What Makes You You?
Humans are individuals. Some more than others, it’s true. People who strongly feel not good enough are often fiercely dedicated to being as ‘normal’ as possible. And some cultures definitely have a stronger collective identity than others. But compared with other animals, individuality is really our default setting.

That means each of us has our own unique individual morphic field, above and beyond the general field for Homo sapiens. A personal morphic field that helps define our identity.

In much the same way that your body has nested fields for cells, organs and the overall organism, the field for your identity likely includes elements of the familial, cultural, national, and possibly ethnic and religious fields you were born into. It’s kind of a package deal that comes with choosing the family you’re born into.

But there are other fields we enter into intentionally. Professional fields, for example, such as medicine and law. Fields around work or career, like plumbing or carpentry, or being a barista, a life guard or a day trader. There are recreational fields, like being a 49ers fan, a stamp collector, a Deadhead or a Harry Potter fan.

Can you see how having a passion for something connects you with everyone else who shares that passion, at least to some extent? You’re actually plugged into the same field, and to some degree that helps to inform your identity – along with a whole bunch of other fields.

A heart surgeon, for example, will definitely be tied into the morphic field for heart surgery, which is nested within the more general field of surgery, which is nested within the field of allopathic medicine, etc. That surgeon might be Greek, or Korean, and that ethnic or cultural field will add another dimension. Perhaps she’s a devout Catholic, Jew or Buddhist. Maybe she goes out Salsa dancing every Saturday night.

Your identity is a composite of all of the fields you participate in. Some stronger, some weaker. And what makes a field strong is repetition. According to our friend Rupert Sheldrake, repetition is how morphic fields become established in the first place.

That’s why religious rituals that use the same gestures, words, and songs, repeated over and over for hundreds of years can have extraordinarily strong morphic fields. Walking into Notre Dame in Paris or Wat Pho in Bangkok, even a non-religious person can feel deeply moved.

There are often little behavioral rituals around the things we do out of habit, like rolling a joint, making coffee, or smoking a cigarette. Even benign activities like bedtime rituals – brushing and flossing, taking off makeup, feeding the cat can build up a strong field through repetition and become a ‘force of habit’.