been there. Done that.”
However . . . nonetheless . . . notwithstanding . . . you still have the right to change your mind about who you are. That has not been made illegal. After all, your Box is yours to play with and to make into whatever you want. That is why you are reading this book – to play with other possible shapes for your Box.
Consciously changing your Box is an option that you may tend to ignore if you have not acquired a taste for being in flux. Having the option to take on any identity, in any moment, is the same as having no identity at all. Those in-between times of making a new decision often seem bothersome – they are indefinite; we entered them after leaving behind 'the way it was' and before having in place a new 'the way it is'.
You Are A Dissipative Structure
A human being is like a tornado, sustained by the energy flowing through her. We are 'Dissipative Structure' Capable - in the correct circumstances - of being precisely perturbed and suddenly reordering into a more elegant, more sophisticated functioning.
Consciously Shifting Identity can feel at first a bit like going crazy, like a bird being freed after long imprisonment in a golden cage.
Experiments
INTERVIEW YOUR FATHER FIGURE
Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.01
Tell your father you would like to interview him about his time in school.
During the interview, while listening to the stories, keep part of your Attention on your father and write down the different identities that they do in front of you, for example:
- Their victim identity.
- Their hero identity.
- Their adventurous rebel identity.
- Their romantic identity.
- Their straight 'A' student identity.
- Their confusion identity.
- Their scared identity.
- Their parent identity.
Notice how each identity has its own posture, language, tone of voice, gestures, beliefs, purpose.
If it is not possible to do the interview with your father, do it with another male figure such as your uncle, a mentor, a teacher, or ask someone from your Possibility Team to use their Clicker and shift identity into roleplay.
After completing this experiment, please register Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.01 in your free account at StartOver.xyz.
This Experiment is worth 1 Matrix Point.
INTERVIEW YOUR MOTHER FIGURE
Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.02
Do the same experiment with your mother.
After completing this experiment, please register Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.02 in your free account at StartOver.xyz.
This Experiment is worth 1 Matrix Point.
INTERVIEW YOURSELF
Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.03
Ask a friend or your Possibility Team to interview you about your time in school and ask them to write down the different identities that you shift into.
Compare them with the ones you have found from interviewing your mother and father. Which ones have you got from your father? From your mother?
After completing this experiment, please register Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.03 in your free account at StartOver.xyz.
This Experiment is worth 1 Matrix Point.
NAME YOUR IDENTITIES
Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.04
You are probably not aware when you shift from one identity to the next. For each story you are part of, you take on different identities: the respectful employee, the romantic wife, the loving father, the law-abiding citizen. You can make this whole shifting thing conscious.
“Naming” is a powerful alchemical act. By giving a name to something that did not have a name before, you change the thing from invisible to visible, thus from unconscious to conscious. By clearly naming an identity, you bring people’s attention and your own to the option of shifting to a different identity.
For a whole week, Observe and write down in your Beep! Book all the different identities that you take on during the day, from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep. At home, in the streets, at work, with the neighours, with strangers, on the phone, while writing your emails, etc...
Give a name to each identity.
After completing this experiment, please register Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.04 in your free account at StartOver.xyz.
This Experiment is worth 1 Matrix Point.
CREATE A BACK DOOR OUT OF EACH CHARACTER
Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.05
Please complete experiment SHIFTIDx.04 before moving on to this one.
Create and write down a backdoor out of each identity that you have discovered. That way, when you catch yourself in the act you have the possibility to shift your identity in that moment, you have a Doorway into another character.
For example, if you catch yourself playing the 'indecisive worrier' role, a doorway can be a sentence that the 'determined warrior' role would say such as “I decide to decide, NOW", it can be a tune that you hum, you can make up a dance, use a different physical posture or have a different breathing pattern, change your clothes, wear a hat.
After completing this experiment, please register Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.05 in your free account at StartOver.xyz.
This Experiment is worth 1 Matrix Point.
SHIFT INTO 3 IDENTITIES THAT YOU NEVER TRIED OUT
Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.06
Take out a new page in your Beep! Book and write down all the identities that you would like to have that you have never tried out.
