Vanishing Twin Syndrome can leave a lasting impression, not just on the
- by Seneca
Finding Internal Unity: Dropping all the Pretense
Pre-tense
ˈprēˌtens,prēˈtens
noun
- A way of behaving that is intended to deceive people:
They kept up (= continued) a pretense of normality as long as they could.
A year ago I was looking up "pretense" in the dictionary because I saw the word in a vision that later ended up in the book "Accessing Your Spiritual Inheritance. It's not that I didn't know what the word meant in a general abstract way, but I was looking for the concrete. I needed to know exactly what I needed to turn away from.
In the vision, this was an issue in my generational line that was hindering me. Pretense was keeping me from my destiny. It made sense. When I was a little girl, I would overhear my mother and grown sister talking about other people. "She's well... different..." Different in my family is what you say about somebody when you're above name calling but not judgement. Very early on, I got the distinct impression that "different" is bad.
I learned how to censor myself pretty fast, but there was also a spark in me from my dad's side that liked rocking boats and pushing buttons. I provoke people. You don't get to be mediocre around me. I would spend the next 20 years vacillating between wanting to be liked and wanting to shatter paradigms. I was the girl who would acquiesce and let you stay in your limited thinking one moment and start a riot in the grocery store ten minutes after.
As you get older, you naturally get more comfortable in your own skin, and I was no exception. I sucked it up and dared myself forward, but then this book project came along, and I got blindsided by more healing. By being a test dummy for the process (outlined here) I felt the weight and the necessity of being real. All of the areas where I had previously not felt seen or heard, I knew were about to change. And I had better be me.
This year on my birthday, I found a new flower and got a new formula. It's called "Bravely You" and it helps with stuff like this. It's time to be uncompromising about being ourselves. Anything less is exhausting, and it robs the world of the reason you're here. I love this quote from The War of Art.
Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action. Do it or don't do it.
It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don't do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet.
You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God.
Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It's a gift to the world and every being in it. Don't cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you've got.
Steven Pressfield
Author
Author
I think I'm doing what I was born for. Are you? I still have moments where I hide who I am. I bet you do too. There's no internal unity as long as there's pretense. It's time to get brave.
Pick up the new "Bravely You" Essence
Be uncompromisingly true and brave.
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On Easter this year, which was also my birthday, I decided the
Image credits © Can Stock Photo / heckmannoleg
