P&G SPIRITUALITY

Though one would hardly suspect it at this point in my incarnation I spent some years as a commercial print model while living and working in New York City. Commercial print modeling is very different from fashion modeling, a faction I never would have been considered for. Commercial print modeling is all about a certain look that can sell a certain product or service. It is a composite of look, energy, and believability. Models fall into certain categories, and these slots are very difficult to ever move out of and still stay viable in the business. An ingénue, for instance, will rarely find herself one day obtaining work as a vixen. People age out of the business more often than they change categories. As I chose to alter my look or “brand” in order to move into different theatrical roles, my commercial print days ended. I was, while employed, known as a “P&G” model. A “P&G” refers to someone who has a Proctor & Gamble type of look. It is the clean cut guy/girl next door, the all-American person who is goodness and wholesomeness incarnate. Yes I know. From my current perspective it is hard to see me through the P&G lens. Yet that is where I landed and that is what got me jobs. It didn’t matter if that was how I really expressed and lived. It only mattered that I could maintain that look and play that part.
It was during this period of my life that I became intensely serious about my spiritual awakening and my emotional healing. I began attending Unity of New York, became a student of A Course In Miracles, and steeped myself in prayer, meditation, and recovery. During the earlier years of this quest I inadvertently cast myself in a P&G pseudo-spiritual role of always trying to look like the better-than-good guy next door, a living embodiment of only Love and Light. Regardless of what was really happening in my interior I tried desperately to look the part of what I perceived an enlightened being would look like. Denial and suppression became my tools for modeling what I thought would somehow gain me entrance into the spirit-life I so longed to live. The tension between what was seeking to occur inside of me and what I was trying to portray on the outside literally did me in. The boy next door began to rage on the streets and in the subways of New York City, and the disguise finally and mercifully dissolved in a messy yet liberating look-good meltdown. All that had been suppressed was exposed and the role I thought I had to play no longer served my emergence. I hit a wall with my pasted on “church face,” and slowly it seemed I was forced to confront all the inner demons that I had tried so hard to hide. I “aged out” of the limiting mental images of what a spiritual being looked like, and I came to know that no matter how uncomfortable and messy and unskillful the immediate expression, what I saw in the mirror was actually the spiritual man I had always wanted to be. The charade never led me to an experience of my Source. Trying to be good, sweet, and perfect led only to lies, resistance, and emptiness. It was in the darkness of my deepest despair that I finally found the Spirit I had so longed to feel. It was in getting real that I caught my first glimpses of Truth.
And so my modeling days are long over, and so are the days of “P&G” spirituality. I resist the recurrent temptation to put on the mask of inauthentic Love and Light so that the reality of those Qualities can shine essentially through. What role others may cast me in is truly none of my business. With Carl Jung I am much more interested in being whole than in looking good. I am devoted to letting Source shine from the interior of my being to the circumference of my heartful expression. I am dedicated to being a real and authentic Presence in the world. I am committed to contributing consciously to the Field of One. I choose Presence over pretense, conscious staying over suppression, and deliberate attending over denial. Source is not a part I want to play or a look I seek to adopt. It is the Reality I am committed to living. Whether or not I think I look the part in any given moment is truly beside the point. I am letting the authenticity of my Essential Self be my guide, my direction, and my referral. That is the only real role I was born to play, and it isn’t really a role at all. Having faced the suppressed trauma and denied darkness of pretence- spirituality, I am now free to finally be the entirety of the authentic me.
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ESTEEMABLE ME

I hail from a long line of people who have worn low self-esteem as a badge of honor. Humility and humiliation are so intertwined that the crucial distinction is mostly imperceptible. The admonition that I was given was if you dare to feel good about yourself, the world will surely knock you back down to size. It is the old pedestal-take a fall scenario. To be aware of and celebratory of one’s gifts and talents was thought to be arrogant and self-serving. To possess a strong sense of self and personal mission was deemed to be willful and egotistical. I totally get that this ancestral programming was done in service of what was believed to be safety and security within a dangerous and potentially hostile world. If you play small you won’t become a target. There was and is nothing malicious. And that fact doesn’t stop it from being a damning sentence to live under.
It has taken me years to realize the extent and the effects of this conditioning. It has taken me decades and much inner-work to soften the wince in a world that was designed to keep me in my proper and limited place. I have always sensed a tension between what my Soul was calling me to express and what my personality believed it was safe to allow. This didn’t keep me from daring to follow at least a few of my dreams. I did manage to plough through the fear and ignore the self loathing long enough to take a stab at what I wanted to bring forth in my life. I also, however, unconsciously sabotaged my dreams ultimate achievement.
Standing at the far end of this strong and perpetuating perceptual system let me say that there is nothing noble about self-scrutiny and subsequent diminishment. There is nothing humble about playing small and hiding your gifts. I know from personal experience that it benefits no one to withhold your talents and then attribute this suppression to the will of some God that seemingly wants us to hide the talents that It has endowed us with. Suppression of any kind leads to depression and depression is very self-absorbing. It becomes a shroud that veils the Light that is the Truth of our Sourced-identity. Self-aversion is the shadow side of narcissism, and they both stem from amnesia of our true and authentic nature. Self-opinion blinds us to opportunity and deadens us to possibility. Daring to feel good about one’s self and affirming of our talents is a direct celebration of the Source of those very gifts. Accepting our innate worth is a full time commitment and one that gives massive benefit to our world. It is the greatest gift we can give to the critical mass. Feeling through and moving out of our painful self stories is a contribution of enormous consequence. Low self esteem is epidemic in western culture. It is in vogue to lead with our neurosis and self-negations. And it keeps us mired in emotional quicksand and mental prisons. It robs us and the world of the song we came to sing.
It is time to truly and deliberately take a stand for stepping into a Reality that is worthy of one that is sourced by the One. It is time to commit to seeing ourselves and each other with the Vision of the One that Knows. It is time to step out of the suppression and to open into the blissfulness of giving our gifts and sharing our talents. It is time to move out of the self-absorption and into passionate self-expression. Celebrate Source by celebrating your own wonderful Self! Do it today- just the way you are! Be bold in your affirmation and liberal with your praise. It is safe and advantageous to be upon the pedestal. There is nothing and no one to waiting to knock you off. That is where life wants us to be. It wants to proudly display Itself through our moments and our days, our giving and our gifts. It is actually egotistical to suppress the magnificence that is within you. It is arrogant to place our personal opinion above that of Source Presence. Humility seeks to live a life of grandeur and of glory. It knows that each of us is worthy of the best. The very, very best.
So if you find yourself belittling yourself: STOP! Listen to what you are saying and take a deep breath of awareness. That old programming and its subsequent self-diminishment is nothing less than blasphemy. Stop and ask for help. Ask the Universe, God, Buddha, your own Higher Self, just stop and ask. Ask to be shown who and what you really are. And then forgive yourself and begin today to tell a new tale. A tale of one who is here on earth to live and to give the best that is our Source. Only worthiness is of the One. Allow your esteem to come from Source. Allow yourself to be lifted to the heights of all you can be. And know that you do it for us all. There is no greater legacy than integrated self-love.
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