Showing our Different Faces

The Japanese say you have three faces. The first face, you show to the world. The second face, you show to your close friends and your family. The third face you never show to anyone. It is the truest reflection of who you are.

(Anonymous)

I will be honest with you, I fear that there is a lot of projecting going on in the 'business of spirituality'. The readers need someone to look up to, a modern-day guru so to speak, and the publishers have little choice but to feed the wishes of their readership in order to stay in business. We 'amateurs' don't have that problem, but there is unfortunately also some escapism in our community. We have a hard time admitting our sometimes lackluster performance in the real world so we compensate by blaming the greedy, evil and egotistic world out there. Unbeknown to us, we inflate our spiritual image to compensate for the fact  that the average Joe apparently doesn't get us.

I probably risk falling in the same trap hence the need for this note. I still experiment how to best communicate and interact in our network of spiritual travelers. I published one book in 2012 - The Magnificent Experiment -  and have been shy to follow it up with a second one for the very reason that I want to keep the divinity of the WAY fresh and real. When I am finally ready to publish another book I want to have 'divine approval' for my work so to speak. We spiritual travelers might not always have the POWER, but when we do, we are 100 percent authentic in sharing IT.

I earn my living in the real world so my spiritual belief-sets are battle-tested. I hardly walk on water there but my colleagues and friends in the financial industry will probably tell you that I do have my moments. And only those I share with you, as well as my lessons learned along the WAY. I live for this divine CONNECTION, and I am grateful for every moment I experience and can share with my readers. No one gets a 100 percent hit ratio in the spiritual realm, but when I do share my insights, I know that they are as authentic as can be. 

Keeping the Japanese proverb in mind, while I try my best to keep all my different faces authentic, in terms of projected power they differ a lot:

spiritual writings and mentorship  (highest)

work  (somewhere in-between)

family and interactions with my soul siblings  (lowest)

I can be a messenger of a higher POWER and thus can appear larger than life now and then. In my day-to-day job as a financial strategist I put up a different face from home as well. I want to demonstrate for everyone that we don't need to be an ego in order to advance professionally. I also want to show that we can overcome our littleness and selfishness as we travel the WAY. Sometimes the more depressed I am beneath the surface, the more extroverted and forceful  I become in my professional interactions. You can call this compensation or projection, but this is what I have signed up for. As one friend in our community put it, I am here to give others hope! At home and when I interact with my soul siblings, on the other hand, I have no qualms telling them when I feel depressed. More than that, I am often at the receiving end to receive their love to get my energy back.

I believe the Japanese are on to something. We have a mission to perform, before GOD, at work and with our friends and family. It is our spiritual mission to use the complexity of this world and our human interaction as a tool for finding out who we truly are beneath the different masks. Authenticity is what we strive for, always. No worries though, GOD keeps us humble and upright. HE has his messengers to tell us when we put up a face that is not us at all.