Who would you be without .......

I am sure many are familiar with the work of Katie Byron and her question inquiring

“Who would you be without your story”?

When I first heard that spoken it resonated very deeply with me and really gave me the first insight into how we attach to our personal stories with all their incumbent programs, beliefs, experiences and memories. Making the distinction as to whether or not we really are our story is what her question asks of us.

All stories are personal accounts we tell of our lives that are essentially impersonal if you are to accept the concept of a one Consciousness animating us all. We get so caught up in these stories, particularly the painful ones, we virtually become the story through the continual re-telling of it to anyone who will listen, and unwittingly ensuring the belief in the story becomes more and more ingrained.

In the end we haven’t a clue who we really are, mostly lost in those stories being a victim of someone or other, and generally not very happy.

Through various spiritual practices the story can be seen for what it is and gradually let go of allowing consciousness to fully express its unlimited potentiality and not be blocked out by our old worn out stories of what we once thought was us, but definitely no longer is.

“Who would I be without my name”?

Recently I had the thought “Who would I be without my name”? Just saying that out loud had me feeling a deeply diminished identity.

So then I experimented with dropping my name at any quiet opportunity I had. Inquiring of myself “Who would I be without my name?” seemed remarkably to strip from me my ego (my sense of self and its story) and leave me quite disorientated as if I had no known characteristics, kind of in an empty yet peaceful space, a complete nobody.



Identifying with our names it seems can keep us right in our stories, particularly the ones we thought we had left behind. Our name after all encapsulates our entire life’s history. Our name is our own personal label glued to us like a tattoo. When it is spoken we respond to it and take ownership of all it entails. Our entire life’s identity seems to be wrapped up in our names.



If the stories of our lives are sub-files then our name it seems, is the title of the zip file that holds them all in memory.

Maybe the use of deed poll is the only answer!