I had a nice conversation yesterday on the challenge of finding purpose within, in a world which has lost many of the traditional places or containers which used to supply meaning in the past. It is a challenge all through life, and it comes down to having some degree of comfort in our sense of who we are and where we are at this moment. In other words, as Winnicott says, “we gather the personality together from within” by developing a capacity to be at ease with an interior “formlessness and comfortable solitude”, without being afraid, or needing to fill the space with objects and distractions. In this way we unlearn a lot of the messages which come from our restless society or from the wounds of our own history:
To know this spot of inwardness is to know who we are, not by surface markers of identity, not by where we work or what we wear or how we like to be addressed, but by feeling our place in relation to the Infinite and by inhabiting it. This is a hard lifelong task, for the nature of becoming is a constant filming over of where we begin, while the nature of being is a constant erosion of what is not essential. Each of us lives in the midst of this ongoing tension, growing tarnished or covered over, only to be worn back to that incorruptible spot of grace at our core. Regardless of subject matter, this is the only thing worth teaching: how to uncover that original center and how to live there once it is restored. We call the filming over a deadening of heart, and the process of return, whether brought about through suffering or love, is how we unlearn our way back to God.
Mark Nepo,
The arrogant mind never stops searching for identity, and this identity always defines itself through attributes: “the beautiful one,” “the smart one,” “the creative one,” “the successful one.” We can hold on to these labels on a “good” day. But when we feel insecure about our attributes, or our lack thereof, we start to wonder how to define ourselves; we wonder who it is we really are. Regardless of whether we’re having a good day or a low-self-esteem day, the points is, we haven’t found a way to relax, to be natural, to be unself-conscious. We don’t know how to take our seat in ordinariness and feel comfortable in our own skin. We are always searching for something to be. It’s like having an ongoing identity crisis.
Emotional turmoil begins with an initial perception — a sight, sound, thought — which gives rise to a feeling of comfort or discomfort. This is the subtlest stage of getting hooked. Energetically there is a perceptible pull; it’s like wanting to scratch an itch. We don’t have to be advanced meditators to catch this. 
Normally we do everything we can to avoid just being. When left alone with ourselves, without a project to occupy us, we become nervous. We start judging ourselves or thinking about what we should be doing or feeling. We start putting conditions on ourselves, trying to arrange our experience so that it measures up to our inner standards. Since this inner struggle is so painful, we are always looking for something to distract us from being with ourselves.
If we are feeling unhappy, what is called for is a willingness to simply be with that unhappiness. If we’re not careful, we say something’s wrong, though it doesn’t really help to say that. We say it either inwardly or outwardly. This projecting of blame is a consequence of having made an inner mistake of misperceiving our unhappiness, sadness or suffering as being something wrong. We don’t receive it just as it is. We don’t acknowledge it and feel it, allowing it to happen; we don’t have the ‘knowingness’ to see it as activity taking place in awareness. Because we don’t have that perspective, we struggle to do something about our suffering, to deal with it in some way. To say that something has gone wrong and that it’s somebody’s fault is a heedless way of dealing with our unpleasant experiences. The habit of consistently doing this is a symptom of what I call the compulsive judging mind.
We really have to determine to recognize and open to that which is emotionally challenging, that which is very powerful, overwhelming, frightening or threatening. Yet through the confidence of awareness, we begin to observe how these difficult situations affect the mind, the heart. What is the feeling? It’s not right or wrong. A feeling is what it is, and only we can know it. If we trust our awareness, we know it’s like this. We don’t need to have a word for it or define it in any way, because it is what it is. This is not cultural conditioning or the ego. It is direct knowing.
Mindfulbalance 