Michelangelo & Authenticity
Michelangelo was one of the greatest artists of all time. He was extremely dedicated and spent 3 years creating the sculpture of David.
The final masterpiece is no doubt magnificent, yet - the way in which he revealed his artwork is what I am choosing to focus on here.
It is beautiful and inspiring to see so many people becoming empowered to heal the emotional wounds of their psyche.
Yet, often we focus on the surface wounds - that painful ending of a relationship or the rejection experienced in dating or healing from a disappointing experience in our careers.
But only by getting to the original source of our wounds are we ever able to experience true healing and liberation.
stand out
One must first heal their original wound.
The Original Abandonment Wound
A child has two essential needs: Attachment and Authenticity.
Attachment is the drive for closeness & proximity to others physically and emotionally and its primary purpose is to facilitate being cared for.
Authenticity is the quality of being true to oneself.
So, consider for a moment how vulnerable and helpless a young child is. Among all species, human children rely on their parents to care for them and meet their needs for the greatest duration of time.
A child relies on its parents to feed, cloth, care for and keep them safe. A child’s survival depends on maintaining a certain degree of attachment with its parents.
Even if this attachment requires the sacrifice of one’s authenticity.
How a Child Sacrifices Authenticity
A child gives up her authenticity incrementally and unconsciously over the course of her childhood. Her intentions are pure - “Be who I think my parents need me to be so that they will take care of me.”
During our formative years we are like sponges and absorb every message that we are exposed to and store these messages as facts! We don’t have the capacity to question or analyze the constant stream of messages we receive so there is no filtration process. Rather, every message is programmed into our minds and informs us who we are expected to be and who we are not allowed to be.
Sometimes these messages are verbal - “Good girls don’t get mad and yell”, or “Big boys don’t cry.”
But, more often than not they are non-verbal; how did your parents behave, how did they interact with one another, how did they care for their bodies, what were their beliefs about wealth, rest, relationships and health, did they allow themselves to rest when sick and tired or were they always pushing through, what was the energy within the home, what was the tone of voice they used, what were the looks they gave you?
All of these create the beliefs that a child adopts about herself and as such creates her ‘personality’.
Inauthenticity Becomes Our Personality
For example, suppose a young boy is at the dinner table eating with his family. He is enjoying the meal and after some time has passed his body signals to him that he is full and does not want or need to eat anymore.
The boy’s father notices his plate still has food on it and tells him to finish eating everything on his plate.
The boy explains that he is no longer hungry but the father persists relying first on persuasion then bribery and finally guilt, telling him that there are many children in the world that don’t have food and he should be more grateful and appreciative.
The boy finally concedes and finishes the food on his plate in order to please his father and maintain his attachment with him. And the father tells him that he is a good boy.
Although this story is somewhat simple and rather common - there are two major splits that happened within this boy during this dinner.
He learned to deny his own gut instincts. A crucial part of being an authentic human is knowing our inner feelings and honoring them. Often a child is denied this luxury and it may be many years before he learns how to trust his own intuition again. He may live a lifetime of denying self in order to appease others; hence, the birthplace of people-pleasing.
He learned that there was something wrong with him. When a parent uses guilt or shame - such as: “There are starving kids in the world and you can’t even finish your dinner. That is so selfish of you!” - a child internalizes this shame and creates a belief in regards to their own inadequacy and sense of worth. Such as: “I am bad. I am selfish.” Then he will do everything he knows how to make sure others don’t see how bad and selfish he is, because after all it felt really good to have his father tell him he was a ‘good boy’.
Hiding Parts of Yourself
Little moments like the one described above causes a child to begin to hide parts of himself. He truly believes that he is ‘bad’ and ‘selfish’ and doesn’t want others to see that so he overcompensates by either being really, really good or plays the role of the perceived notion of what it means to be a ‘bad boy.’
Because he wasn’t allowed the space to listen to his gut instincts and honor his own feelings he begins to adopt these personas that become second nature to him. This happens at such a young age that often we can’t even remember life before this ‘personality’ and just assume that just must be who I am.
This occurs in small ways that may seem insignificant at first, but everytime we deny our intuition and fail to honor our own needs, we become more and more disconnected from our true self.
Reclaiming Your True Self
A reclamation of one’s true self is a process of dissolution. The work isn’t found in changing who you are or in behavior modification but in stripping away everything you think you are but are not, in order to reveal the magnificence that is hiding underneath.
This process requires a tremendous amount of courage as often our identities and our relationships are intertwined with these inauthentic personalities. But, only through committing to returning to your true self are you able to experience real freedom in this life.
Michelangelo & David
Michelangelo is one of the greatest artists of all time and his marble sculpture, David, is a testament to his hard work, creativity and dedication.
But what’s even more remarkable is that he didn’t create David from scratch; instead, he chipped away at a large block of marble until the masterpiece was revealed within.
This is what this human healing experience is really about - removing everything that is not really us in order to reveal the masterpiece that has always been there.
This is my work and this is why I am so passionate about it. We have all forgotten how truly incredible we really are. Helping others to dissolve their limiting beliefs and their false personas so they can uncover the beautiful creation that they are, uncover their hidden gifts and talents and allow their light to shine into the world is a privilege and honor.