An excerpt from Dr. Linda Seger’s book, Spiritual Steps on the Road to Success: Gaining the Goal Without Losing Your Soul
To get to the core of who we are – as children of God – we sometimes have to strip away all our other roles that have been handed to us, or that we’ve accepted without much thought – whether mother, daughter, son, father, home-owner, head of a business, churchgoer or non-churchgoer, atheist or believer – to find what is truly essential and then build up a more authentic identity. This becomes important because all other identities can be taken away from us and can leave us bereft, unless we understand that, at our most essential core, we belong to God, not to ourselves.
What happens to our identity when we realize we are loved, and beloved, by our Creator? However you define God, there is a connection between us and Something or Someone greater than we are. Whether it’s that small inner voice that guides us and nurtures us into who we are meant to be, or a sense of something transcendent and sacred that pulls us into our identity, from our first to our last breath we are loved into being.
For the spiritual person, the Who-We-Are is rarely seen in the world’s terms. We have bigger issues to deal with than owning the red Porsche and the mansion and the stocks and bonds. In spite of the pull to wealth and power, that is not what we’re about. If wealth and clout is a by-product of our work, it’s probably fine with us, but it isn’t the essential core of what we seek.
What do we want? What calls us? To find the answer, we need to push aside the world’s issues of fame and fortune to see clearly. If we listen to the authentic voice that seems to know who we are, and calls us to become that person, then we will find a few basic issues that are part of our true identity.
Our first answer will be: “It’s not about materialism.” Anything material is a by-product of our true identities. Some say we are physical beings in a spiritual body and some say we are spiritual beings in a physical body, but however you define it, you are talking about a sense that it is the spiritual world that we serve and it is the spiritual world that determines what we are and what we can be.