I love the stage. I’m on one given any opportunity. I’ve been acting since standard 5 (grade 7). In fact, my friends tell me I’m always on stage but they exaggerate. I’m not that dramatic.

One of the things that draws me to performing is the adrenalin rush. Standing backstage as the opening music begins to play, the audience settles down to silence and the lights dim, my heart races, my pores become damp (I know – it’s beautiful), and I can’t stand still. My words and dance moves are racing through my head as I calm my ego down by telling it that I’ve done it before and I have fun regardless of whether I commit a boo-boo. I have been known to exit stage left when the rest of the company waits for me to start the next introduction. (continue reading…)

There are two parts to all of us. We travel through life as both Soul and Ego. Soul is brave, lives in the present, loves unconditionally and is everything and everyone. Soul…well…just is.

Ego loves us dearly and all it wants is for us to be safe. As a result, ego wants us not to change and grow. It wants to keep things as they are because it is known and safe. It wants to control everything to ensure that there are never any surprises.

The soul and the ego are connected by a bridge. The closer the two are to each other the stronger the bridge. If they grow apart the bridge starts to crumble and can eventually fall away completely, resulting in a kind of split personality, where they appear to be different people and one cannot relate to the other, even carrying different memory.

This bridge is fragile and needs to be nurtured. Keep the ego close but see it as the movie it is meant to be. Listen to your gut… listen to soul. It is not possible to live completely in soul and still be in the body so this is not the aim. Keep the bridge strong between the two and you will grow. The bridge is the love you have for you, like the glue holding a healthy relationship together.

The story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a good analogy. Dr Jekyll is a likeable and kind man with many friends, but he has a dark side. He takes a potion to bring this dark side, which he calls Mr Hyde, to life. Over time though the potion becomes unnecessary and Mr Hyde takes on a life of his own, being a cruel, bitter and remorseless being. Jung always spoke of not ignoring your shadow and this story represents the dire consequences of not heeding this advice.

So, ensure you give your Mr Hyde his dues. Nurture the ego without becoming it, because you are Dr Jekyll. Always remember who you truly are and not who everyone else wants you to be.

You can see that this is all about how you relate with you. This influences how you relate with others and contributes to what is happening in relationships in the world today. While you lack love for yourself the bridge is long and fragile and you do a lot to be what others want of you. This is how people lose themselves in relationships. Work on you first. Get that bridge shorter. Ensure that ego and soul are happy bed buddies and then you can reach out and relate to others in a way that will be healthy and fun for you.

Sometimes music just pops into my head for no reason. I will not have heard the song recently and there is no apparent external prompt. This time it was “Getting to know you” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The King and I”. The reason this is bizarre is because it is not a favourite of mine (although if you knew me then a show tune popping into my head would not surprise you).

I then thought carefully about the words and related it to the myriad of relating that is happening in my life. When we meet someone and immediately “click” with them we know them already. We often say that we recognise them from somewhere or that it is like we have known them all our life. They are easy to talk to and understand us like few others do, even though we have just met.

We then embark on a process of “getting to know” them: what work they do; where they live; are they married?; do they have children? Yet these things do not alter our perception of the other because we know them. I have to correct the last sentence: these things should not alter our perception of the other but sometimes they do. When we learn things about the other that make us uncomfortable, because they reflect something within ourselves, often our perception of them does change. I know that I can get very uncomfortable with people who are very much like me because of the very fact that I see a lot of me in them.

“Once I got to know them I realised they weren’t for me,” I’ve heard myself say on occasion. This isn’t entirely true because in hindsight I knew deep down that they were never for me right from the start. The ego just needed to work it out for itself. If you have ever read Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink” then you would see my point that in the very instant that we meet someone we already know whether we will get on with them, how special they could be in our life, and whether we would want to spend more time with them. Conversation is not necessary.

This is not to say that conversation is not important in a relationship of any kind. On the contrary, communication with the other is necessary and healthy but only to minimise confusion by the ego, the Soul does not need this communication. The Soul knows.

