Man's Search for Meaning

Man’s search for meaning – a journey that has many roads; many paths – some rewarding;
some strewn with fool’s gold. A continuing thread in this quest seems to be the seeker’s
looking for understanding and answers from sources outside of themselves.
Self-awareness is the defining characteristic of human beings. If nothing else, people
usually know that they exist as individual entities. People are each unique and have their
own interpretation of the universe and individual way in which they perceive it to be. There
seems to be an inimitable aspect of a person that is always there, no matter what new
concepts are grasped or what new insights are gained.
An individual’s life is a composite thing; made up of many different interests and
relationships, such as a job, a family, and different groups to which one belongs or is
affiliated. These components may blend, enhance or detract from one another, but they are
definitely separate parts of a person’s pattern of existence. Likewise, people themselves are
composed of separate and distinct parts; different “ways of being” – different “selves” they
adopt, depending on the situation or circumstance they find themselves in. In Idenics we
refer to these separate parts as “identities,” and define an identity as “a way of being in
order to accomplish something.” Simply stated, an identity is a separate self created by the
individual; a separate self consisting of ideas, beliefs, conclusions, decisions, etc. which is
there to carry out some goal or purpose. An identity is a package of rules and laws dictating
how to be in given circumstances. Examples of identities are a husband or wife identity; or a
job-related identity such as a teacher or taxi driver.
There is apparently a basic individual or basic being, the “I,” which generates these
identities, experiences life via these identities, and shifts in and out of them automatically;
without much thought. For example: the computer salesman who at work is in his salesman
identity, but when he comes home to the wife and kids he shifts into his husband or parent
identity. As a salesman, his primary purpose is to sell more computers than anyone; a
purpose and activity that would be inappropriate when he is at home with his family, so he
shifts into the parent or husband identity with a different goal or purpose. But what does all
this talk about identities have to do with a person’s search for meaning?
The one thing that people who have been perusing the fields of therapy and self-
improvement have in common is that they all have something about themselves that they
want to handle, resolve, change or improve. In Idenics we refer to such things as “unwanted
personal conditions;” which can be expressed by a person in two different ways: (1)
something that is present but is not wanted, such as an individual’s issue with anger or fear,
or (2) something that is not present but is wanted, such as an ability that a person desires. It
may not make sense categorizing a desire to attain an ability as an unwanted condition, but
usually, if a practitioner asks a client if there is anything that holds them back or gets in their
way from achieving or demonstrating that ability, the client comes up with more than one
unwanted condition to be addressed. One of the primary discoveries in Idenics is that an
unwanted condition is the “property” of some identity, and that by properly addressing the
identity the unwanted condition can, in most cases, be easily resolved.
Having identities is not in itself aberrant to the individual. The assumption of identities as
given in the examples above does not usually cause a person any difficulty. But the
unknowing assumption of certain identities that people get stuck in, believing the identities
to really be them, can create all sorts of trouble for the individual.
We can liken an identity to a suit of armor. When the knight puts on the armor it limits his
movement but it is useful in certain circumstances. But imagine that once the man dons the
armor he forgets that it is not him, and he believes that the armor is part of his skin. In other
words, there is no longer any separation between him and it. In battle all is well, as he is
protected by the heavy, metal covering. Later, though, walking by a lake he sees people
swimming and decides that he, too, would like to swim. He jumps in and he sinks. Someone
pulls him out of the water, and as he lies on the bank he thinks to himself, “What’s wrong
with me? Other people can swim but I can’t.” Here is the unwanted condition. And all that he
would have to do is to take off the armor, but he doesn’t know that it is not him.
The above analogy may be a bit simplistic, but it does serve to demonstrate how an
unwanted condition is the property of an identity. People are “sunk” by identities that they
think themselves to be and from which they cannot get themselves unstuck. A good
definition of “stuck” in these circumstances is “being without noticing.” Unaware of identities
people may believe that they are limited, and can invent a myriad of reasons and
explanations that might make sense, but do not resolve their unwanted personal conditions.
The idea of identities in not new; many names have been given to them and lots of
explanations of how they come to be. Many schools of thought mention identities and have
for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. But much about identities, how and why they are
formed, their characteristics and make-up, their relationship to people’s problems, how to
deal with them, and their relative importance in a person’s search for self-actualization was
not known prior to Idenics. Finding out who you really are may be as simple as discovering
who you are not.
Idenics is a new system, and not a rehash of some earlier subject or subjects. Most people
find that the Idenics concepts and application in no way conflict with their own beliefs and
reality. On the contrary, most individuals are quite pleased to discover that Idenics is
complementary to their own way of thinking.