Just recently I started to learn Spanish. Spanish is a superbly elegant and beautifully colorful language with a grammar charming in its logic. In my very first lesson I learned to pose and answer questions like this:

“¿Cómo te llamas? ¿De dónde eres? ¿Cuántos años tienes? ¿En qué trabajas? ¿Tienes móvil? ¿Tienes correo electrónico?” Without knowing Spanish, you will nevertheless surmise that these questions are universal questions asked when people meet for the first time. They deal with name and origin. They ask for age, profession, and telephone number. And if people continue the dialogue, further questions might include cultural background, religious affiliation, and/or inquiries about parents and siblings.

In our passports we are defined by eye color, skin color, gender, and physical dimensions. But beyond those descriptions are many more identity markers. Millions of people feel trapped with disadvantages attached to them because of heredity and family history—illnesses and liabilities of all kinds, from weak sight and hair loss, to diabetes and heart disease. Or they feel defined by good or bad character traits, by habits that feel “so like me,” and by abilities like having a musical ear or just the right leg length for bicycling fast. If someone remarks on how young or grown-up we look for our age, we may feel we are benefited by our human sense of identity. But all these matter-based and personal identity markers are no fun when we see their flip side. Actually, these markers truly have no good or bad side—even what looks like a good side eventually shows its true root.

There is good news, though, that eliminates our sense of a weak or even stable human identity. There is a secure spiritual identity we all have that’s ageless and unlimited—an identity that belongs to us for eternity. This identity is never limited to matter, to our human origin, to our physical makeup. It has no material markers, because it is defined, protected, and outlined by God, Mind. The truth about our identity is enforced and guaranteed by divine Principle, the supreme lawmaker, which governs both the infinite and infinitesimal aspects of the fabric of creation. 

The deepest insight that we can ever have about our identity is the truth that God, Spirit, is our Father-Mother. This supremely intelligent power is the only presence, cause, intelligence, and substance that truly matters. Christian Science reveals the allness and onliness of God, the God that the Bible has revealed already as Love, Spirit, Life, Soul, and Truth. Life is not separate from God. God is Life, and this Life is expressed in man—the individual expression of Life. Our spiritual identity is proof of the fact that Life is immortal. Mary Baker Eddy writes: “Soul must be incorporeal to be Spirit, for Spirit is not finite. Only by losing the false sense of Soul can we gain the eternal unfolding of Life as immortality brought to light” (Science and Health, p. 335). Imagine opening a dictionary and looking up “Life” (līf). And you find this: “Immortality brought to light.” Would you want to have such a definition? I would!

In trying to find out how immortality could come to light, I feel that overcoming fear in whatever form is the way to go. Our spiritual identity is fearless, because there is no fear in eternal good.

The deepest insight that we can ever have about our identity is the truth that God, Spirit, is our Father-Mother.

I love creation and all its inhabitants dearly, but I loved horses at a distance, until about a year ago. For my entire life one of the identity markers I’d accepted was: “is afraid of horses.” But I started realizing that I couldn’t afford to harbor any fear or accept something limiting about myself if I was seriously pursuing getting to know my spiritual identity. Over a course of several years, a close friend of mine, a horse “whisperer” and an equestrian coach, would kindly ask me, repeatedly, to come to her horse stable with her and see what horses truly are. In the meantime she had bought a big thoroughbred Arabian stallion.

As I continued to decline the invitation, divine Love didn’t give up on me, and I slowly realized that here was a beautiful opportunity to face a fear, which intellectually I understood to be baseless and not part of my spiritual “identity card.” Last year I finally scheduled an appointment and went—gladly joined by my dear daughter Anna-Zoë. It was a question of spiritual preparation all the way through, of understanding the truth of God and my spiritual identity as His fearless child, and realizing the presence of good as tangible and real. Of good being greater and more real than the height of a horse, the depth of my fear, or an insistence that “I’ve always been afraid of horses.”

To make a long story short: I faced the “foe” and entered, for the first time in my life, a huge paddock with about 40 horses. Seeing my friend’s stallion come to her from a long distance, simply by sensing her, was totally impressive to me, and I could finally understand something of the dignity and gentleness of the animals surrounding me. In the end, I learned to ride my friend’s horse without a saddle, with eyes closed, and arms spread out! I can now turn my back on horses and feel them approach from behind, as they sniff my neck with their soft noses. I am so grateful to my friend for having been so persistent over the years. I claimed my fearless identity right where the identity of each horse is also found: in eternal, infinite, divine Mind, the creator of all. 

The Bible speaks many times about our true identity, our real life, and an especially beautiful image is found in the book of Revelation. I love to regard this image as my spiritual identity card: “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it” (2:17). 

Can we exchange thoughts about our human history for a recognition of our spiritual identity and accept a “new name”? Can we swallow the pride that accompanies even the good aspects of our human makeup and make room for the millions of surprising qualities and characteristics Spirit has in store for us? In all humility, these qualities are eternally unfolding in us and as us. Our spiritual identity is an open secret between God and us. It is to be discovered step by step.