The World has Offered You a Name . . .
And You Have Taken it
written 5 Aug 2018 / Emily Peters
“The World has offered you a name . . . “ Those words spoken by Mooji [1] reached my ears and, in the same moment, touched the place where this construct lived in my psyche, where it dissipated like a vanishing mirage. “. . . And you have taken it.” And I did. I was offered and took a name three times. With that simple sentence, I understood why I felt disconnected from all of my names and also how convinced I was that I was those names, too.
The first name was given to me by my parents, of course. They named me Emily. They liked the sweet, melodic sound of it and they knew of two people who both carried the name Emily with grace. My parents liked the singular identity this name would hold for me within our family and in the world. Until that year, Emily was not a common name. However, that year it was the most common name given to female babies, and every year for the next ten years it was among the top ten female baby names. There’s no way they could have known this, but it is quite possible that my parents are psychic trend forecasters! Afterall, they did have a Scandinavian Design furniture store with a coffee shop inside way before IKEA and Starbucks became household names. And they nearly named me Amanda Lynn and now I play A Mandolin. So the evidence is pretty strongly in favor of their psychic powers! All kidding aside, the point is, their intention to give me a distinctive name was genuine. My older sister even had a voice in the decision. While I was incubating in the womb, she had a doll whose name was Emily Dolly. She referred to me, her unborn sister, as Emily Baby. So it was unanimous; I was Emily.
The second name that the world offered to me arrived when I started practicing Kundalini Yoga [2]. In that practice, many people experience a very profound spiritual, emotional, and mental healing. The process of healing that intrinsically happens within a consistent Kundalini Yoga practice brings a new perspective of the self-image and a fresh awareness of the power of vibration. This new understanding of identity, especially as it relates to living in this world as a house-holder [3], gives rise to a desire to align semantics in thought, action and vibration. The practitioner’s energy becomes focused on creating an attracting aura of abundance, contentment, and radiance which is grounded in a positive self-image. For many who are called to practice Kundalini Yoga, the reflection in the mirror changes – both visibly and internally. The person in the reflection is different: happier, more vibrant, confident, and more loving. In response to the healing that occurs, many practitioners decide to request a spiritual name from an organization called 3HO (Happy Healthy Holy Organization). Each applicant’s spiritual name is determined by their birth name, their astrological chart and their numerology reading. I’ve heard many friends speak on their experience of receiving a spiritual name, and most stories are akin to a rebirth experience. In most cases the new identity helps solidify the newly improved self-image. Even if they don’t use the spiritual name in daily life, simply the knowledge that the spiritual name carries and embodies a vibration of light, infinite love, truth, strength, and purity brings a stability to the self-image. Now, they can say, “Yes, I Am That,” with expanded self love.
For me, it was a similar progression. Although I didn’t feel that requesting a name from 3HO was the authentic way for my personal pathway, my interest was piqued. I was curious about the concept of understanding my identity through my own experience of spirit, and this interest was fueled by my general experience of disassociation with my given name. I love my parents and my family, and I honor their intentions and their love and care in blessing me with the name Emily. I’ve also never felt an identifying attachment with that name.
So, one humid Miami afternoon, in the thirtieth year of this lifetime, a dear friend and I traded bodywork. I received a cranial-sacral therapy session. In the altered state of touch-assisted meditation I asked the question internally, “What is my name?” The answer came clearly, spoken through the unstruck sound current, not heard with the ears, but heard with the utmost clarity within my being. The Self spoke distinctly, in English, from inside me: “Truth.”
Whoa. And also nothing. I was stunned because the answer to my question arrived at all, but I was not surprised because it came with such decisive and authoritative clarity through the vehicle of my own bodily energies. Yes, I was both at once: stunned and not surprised. The experience of the Self just is, it’s just nothing, just being, and it is also ecstatic, bring-me-to-my-knees-bliss.
That one simple word carried a wealth of information. I understood the message with immediate clarity in its totality. The message came from The One, from Its own voice, and it emanated from inside my own body. The word Truth spoken by this voice that emanated from infinite space within me was delivered, pregnant with meaning: The One is Truth and I am that same Truth. Truth is. Truth cannot be comprehended by the brain, but it can be known through experience. Truth is the bliss, the infinite ecstasy and the freedom for which I hungered. So I translated this message into Sat Sukh, a name that is the same in both Sanskrit and Gurmukhi (related sacred languages from India which carry the practices that keep my heart and soul uplifted in every moment and my every desire focused on remembering my true identity). Sat means truth and Sukh means bliss, ease, true happiness. Those two words together spoken as a name mean The One in True Bliss.
Two years ago, I received my third name. I was in Hawai’i, on the island of Kauai. I was participating in a retreat with another spiritual community that I love like family. This was my fourth immersion in Hawai’ian Lomi Lomi training. Although I had already progressed to an advanced level of practice, this particular retreat was at the beginning level of training because most attendees of retreat in Hawaiian lands are completely new to this sacred and ancient method of healing massage and energy work. Everyone who attends this annual retreat receives a Hawaiian name, and the experience is very similar in intention and result to those who practice Kundalini Yoga. Through the healing work of Lomi Lomi, we begin to understand ourselves at a higher frequency and start to see ourselves with radiant understanding and unconditional love. In this case, the spiritual names are channeled through Karen Leialoha Carroll, a gifted Lomi Lomi teacher and Kanaka Maoli (Maoli Person, or Native Hawaiian). Before our arrival on the island, she confers with the Ancestors and receives the essence of our spirits in name form.
