Disidentification: the Silent Gateway of the I

Much of our suffering does not arise from what we live through, but from the way we become confused with what we live through. Without realizing it, we continuously identify ourselves with the contents of our experience: the body, emotions, thoughts, roles, desires. In this state, we are not truly present. We react. We repeat. We are moved by forces that act in our place.

To identify means to say, inwardly and without words: I am this.

I am my body when it suffers.

I am my emotion when it becomes intense.

I am my thought when it takes over.

I am my role when it defines me.

But can everything that changes, everything that appears and disappears, truly be who we are?

Disidentification is the movement that dissolves this confusion. It is not a rejection of experience, nor a cold or intellectual detachment. It is a step back. A simple yet radical inner gesture: shifting the center from the observed object to the one who observes. It is the moment when something within you stops being overwhelmed and begins to see.

When disidentification occurs, you realize that the body is an instrument, not an identity; that emotions are currents passing through, not definitive truths; that thoughts are movements of the mind, not who you are. In that space, a new perception arises: you are what observes all of this unfolding.

Ordinary consciousness resembles an overcast sky, constantly crossed by clouds of thoughts, impulses, images, memories, and internalized roles. The problem is not the clouds, but the fact that we mistake ourselves for them. Disidentification does not eliminate the moving sky; it makes the sky itself visible.

Every time you stop saying I am this emotion and begin to perceive there is an emotion arising, something realigns. Every time you recognize there is a thought appearing instead of I am this thought, you recover inner space. Within that space, the Self emerges as a stable center—not rigid, but grounded.

Disidentification creates freedom because it creates distance. And distance is not separation; it is the possibility of choice. As long as you are fused with what is happening inside you, you cannot orient it. The moment you observe, you are already beginning to transform.

This process is not only psychological or spiritual, but deeply creative. When the Self observes, what once seemed inevitable returns to being a possibility. The impulse loses its dominion. Reaction is no longer compulsory. Attention brings order where automatism once ruled.

To disidentify does not mean moving away from yourself, but returning to the center from which everything can be seen. From there, the Self regains its natural function: not to endure, but to direct; not to react, but to choose; not to be dragged along, but to create.

And it is within this silent space—often discovered precisely in moments of crisis or emptiness—that the human being stops leaning outward and learns, perhaps for the first time, to lean inward. From there, every true transformation begins.