Ditto.
Although I don't think that changing your name in itself is one of those aspects of self-identification which lead to awakening.
If you are interested in which views to identify with / which belief system to adopt, in order to bring about awakening, I think that the following three points are the most fundamental.
- Conviction in the principle of kamma.
- Conviction that awakening is a skill.
- The desire to see phenomena in and of themselves.
(1) The principle of kamma, states, to be brief, that future results depend both of past and and present actions. That means that I can influence the future by acting in the present, that I am not deterministically fated to fail (or to succeed, for that matter). This means that I can and should do things to bring about desirable outcomes; that I should be proactive.
(2) I believe that awakening happens through the act of developing a skill: the skill of bringing about true, lasting, reliable happiness. As a result of this, I see that actions can be categorized in terms of how effective they are at bringing said happiness, and hence I see my practice very simply as: learning how to identify which actions are skillful and which actions are unskillful, and how to do the former and not the latter. It is an act of discernment and persistence.
(3) I realize that, in order to discern which actions are skillful and unskillful, phenomena must be seen as they happen, in their own terms. This way of seeing is denoted by any of the following expressions (in case you already know what I mean by one of them):
- Seeing the events of my experience as they happen, in their own terms.
- Seeing the events of my experience directly as they are made conscious.
- ... in and of themselves.
- ... phenomenologically.
For instance, if I am thinking that my father is tall then I should be aware that I am thinking that my father is tall, rather than mistakenly believing that I am aware that my father is tall; i.e., I don't confuse the content of my thoughts and mental impressions with what is actually happening. However, of course, if I am not thinking that my father is tall, but instead I am looking at my father whilst aware of his tallness, then I am aware that he is tall. It is at this level that I can see for myself what is skillful and what is not.
As far as I was able to discern, in those people whose view is in alignment with these 3 points, myself included, there tends to be a motivation for practice, and said practice bears fruit. Though I don't know first hand if it leads to awakening, for I have not experienced it myself.
