When we talk about discovering who we are, it’s crucial to add that in speaking of finding and being our true self, we're not talking the language of pop culture.

Expressions such as “true self,” "be yourself,” and “be who you are” have nothing in common with the code words of the “me” generation—you know, “I gotta be me.”

To be true to ourselves is an act of self-affirmation. This is not only very different from selfishness, it’s the opposite of selfishness.

Says Shug in the novel The Color Purple, later made into a wonderful movie in which Oprah Winfrey starred alongside Whoopi Goldberg, Margaret Avery, and Danny Glover:

Here’s the thing, the thing I believe, God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside, find it.

A dialogue from the book The Color Purple: “I is a sinner,” says Shug.

“Sinners has more good times,” says Celie.

“You know why?” asks Shug

“Cause you ain't all the time worrying about God,” says Celie

“Nah. That ain't it,” says Shug. “Us worry about God a lot. But once us feel loved by God, us do the best we can to please him with what us like.”

Celie is puzzled. “You tellin’ me that God love you and you haven’t done nothin’ for him? I mean not go to church, sing in the choir, feed the preacher, and all like that?”

A dialogue from the book The Color Purple: “I is a sinner,” says Shug.

“Sinners has more good times,” says Celie.

“You know why?” asks Shug

“Cause you ain't all the time worrying about God,” says Celie

“Nah. That ain't it,” says Shug. “Us worry about God a lot. But once us feel loved by God, us do the best we can to please him with what us like.”

Celie is puzzled. “You tellin’ me that God love you and you haven’t done nothin’ for him? I mean not go to church, sing in the choir, feed the preacher, and all like that?”

The only way to really get close to another person and not lose yourself in the relationship in the way Liz Gilbert describes in Eat, Pray, Love (both the book and the movie) is to become your own centered, strong person.

We can't allow ourselves to get really close to someone unless we are strong. What happens if we aren't strong is that we either become a sort of clone of the other or we constantly fight against them in an attempt to maintain some sense of our own identity (even though it's the false identity of the ego).

If we truly understand that “love is all there is,” we will also have to agree that this primary, immutable law must set in motion subset laws that emanate from it.

Pure love sees nothing that is not love; therefore, it sees nothing that needs forgiveness.  Forgiveness then must flow from love as surely as water from a stream.

The concept of forgiveness is based on the need to be forgiven for doing some thing “wrong” or “bad.” So flowing from the law of love must also be the law of correction.