I came to understand who I am by realizing what I’m not – that’s where it started.

I’m not my thoughts. I’m not the sum of my experiences. I’m not my career or my demographic. I’m not my body or my mind.

Over time, I came to see that I am awareness itself – the knowing behind it all. I’m the life energy that rides along with an ego named Cristina Manos and a body that has a date of birth. My ego is deeply attached to this vessel.

That ego never stops chattering when I’m awake, and when my body finally rests, the ego takes itself on subconscious adventures that show up as dreams.

So how did I come to see this? And what does it mean for my life?

My first glimpse came through emotional pain. There’s a reason painful awakenings are often called “The Dark Night of the Soul.” Sometimes you have to be disillusioned and humbled before you surrender.

I’m fortunate, I’ve never hit a devastating “rock bottom” as a human being. The true awareness that I am, along with my connection to source and to the human collective, has kept the hardest moments of my life from turning me into an addict or leaving me homeless. That fear is very real for me; my father spent the last two years of his mentally ill life, homeless and addicted. I have always known that I don’t want to follow that path.

From the outside, my “midlife crisis” may not have looked like much. Compared with other people’s stories, I almost feel embarrassed that I felt so victimized and believed that someone or something “out there” would save me.

The turning point was realizing that I’m truly on my own – no one is coming to rescue me. Until recently, I thought I was independent. I didn’t see how much I craved approval and unhealthy codependency.

I’ve always been strong. I have a career. I own a business. I’ve always taken care of myself. I’ve traveled, had adventures, and pretty much done exactly what I wanted. That’s what my ego and my vessel projected to the world as “me.”

And yes, my human self is all of those things. It’s also all the contradictions: pleasure and pain, love and hate, curiosity and analysis, righteousness and discernment, success and failure, joy and sorrow. My human self is part of the human collective. Admitting that was hard because we all tie so much to our personal identity. The more I was disappointed in others, clung to my ideas, and insisted the world conform to my expectations so I could feel okay, the more uncomfortable I became.

Life began to go wrong because I wanted everything and everyone else to change so I could be okay. That wasn’t going to happen. I knew I needed to change – so how?

I went inward. For the last few months I stopped writing blogs, making videos, and recording podcasts. I had no advice to give because I needed to see things from my soul’s perspective. I became the observer of myself.

When I made time to sit with the discomfort, I felt pain. The discomfort came from realizing the outside world isn’t responsible for my happiness. Out there, nothing is “fair.” The only place where things are balanced is within.

I began watching my thoughts. I noticed I wasn’t speaking kindly to myself. I realized I was holding grudges. None of that felt like “me,” so I let it all rise and pass. There were hours when I cried incredibly hard.

I allowed myself to truly feel human, deep emotional pain. I discovered it’s always been there. Feeling it helped me move through it. I decided to face it, even if that meant having a sore heart for years. I’m human, after all.

Allowing myself to feel while knowing that my human self can handle it is a process. I’m still in it as I write this, but I’m able to write again.

I still have to navigate this ego and this flesh-and-bone body throughout this life. I’m no different from anyone else in that way. Our suffering comes from associating so much with our bodies and experiences.

Where we’re born greatly influences who and what we think we are. We don’t choose our names – our parents do. Our immediate family and caregivers shape much of the identity we take on.

But that’s the key, we “take on” an identity. We portray a character to the world. It becomes confusing and uncomfortable because, in reality, we’re not our experiences, our names, our minds, our bodies, our thoughts, or our memories. We aren’t the sum of these things.

We are spirit energy having a human expression and experience.

That’s what makes human life fascinating. It’s a lot like a dream. We get attached to “who” we are. We try to figure out what we’re supposed to be doing. We long for purpose. The more we cling to wanting life to be a certain way, the more we suffer.

If I identified with every experience I’ve had, I would drive myself crazy, and I was. The more frazzled I became, the more every person, place, and thing looked like a goblin or a ghoul. I felt alone and misunderstood.

As I started coming out of this “dark night,” I woke up to the reality that my human story can go wherever I want it to. The main character – “me” – needed to start living again. She needed to decide to be the independent, go‑getter who doesn’t need saving. That decision would allow her to align with better human experiences.

There’s a simplicity in accountability.

In my work, I help clients envision the life of their dreams and guide them to see how likely that reality is to unfold. Often what they envision isn’t far away; they just don’t realize how possible it is.

I had recently lost touch with what feeling and being alive meant to me. Over the past decade I didn’t see that I’d actually achieved my wildest dreams – and now I’m at the place of, “Now what?”

“Now what?” felt like failure because I was looking at it the wrong way. That question gave me an opening to shift my human priorities and answer it. As a spiritual being having a human experience, what’s next for me?

Life doesn’t end because we’re bored. More often than not, a midlife crisis is simply a period when life seems stale. The “problem” is that our experiences feel dull, and we know half our life is over.

Yet in reality, we have no problems. I realized that getting older, slowing down, and living a quieter, simpler life is a natural progression. I’m learning to welcome it instead of seeing it as winding down.

Aging is a change in my human circumstances that will allow me to flourish in ways I’ve always loved – with my creativity.

My “now what?” on a human level has an answer: live.