Living your genius. Why do we choose to live a half life?
Genius = latin meaning the spirit of place… the spirit assigned to one at birth.
Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.” – Erica Jong
The genius of the individual lies in their ability to inhabit fully their peculiar and particular spirit as they converse with the world. Genius is something that is itself and no other thing.
Bucky Fuller would say it is our pattern integrity. Every 7 years every cell in our body is renewed, but the pattern that is us, goes on…even, many say, (including me) beyond death..even before birth..
So many times I have worked with people who have spent most of their lives doing work that was not their genius… work that was crafted from a need to prove….or generated from fear…or because their story of how to make money from being a teacher of kids, which was their genius, did not match their want for fame, wealth and glory.
These people are often extremely successful..deeply admired and respected…but they are impersonating…living a lie….they are not being true to their genius…and this is their heartache…their longing…
…they have become trapped in a success that imprisons them with each and every day…escape is seemingly impossible…
…so they find me…not because they know what is wrong…because they do not…they just know that something is desperately wrong…
…their identities have merged so completely with the life they have crafted…that to step away means to go to an edge that calls them to their more truthful self…
And this edge is frankly terrifying.
Many people ‘soldier’ on…living a half life. This is a tragedy…we have exiled the truth of us to such faraway lands that we no longer know how to call them home…
To step into our full genius is a risk. Most of all it is a risk of exposure. Of being found out that the mask you have so carefully crafted for so many years is untrue…and to do this requires courage and vulnerability….the willingness to step into the soft, the broken, the deceptive parts of ourselves…to be ridiculed…humiliated…to start again…to begin…
..yet to not do so is our soul’s death.
Our genius calls us…in our dreams, in our aching, in our illness… It will not let us go.
Either we step fully into our genius, or we wither on the vine of half life.
I have found that when people do become wholehearted in their genius…the crowds cheer…because this is what they most want…to see another do what they fear to do themselves. These are the heroes that inspire us the most…
My wish is to be cheering for you…as you live your genius.
March 4th 2020
Photo taken March 4th, 2020, By Natalie
