As a little girl, I had the pleasure of inheriting all of my older sister’s clothes as she outgrew them. Now, it wasn’t that I minded wearing used clothes; it was more that they were her style, not mine. Even though we had the same parents, lived in the same house, and went to the same schools, we were completely different girls with our own unique styles. She collected dolls, and I collected rocks. She had frilly dresses and loved to dance. I was most comfortable in my Levis reading a good book. When my sister outgrew her clothes, of course, they fit me perfectly. So, to my parents the obvious choice was to give them to me.
After a while, I realized it was more than just clothes; it was someone else’s ideas. As well as it was intended I was taking on someone else’s ideas for how I would act, what I would say, and even sometimes how I would think. The real me was getting smaller and smaller, while more and more identities were becoming “my life.”
It was like living in the tropics with people giving me turtlenecks, sweaters, and jackets when all I really needed was just what I had.
I learned from The Avatar Course that the best way to live and be happy is to be your Self, not someone else’s idea of how you should be. Avatar showed me that it is possible to peel off the layers, some layers that I didn’t even realize were there.
As the layers peeled away, I heard a voice that I had not heard in a very long time. At first it was faint, but as the layers were removed the voice grew from a whisper. My true self was speaking.
I was taking off layers of indoctrination that society had offered me from a very early age. I had been suffocating under the weight of those extra layers. For the first time there were no acts to play out, no saying things I thought other people wanted to hear—just me, pure and simple, and an incredible feeling of lightness.
Avatar is all about becoming real and appreciating who we are. Pretense is thrown out the window. Trying to be something or someone we’re not can bring sorrow to the soul.
In his book, Living Deliberately, Harry Palmer says, “Honesty is a path that leads to happiness. Becoming honest is an act of self-renewal. When we summon the courage to take ownership of our experiences, to see them just as they are, to feel them, we recover the blueprints to our lives. We will face our fears and find the transparent beliefs that create them. Becoming honest with ourselves means introducing more honesty into the collective consciousness of the world, and this lays the foundation upon which an enlightened planetary civilization can be built.”
Harry also noted that, “Following another’s path leads to who they are, not to who you are.”
The world is changing. More and more people are taking the steps toward being uniquely and perfectly themselves. No costumes, no facades. How about you?
Pamela Ziemann, Kirkland, WA
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