Mistaken Identity

A four year old boy named Jacob is convinced that he is a girl trapped in a male body. No matter how hard his parents try to get him to play with ‘boy toys’ or to stop dreaming of wearing dresses, Jacob cannot shake his conviction that he is a girl. As years go by he struggles to resist his urges toward all things female (including the color pink) until the age of ten when he puts a gun to his head threatening to kill himself unless he is allowed to ‘be who I am.’

A National Public Radio program explored in detail a split within the psychotherapy community between therapists who believe that children like Jacob have been culturally conditioned toward the ‘wrong sex’ and those who adamantly believe that some children are indeed boys trapped in girl’s bodies and vice versa. One thing is clear: children or adults who feel forced to be someone other than who they are inside may go through immense confusion and suffering.

I have had two friends over the years who struggled with these types of issues. I know from counseling with them the deep and traumatic pain they both experienced in trying to come to grips with their ‘mistaken identity.’

Not only within the physical realm, but in spiritual circles as well, the issue of our true identity is a vital question. The inquiry “Who am I” is at the heart of the mystical path within the traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism and other faiths.

Some Eastern philosophies view a person as possessing three identities: a physical body, a subtle psyche, and a spiritual essence. Children who at a young age recognize that their innate male or female psyche does not match their physical body may struggle violently within themselves, as well as with well-meaning parents and teachers, to come to terms with an identity crisis that will not go away.

And those of us on the spiritual path may also reach a shocking point when we realize with unmistakable clarity that we are not who we appear to be. We are not just a man or a woman, an American or a Mexican, a Jew or a Christian, a Caucasian or a Filipino. Deeper than our physical body, our psyche, our ethnic, cultural and even religious identity we exist as our innermost identity—as primal spirit, or immortal soul.

“We are spirits in a material world,” sings the contemporary rock star as most of us nod in vague agreement. But if we do not at some point wake up to recognize our real identity as a spiritual being covered with a temporary physical body and psyche, we may wind up ‘living a lie’ like the boys who are girls and the girls who are boys inside. Our precious and fleeting human life will be compromised in a profound and tragic way if we do not wake up and live as who we truly are.

Then we will live powerful and free. We will live as who we are and have always been.