As the naming ceremony commenced, I fully expected not to receive a Hawaiian name since I already carried the understanding of myself as the vibration of Sat Sukh and my teachers and colleagues were aware as well. To my surprise, Karen called my name and blessed me with the name Kama Kani, The Wind of the Ancestors.
Whoa. Now I had three names. All offered to me by the world, all taken by me, and all giving me a deeper understanding of the person I am, the essence this body carries, and the guided, free-will choices that shape the living of this life. What a blessing! What an abundantly joyful blessing! At the same time, this blessing is an illusion and a spiritual trap.
The human existence carries within it the potential to experience an infinite number of shifts in identity throughout the course of living. Since the advent of human-ness, we have been born under one name and grow and develop into another awareness of personal identity. Some receive another name at the advent of adulthood or successfully completing a challenge of the body, mind and spirit. Some are given a new name when their spiritual teacher, or Guru, decides their student is ready to release the identity. In this modern age, the role is sometimes reversed; the student approaches the teacher and asks for their spiritual name. It also happens in these modern times that there is no Guru - none needed and none sought - and the student is following the call of their inner teacher, thereby receiving a message to enter into an identity that suits the expanded understanding of consciousness. Whatever the case, a new name is meant to detach the person from identifying so much with the world, and begin identifying with the truth that lives inside.
Names can function like a commodity. They can be taken, given, given up, coveted, renounced, denied and exchanged. They differ in structure and function according to culture. They can communicate belonging to a family or lineage, to a caste, or to particular region of the world. A name can also communicate a desire to detach from those social structures and implications of ownership. Even the language of communicating a name implies ownership in relation to the name: we all have a name.
So, remember how I said that none of these names are me? Yep. In truth, there is no person here, and if there is no person, there can be no name. Emily, Sat Sukh, Kama Kani. Whatever you call me, all three of these names are un-real. They are illusory. They are identities, and since the personality is a concept and can never be a truth, they are false identities. They are useful for living in the world, for understanding and communicating the person, but they don’t exist. Having a name is a very useful trap. The name is essentially the foundation for building an identity and becoming convinced that we are whatever the mind constructs. That sounds fairly harmless, but is in fact a breeding ground for neurosis, delusion, and is a hindrance to fully realizing the Self.
Having a name is one of the greatest paradoxes of this existence. The consciousness – whether in a body or not - is always one with everything and that’s why the sense of awareness becomes expressed as ‘I Am’. This is the most basic expression of existing in pure Being. However, the expression of the universal consciousness is experiencing The Everything that Is, and to do so, it chooses to express as a unique entity – many millions of unique entities - at least one for each human. As we enter each birth, most of us experience a sort of amnesia. We forget that ‘I Am That’, we take on a persona. We learn to express ourselves as entities with identity. And then, some have the experience of remembering, and they begin to express The True Self. Many hundreds of human beings in all ages, epochs, centuries, and eons have documented the experience of the amnesia dropping away, the identity dissipating and the spirit awakening. All spiritual texts from all religions and non-religions hold personal accounts of ego-death or spiritual re-birth or becoming one with God or waking up. All terms refer to the experience of the True Self. In those moments, the amnesia falls away like old clothes, and we remember our true identity. If we choose to stay there in that truth, then it stays.
Papaji, teacher of Mooji and Gangaji, put this concept into beautiful words:
You may have met Name and Form. Millions of years you have been meeting Names and Forms, even now. If the question is asked to you, “Have you seen anyone without name and form?” I don’t think you can give me an answer. Whatever you think – maybe object, thing, person – you can’t avoid Name and Form. And if you sense someone without name and form, this is going to be the most happy occasion in your life. And you will very well recognize this moment, that it is you, it is you AND it is you!
It is You. The necessity of a name for the form in the world is a real untruth. By that I mean, we use it, it helps us communicate, it helps us express love and caring for each other and it helps us guide each other to the remembrance that we are all one.
NOTES
1 The title is a quote from Mooji. The world named him Anthony Paul Moo-Young, and later shortened that to Tony Moo. Now, the world has named him Mooji because he is one of this age’s teachers of the Non-Dualist, or Advaita Vedanta [*] pathway. His teacher was Papaji, and his teacher was Ramana Maharshi. One of Mooji’s contemporaries is Gangaji, a woman from the United States who also found the teachings of the non-dualist pointings through Papaji.
* Advaita means not-two. Veda means knowledge, and Vedanta means the end of the Vedas – this is referring to the Upanishads, a group of writings the reflect the Hindu philosophies. This pathway of self-realization is sometimes referred to in English as Non-dualism or contemplation. In the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, this pathway is explained as the two main teachings of the Buddha: Vipassana – seeing things as they are, or observation, and Anapanasati – contemplation.
2 Kundalini Yoga is a system of meditation and physio-spiritual practice aimed at the release of the Kundalini energy. The Kundalini energy is an infinite supply of energy that lies latent at the region of the base of the spine.
3 House-holder: a person who generally participates in the mass consciousness reality of having a job, engaging in family lifestyles, and ‘holding’ a house by renting or owning a home