self-importance

Self-importance

Well, I have to say, I put on lipstick to go to the bathroom, and it’s okay with me. I give it no importance, I just like it. Also my ass!

I was talking with Sylvia about how some recent emotional letting go had been a catalyst for me to get back into my music, and she said “ Why do humans always have to be in pain to be creative or do what they really want to do??? What self-importance!” Which was such a radical perspective on the cultural cliché of creativity, I asked her to say more about it. This is what she said:

“With the human victim mentality pain makes humans feel important. It takes a huge catalyst to move the ego to let go of its grip on negative attention and that catalyst is pain but we do the opposite of what we are supposed to do with it - we get attention when we are in pain and we are attention junkies so we become addicted to pain and love to embrace our pain and dramatize our pain - we become the star of our own pain/self-pity syndrome - and that is certainly a description of self-importance. We could just let go, of course. But the pain addiction keeps us holding on.

Pain is a catalyst that tells us that something is out of balance. But instead of focusing on the point B which will right the balance we focus on our addiction to the pain. We process the PAIN instead of letting go. Even Eckhart Tolle who is a spiritual teacher talks about processing pain - as if if we don't process it we can't be healed -- when in truth we could just let go of it. But we Hold On to it for dear life...o, my pain...it makes me feel real...it tells me I am really living...o how I suffer....and I have to suffer if I am going to be creative..so I nurture my pain...o my pain... all that stuff. It might be that human beings are such powerful in their addiction to pain that they will never be able to shift into wholeness.”

So I (Ditto) was thinking, what would a new, gratitude, impeccability and accountability-based creativity be like? For me, it would be being responsible to my Soul. And choosing to do all the things that feed my soul. If my soul is a singing soul, how arrogant it is of me to squelch my singing out of fear. How self-important it is to imagine that my shyness matters if what nourishes my soul and spirit is self-expression. How perverse it is to deny myself the vibrant beauty that I crave, because I’m skeered. To be creative, to dedicate myself to the creation of beauty and atmosphere, is to be accountable to Me. I'm so grateful to get to explore this now.