For the duration of 3 days, pick one identity and enact it all day long. Talk like they would, do the accent, tell their stories. Walk like they would, perform their actions, wear their clothing. Go to the places they would visit, go to their circles, eat what they would eat.
For the next 3 days, pick another identity and do the same experiment.
For the next 3 days, do the same with a third identity.
After completing this experiment, please register Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.06 in your free account at StartOver.xyz.
This Experiment is worth 2 Matrix Points.
ARCHETYPAL IDENTITIES
Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.07
Open up a new page in your Beep! Book, call it 'Archetypal Identities' and make a list of archetypal identities from the Bright side and from the Shadow side. For example, from the Bright side it can be Dragon, Experimenter, Possibilitator and from the Shadow side it can be the Lawyer, the Judge, the Joker, the Bomb-Dropper.
Chose one identity from each side.
For the first 3 days of the experiment, enact your chosen Bright archetype.
For the next 3 days, enact your chosen Shadow archetype.
Notice the different qualities between Bright and Shadow sides. What are your purposes as each identity? Is one easier for your Box to handle than the other? Does one of your parts enjoy one side more? What kind of joy is it?
After completing this experiment, please register Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.07 in your free account at StartOver.xyz.
This Experiment is worth 2 Matrix Points.
FIND WHAT YOU ARE ARCHETYPALLY
Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.08
Get your Beep! Book and pen. Ask someone from your Possibility Team to become a space for Possibility Listening. Tell them you are finding the name of 'what you are'.
Connect to your 5 bodies, your Bright Principles, your Archetypal Lineage and start saying possible names. Even if nothing comes just start, Speak From The Unknown, say it out loud.It could be as simple as ‘Warrior’, and keep going, what kind of Warrior are you? You need a qualifier.
Keep going until you have 15 or 20 names.
Either one name might hit you, and you will ‘know’ that it is the one, for now, either you just need to pick one and try it out for a while.After completing this experiment, please register Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.08 in your free account at StartOver.xyz.
This Experiment is worth 1 Matrix Point.
FILM YOURSELF SPEAKING AS 3 DIFFERENT IDENTITIES
Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.09
Pick 3 identities and record yourself doing three different 15 minutes talks in which you speak as each of the identities. For example, you can speak as the president of your country, an airplane stewardess, and a birdwatcher.
Put attention on their posture, how they stand, how they look at the camera. How do they speak? Who are they speaking to? What do they want to communicate? What matters to them? How much authority do they believe they have?
They all talk about what matters to them, don't worry if they are different or contradict eachother.
Publish the 3 videos on Youtube.
After completing this experiment and publishing your 3 videos on Youtube, please register Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.09 in your free account at StartOver.xyz.
This Experiment is worth 2 Matrix Points.
DISCOVER 5 IDENTITES THAT YOUR BOX CANNOT BE
Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.10
The purpose of your Box is to give you protection, comfort, self-definition, and security. There are some identities that your box will not even dare to consider possible for you. For example, the hooker, the CEO, the nun, the slave, the ballerina, the president, the garbage picker. But you are not your Box.
Discover 5 identities that your Box cannot be and write them in your Beep! Book.
For the next five days, chose one of these identities per day and act it out in public for the duration of 2 hours.
Use people's reactions to each identity to write a short screenplay of those people interacting with one another.
After completing this experiment and writting the screenplay, please register Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.10 in your free account at StartOver.xyz.
This Experiment is worth 2 Matrix Points.
HAVE AN IDENTITY SHIFT FIESTA
Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.11
Chose 4 identities and write them down on separate cards.
Pick a day this week where you will carry these cards around with you when going out.
For the duration of 2 hours, set a timer to go off every 20 minutes.
Start by picking one of the cards randomly and shifting into that identity. When the timer goes off, pick another card and shift immediately, even if you are in the middle of a conversation. For the whole 2 hours, you are shifting to the next identity but you do not know what it is going to be until you pick the card.
After completing this experiment, please register Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.11 in your free account at StartOver.xyz.
This Experiment is worth 1 Matrix Point.
SHIFT IDENTITY ON TIME
Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.12
Pick a specific time of the day and set an alarm on your phone to go off at that same hour every day for the next five days.
Prepare 5 different identities to shift into, one for each day. Be really clear and specific about them.
