Honestly looking at what we are on the inside, in our souls, is necessary for substantial personal growth and creative excellence. It is a hero’s journey and heroine’s journey, not to be undertaken without courage. What lies within us can be chaotic and threatening, at least until we know ourselves enough to embrace who we really are. And we may often find ways to avoid looking, or dealing with the discomforts of seeing.

[The image is "Structure of Thought No. 5" by Doug and Mike Starn - see the page photography3 for more details, and their book.]

In his richly stimulating article on the philosophy of addiction Unhooked Thinking, William Pryor notes, “Addiction is the map, not the territory. When I was a junky, I learnt to present addiction, to be labelled an addict, because what lay beneath was too difficult, too unacceptable, to express or deal with. So medicalised has become our inner life, so distanced and handed over to figures of authority, that we find it hard to go beyond the map to find the territory within ourselves.”

He thinks the “endemic something in the human condition that leads so many to become addicts.. has been called weltschmertz, world-weariness, melancholy and in India, bireh or longing. It is the pain of being human, no more, no less, the pain of having the chaotic self-awareness of human consciousness chained by its attachments to the mundane.”

In The War of Art, Steven Pressfield writes about our fear that we can transcend the mundane, to “become the person we sense in our hearts we truly are. This is the most terrifying prospect a human being can face, because it ejects him at one go (he imagines) from all the tribal inclusions his psyche is wired for and has been for fifty million years.

“We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are. More than our parents/children/teachers think we are. We fear that we actually possess the talent that our still, small voice tells us. That we actually have the guts, the perseverance, the capacity.”

One of the pleasures of the tv series “Heroes” is its depiction of very real people with various superhuman, or meta-human, powers and how they are facing themselves having such extraordinary abilities [stopping time; flying; foreseeing the future etc].

This image shows one of the main heroes [on the right], Hiro Nakamura [played by Masi Oka] and his friend and fellow traveler Ando Masahashi [James Kyson Lee]. In one of the other scenes in the series, Hiro says, “My only concern is should I hide my true identity? A costume maybe?” To which Ando responds: “You start talking about capes and tights and I’m out of here.”

It may be natural to be uncertain about our authentic inner selves, and want to shy away from it, or put on some kind of costume.

But personal development teacher Bob Proctor says in his article Notes on The Secret DVD, “You’re going to attract according to your belief. Now you might not really believe in yourself, but if you keep studying, you are going to be absolutely amazed with yourself.”

In her stimulating newsletter [available by subscription at her site The Joyfully Jobless Life], Barbara Winter quotes from The War of Art: “We know that if we embrace our ideals, we must prove worthy of them. And that scares the hell out of us. What will become of us? We will lose our friends and family, who will no longer recognize us. We will wind up alone, in the cold void of starry space, with nothing and no one to hold on to.

“Of course this is exactly what happens. But here’s the trick. We wind up in space, but not alone. Instead we are tapped into an unquenchable, undepletable, inexhaustible source of wisdom, consciousness, companionship. Yeah, we lose friends. But we find friends too, in places we never thought to look. And they’re better friends, truer friends. And we’re better and truer to them.”

Barbara Winter affirms she has “been dazzled by the helpful, delightful, creative people that are in my life… If I ever doubted the Law of Attraction, I’d only have to scan my e-mailbox to see that I consistently attract people who are curious, adventurous and committed to making a difference.”

[For more on the Law of Attraction, see page about The Secret DVD]

One way we have to understand ourselves more deeply is through literature, the arts and fantasy.

As Jungian writer Marie-Louise von Franz says in her book The Interpretation of Fairy Tales, “Fantasy is not just whimsical ego-nonsense but comes really from the depths; it constellates symbolic situations which give life a deeper meaning and a deeper realization.”

Some related Talent Development Resources pages:
addiction / dependency
change / personal growth
depth psychology
myth & story
the shadow self: sites articles books
~~

02.10.07 |
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