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Be Your Real Self*

plum

plum

Beloved Grand Eagle
I'm curious, how many people here feel in their heart of hearts that they are being their real selves?

How many are living a life that is bone-deep authentic and true?

I'm not.
I am tame when I would be wild and the saddest aspect of this is how it tempers the generosity of my heart.

Life has happened to me despite my best efforts and full awareness. There is much beauty and evolution in this for I am a 'better' person than I was but I miss that girl and the integrity with which she lived. I am calling her back.

Does this resonate with anyone?

*David Harold Fink. 1951.
 
Yes, dear Plum, oh yes. You always manage to touch me in a deep place, and that is what makes you special, dear one.
 
Ellen, I do treasure you. You feel free from junk and so beautifully light and bright.
What to do? Should we fight for happiness? Flee responsibility? Is there a gentle place where inner conflict reconciles with imagination?
 
I believe happiness can be found within responsibility--I've been having glimmers. For me, it's about opening up, creating space for it. What you wrote has made me nostalgic for that sense of possibility I had in my youth. I was never free enough to be 'wild', but I did feel that just about anything was possible. I feel more limited now, and of course pain is the physical manifestation of this. Perhaps that 'gentle place where inner conflict reconciles with imagination' is called 'hope'. I have much more of that now.
 
I like your reply very much. You remind me of the time I sat behind the wheel of my first car (a mini city. god i loved it), and felt the exhileration of freedom and responsibility. Maybe that is the feeling to anchor to. Thankyou my darling for those memories. x
 
Great discussion. Thank you Plum and Ellen. Simple answer, no. I've always played it too safe.
I can limit imagination and creativity with my perfectionism, and taking myself too seriously. I'm trying to let go of that.

Here's another side to this. Would being true to myself now at age 61 be the same as when I was young? At that age it was all about me. I hope that's different now.
There is a great book called Falling Upward by Richard Rohr that I really like. It addresses the issue of aging, which I've had a few issues with:), and being true to ourselves.

All the best to both of you.
 
plum said:
I like your reply very much. You remind me of the time I sat behind the wheel of my first car (a mini city. god i loved it), and felt the exhileration of freedom and responsibility. Maybe that is the feeling to anchor to. Thankyou my darling for those memories. x
Click to expand...
What a perfect image and phrase! The exhilaration of freedom and responsibility....love it.
 
Msunn said:
I can limit imagination and creativity with my perfectionism, and taking myself too seriously. I'm trying to let go of that.

Here's another side to this. Would being true to myself now at age 61 be the same as when I was young? At that age it was all about me. I hope that's different now.
Click to expand...
Msunn,
Yes, the limitations of perfectionism, which I feel is low self-esteem striving to be accepted. Doing things for the shear joy of it is the antidote.

The book you recommend looks interesting and I'll check it out.

A Joni Mitchell lyric comes to mind "Something's gained and something's lost in living every day." Like Plum, I miss the wildness and integrity of youth before compromise and responsibility kick in. But as you both say--I'm a better person now, which I believe means I am more true to myself. But I also see myself less as the center of the universe, and more connected to it all.

I've been running across lots of messages about time this last week. I love listening, watching and reading about theoretical physics, in part, because the evidence is now pretty substantial that time is an illusion. This doesn't provide much practical guidance for us humans, as our brains are wired to see the passage of time moving in a linear fashion. But I like storing the knowledge in the back of my mind that it's just an illusion--especially as I move down the line. :)

Anyone else interested in this--here is a link:

http://www.onbeing.org/program/brian-greene-reimagining-the-cosmos/6118
 
When I was in college, my mother and step-father visited for Parents' Day and met the grad student who
was in charge of behavior control on my floor of the dorm I lived in. They asked him about me and he said
"If everyone was as good as Walt, I'd be out of a job."

Yes, I always tried to be a nice guy. I feel like I did that without overdoing it, but I must have because I got TMS.

I am more than I project out front, but hey, we have to keep some of ourself to ourselves, don't we?
 
