I never liked that word, now floating in every pop-psychology and self-help conversation as truth. Life isn’t a stage. Not a play.
When you’re being polite when you’d rather be dismissive, or when you say yes when you’d rather say no, that’s you. Not some character apart from you that took over. When you shut down and don’t know why, when you really want to connect, to meet—it’s not performing. It’s you.
Being you doesn’t require understanding or approval from you. You’re not acting, you’re being.
But any part of us that we distance, disown, is another part of our totality that we have marginalized and cannot understand.
Accountability is the door to deepening, to understanding, to seeing what was previously unseen.
There’s no cosmic director directing you, no cosmic judge judging you. There’s you, in all your messy, imperfect process of development.
Remember the natural process of development? When did it get sidelined, and why was it replaced by judgment and diagnosis? Why did “performance” enter the human condition, become a part of the human psyche?
Words have power. They don’t just describe reality—they structure perception. They can dominate, control, hypnotize. They build and destroy illusions, form and break relationships. At the same time, they have lost their weight, their essence and purpose.
The purpose of dialogues (also the ones we have with ourselves—if we know how) is to de-hypnotize us, restore meaning, reawaken awareness and attention.
You listen carefully, attentively. You speak freely, without self-censoring. You restore wonder. You research innocently. You share courageously. The vulnerability we unconsciously consider dangerous, a weakness…
You’re not performing. You’re being. You’re not broken, just unaware. What we often call “healing” is the attempt to fix or interpret what may simply be part of a natural process of development.
You’re de-hypnotizing, one word at a time. You’re deconditioning, one be-lie-f at a time. You’re developing, one descent into your mind and psyche at a time. You’re de-diagnosing, and de-categorizing.
That’s another word: mind. Why was the mind—our most precious and fascinating tool—made the enemy everyone wants to escape, silence, stop functioning? Like breaking an instrument because you don’t know how to play it.
There’s no future self waiting “at the end of the road” with a badge or a graduation certificate. This is it. It’s all happening now.
Liberation is realizing that your roots have always been inside, while you were trying to form, ensure, and defend them externally.