Also, please understand me when I say “they were never for me”. We can never make a wrong choice and there is never an experience that shouldn’t have happened but, in this case, the reason for the experience may have been purely for the ego.

Every day we are relating with someone very special in our lives; someone more important than anyone we will meet. That someone we call “me”. The same observations apply to this relationship: we already know who we are, why we are here, and everything we need to know in order to get there. The constant chatter to ourselves is our ego and this is what changes the perception of ourselves (only our perception of ourselves can change). However, we are so used to the ego as it is the very world around us (I’ll explain this in more detail in a future discussion) that we battle to hear our Soul or sometimes even choose not to hear it. Any internal voice that is justifying and analysing is ego; the Soul just knows and does not have to justify.

Listen to what you feel deep within. Listen carefully. You already know the people you meet. You already know you.

Just like it has never been seen as endearing to be foolish, love has grown to be disliked too.

“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is to love and be loved in return”, says the artist, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, in the beautiful film about love, Moulin Rouge. The strange thing is that it is not something that needs to be learnt as we are all borne of unconditional love. It is something within us that needs to be rediscovered.

Love is the true experience of life. It is the one emotion that incorporates all that we are and wish to be. It takes us places we would not have otherwise gone; it makes us do things that we would have not attempted otherwise; it makes us foolish. Like all experiences in life, love has its ups and downs and the greater the ups, often the greater the downs. The key is to enjoy the downs as much as the ups. Often the downs can be characterised by bitterness and hate but there is still nothing but love.

What defines a fool? They have a poor reputation; one given to them by those who do not take risks because they claim they are too clever to make mistakes. A fool is innocent, pure and trusting. They rely on their inner knowing to guide them. Even though their ego may see an abyss ahead of them, they keep going. They stroll off the edge with the faith and knowing that has typified many of the great leaders and warriors of history. Think of the great explorers who set out to prove to people that the world does not end and you cannot sail off the edge. How similar is love? Every experience of love is different yet we choose to see it as the same and this is what makes it the same. This is what results in repeated patterns in love. The patterns provide our ego with comfort but rob our soul of experiencing.

To be a fool in love it is necessary to abandon the mind. Laugh at the mind and its antics as it tries to anticipate what will happen next and how the other will react to your words and actions. Go with what you want to do and say. If you find yourself stopping yourself then you know that the innocence is being disturbed.

I recently experienced unrequited love. This is something that is written about a lot. It is an uncomfortable space but one that needs to be seen for what it is – love with yourself. Hindsight can make you look stupid because your actions were never reciprocated. Yet, the gift you give yourself is to see how you can abandon all rules and norms and be yourself regardless of how it may seem. Have you tried to “dance like no one is watching”? We have all heard the saying but for some of us it is more difficult than it may sound. It requires you to listen to what you hear in the music and to respond how you want to respond, not how you have been taught to respond, which fits in with the rest of the crowd. If you are one of those who criticises others for how they dance you will find this even more difficult. Try it though because when you have mastered this you are starting to get the concept of being foolish in love.

Then take another step and do it again…differently.

The whole purpose of life is to experience the pull between ego and soul.

I was reading through one of Jodene’s blog posts and the responses to it and I was overwhelmed by the propensity we have to pontificate over peace, happiness, eternal love and joy … concepts that the soul is only too familiar with. So why do we seek this with such vigour when we are here to experience the pain, anxiety, fear and confusion that comes with having both the ego and the soul? They are so a part of the experience of life: these moments that we so naturally dread and wish to avoid. They give perspective and balance. Without these experiences life would be a monotone of even keel nothingness. We would move from one day to the next expecting nothing but the usual happiness and peace … fooled into believing that we should always focus on the positive and pay no attention to the other side; the side so vital to the experience of life … the side that will give you growth.

Approaching the moments of confusion, pain and anxiety with innocence and the same enthusiasm that we have for the good times is the greatest gift we can give ourselves. Without them the journey would not be the amazing adventure it is.

Have fun … or not. Both states are special.