#85 – Whose Ego deterred you from your True Self's purpose?

Being an artist is more than a calling, or an identity. Could we say it's a "nature?"

Since I was seven, I wanted to write. I felt like a poet.

But at 13, my father's well-intentioned words made me feel ashamed of my nature – who did I think I was?

Because he'd said that to be a writer I needed to know a lot of things, my Ego, wanting to protect me from abandonment, shoved my True Self into the closet and clapped its hands clean – what, a poet, here? Nah! You've got the wrong person.

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From outside, it's hard to understand someone else's internal experience. So we give them advice.

We don't say, "oh, you want to be a writer? That's great! How does this knowing make you feel?" Or, "when did you discover this?" Or, "how do you feel when you think about not writing?"

Instead, we go, "oh, you want to be a writer? That's great! What do you want to write about?"

Or worse, "How are you going to make a living?" Or even worse, "You know? The publishing world is really hard right now..."

Or the worst of all, "What makes you think you can write?"

What we're doing there is meeting their True Self with our Ego.

We assess someone's deep need for purpose with the pragmatic view of our Ego-driven goals and consequences.

A True Self that is an artist needs to make art (in whatever form it chooses) in order to live its whole nature – we often call that to "self-actualize," or "realize oneself."

I call it to live.

Whose Ego deterred you from living your True Self's purpose and when did you reclaim it?

Love,

Carolina