I write a lot of personal stuff in my chapters of the book I've written with Herbie on TMS
but like JD Salinger said in Catcher in the Rye, I won't tell everything.
 
plum said:
I'm not.
I am tame when I would be wild and the saddest aspect of this is how it tempers the generosity of my heart.
Life has happened to me despite my best efforts and full awareness. There is much beauty and evolution in this for I am a 'better' person than I was but I miss that girl and the integrity with which she lived. I am calling her back.
Click to expand...

I never knew 'that girl', nor any wildness. I knew too much, too soon, and created a labyrinth to shield myself from prying eyes and careless, shallow questions. My labyrinth was lined with mirrors, always reflecting and deflecting. In the years that have passed since my perceived Date with Death, I have been on a quest to select and plant the acorn that will grow into the oak, allowing me to come through. Sometimes I feel her, a whisper, a glimpse, a wild touch of wind caressing. The only aspect I have always known at my core is an innate integrity that never faltered, no matter the provocation.

plum said:
What to do? Should we fight for happiness? Flee responsibility? Is there a gentle place where inner conflict reconciles with imagination?
Click to expand...

Happiness seems fleeting, almost shallow, like the glimpse of a rainbow after a storm. I seek contentment, a one-ness with my environment, an awareness of now, and a peacefulness that all is as it should be. Peacefulness not in the placid, but in the full expansion of sense integration. Of allowing pain its expression, as I would stand bare of foot upon the saturated grasses, the storm in full rage; of allowing joy in the tipping my face towards the warming sun, hearing the branches dripping still; of breathing in the wild woodland violets, their scent thick in the air. Not happiness, this. Being. Just ... being. Is it gentle? At times. Is it wild? At times. Everything changes, every moment, every breath. We change.

Ellen said:
I believe happiness can be found within responsibility--I've been having glimmers. For me, it's about opening up, creating space for it. What you wrote has made me nostalgic for that sense of possibility I had in my youth. I was never free enough to be 'wild', but I did feel that just about anything was possible. I feel more limited now, and of course pain is the physical manifestation of this. Perhaps that 'gentle place where inner conflict reconciles with imagination' is called 'hope'. I have much more of that now.
Click to expand...

Opening up, oh yes.
Nostalgic.

In the Buddhist tradition, hope is considered a conflict with accepting things as they are. They believe in emptiness, whereas Christianity believes in fullness. I do not consider this a conflict. Rather, it is one side of the same thing. Yin/Yang. Light/Dark. Breathing in/Breathing out. Fullness/Emptiness. We need both to experience life.

I enjoy having, and I enjoy yearning. There is sweet emotion in both.

What a lovely topic to introduce.

with grace and gratitude,
^_^
 
Msunn said:
Great discussion. Thank you Plum and Ellen. Simple answer, no. I've always played it too safe.
I can limit imagination and creativity with my perfectionism, and taking myself too seriously. I'm trying to let go of that.

Here's another side to this. Would being true to myself now at age 61 be the same as when I was young? At that age it was all about me. I hope that's different now.
There is a great book called Falling Upward by Richard Rohr that I really like. It addresses the issue of aging, which I've had a few issues with:), and being true to ourselves.

All the best to both of you.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your lovely response. I appreciate your thoughts on age as this is something I turn over in my hands. I'm mid-life and praise the gods I am grounded in Paganism. I grew up with this gracious worldview but feel it is coming into its own as I move towards the autumn of my life.

I'm late Summer at the moment but the colours are changing and it would be too easy to fall prey to prevailing stereotypes.

In the Jungian tradition there is the idea that at midlife we face the eruption of our true selves in challenge to the roles we are socialised into relentlessly. Tricky waters to navigate and many crash on the rocks (affairs, fast cars, the usual suspects).

I very much like the idea that our psyches invite this blossoming, the chance to be ourselves. I suppose I am playfully addressing a paradox, the oddness of becoming less and yet more. Less dross, more humanity maybe.

I'm thinking aloud so I hope I'm not rambling. I appreciate the book reference, I shall take a look. There are some videos on youtube by Ram Dass on ageing that I quite enjoyed. I'll see if I can find them.
 
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