Identity crisis

How do we know who we really are? By what criteria do we define our lives? Are we a collection of our past experiences and our current mindset and our future dreams and goals? And to what degree does that delicate balance determine our fate? If we dwell too much in the past, can it fix our present course on an unchanging road? How much do we let go of, and how much do we hold on to? And to what degree do these things define our identity? Is our identity our experiences at all? Or is it something else entirely, outside of our feelings and history? If we cling too hard to experiences that define us, do we limit our own ability to change? To grow? To love? Who are we, really?

Ordinary time

"The more you fight against something, the more you draw it in." These words sit on my desk as a reminder, and yet I find myself in the struggle, in the fight. But I want to do something....not just sit. Not just wait. Just tell these voices inside the shut the hell up! But I'm not getting any answers now, it's just static on the line. I'm in a spiritual time out, some time alone in the corner to sort out my thoughts? I guess that is what is needed. So I'll do nothing at all and try not to fight it. The "path of least resistance," as the Buddhists say.
I've stopped everything now and given up all the gifts that I thought were divine. I no longer know what makes me special, though I thought I had known all this time. Maybe there is nothing. Maybe I am completely ordinary. Maybe my quest for the mystical and the signs I thought I saw were just illusions. I don't know anything anymore.