Whenever the time comes, stop whatever you are doing and sing a song from that identity. Sing about something that they love, that they want to communicate, that they care about, that they are angry about.
After completing this experiment, please register Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.12 in your free account at StartOver.xyz.
This Experiment is worth 2 Matrix Points.
SHIFT TO THE WRONG IDENTITY IN THE WRONG SPACE
Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.13
What is Possible in one Space is not necessarily Possible in another Space.
Yodeling in the bank, for example, not Possible. Or is it?
Pick 3 different spaces, they could be the church, the bank and your parents' home.
For the 3three days, visit each one of these spaces per day and shift into the wrong identity. Per example, walk on the sidewalk as a sheepherder.
Remember the three rules: do not hurt yourself, do not hurt anyone, do not get arrested.
After completing this experiment, please register Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.13 in your free account at StartOver.xyz.
This Experiment is worth 1 Matrix Point.
SHIFT IDENTITY TO CREATE A NEW SOLUTION OR POSSIBILITY
Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.14
In your next Possibility Team, tell them you would like to practice creating possibilites by shifting identities.
Have one person ask for possibilities and tell you to shift into an identity, for example, millionaire, emperor, Pirate, zoo keeper, ecologist.
Give them possibilites from that new identity.
After completing this experiment, please register Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.14 in your free account at StartOver.xyz.
This Experiment is worth 1 Matrix Point.
PLAY IDENTITY CHARADES
Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.15
Make a proposal to play identity charades at your next Possibility Team meeting.
One person goes on stage and starts speaking from a shifted identity for 2 minutes. The rest of the team has to identify the qualities of this identity. For example, overexplaining, trying to be earnest, distrusting of his own intuition,
Then the person shifts for another 2 minutes to another identity. The rest of the team has to identify the qualities of this identity that are different from the previous one.
After 3 times, another person goes on stage.
After completing this experiment, please register Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.15 in your free account at StartOver.xyz.
This Experiment is worth 1 Matrix Point.
BECOME YOUR TEAMMATES
Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.16
In your next 3Cell or Possibility Team meeting, practice becoming your teammates.
In groups of 3, one person goes on stage for 3 minutes and starts giving possibilities as if they were their teammates. Give possibilities that they don't even know they have, say it the way they would, with their vocabulary, loving your teammates.
The purpose of this experiment is to have access to their possibilities even when they are not around.
After completing this experiment, please register Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.16 in your free account at StartOver.xyz.
This Experiment is worth 1 Matrix Point.
ENTER A CAFE AS A DIFFERENT IDENTITY
Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.17
Next time you go to a cafe shift identity before you enter. Shift into someone with a strong character, for example, Boris Karloff, Mae West, Donald Trump, Mother Teresa.
The experiment is to order what they would order and the way they would order it. Let it saturate, let this identity get defined by what and how you are ordering, so choose wisely.
Write in your Beep! Book how they treated the waiter, how they stood in line, how they interacted with other customers. What did you learn about that identity? What qualities do they have?
After completing this experiment, please register Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.17 in your free account at StartOver.xyz.
This Experiment is worth 1 Matrix Point.
NOTE: This website is a Bubble in the Bubble Map of the free-to-play massively-multiplayer online-and-offline thoughtware-upgrade matrix-building personal-transformation real-life adventure-game called StartOver.xyz. It is a doorway to experiments that upgrade your thoughtware so you can relocate your point of origin and create more possibility. Your knowledge is what you think about. Your thoughtware is what you use to think with. When you change your thoughtware, you go through a liquid state as your mind reorganizes itself. Liquid states can bring up transformational feelings and emotions. By upgrading your thoughtware you build matrix to hold more consciousness and leave behind a low drama life of reactivity. No one can upgrade your thoughtware for you. More interestingly, no one can stop you from upgrading your thoughtware. Our theory is that when we collectively build 1,000,000 new Matrix Points we will change the morphogenetic field of the human race for the better. Please choose responsibly to read this website. Reading this whole website is worth 1 Matrix Point. Doing any of the experiments earns you additional Matrix Points. Please use Matrix Code SHIFTIDx.00 to log your Matrix Point for reading this website on StartOver.xyz. Thank you for playing full out!