I am a multi passionate person. I write every day, make art every day, play music nearly every day, connect with spirit every day, I love to journal and play with colours and generally stay involved in everything that I love to do. I did however make the mistake many years ago of listening to what everyone else said around me when they would give me advice about my career and making my path in the world. They all said I had to choose! So I did, I chose music. Over the course of the next 15 or so years I gigged hard, learned different instruments and continued to play in and around the UK. I had some incredible moments and some horrible ones but there was an over riding feeling the middle of all of that, there was something like an itch in my spirit that just wouldn't seem to stop niggling me. After one of my many burn out's and emotional collapses it finally dawned on me that in equal portion to enjoying and working on the music I was also exhausting myself trying to deny every other part of myself. My spiritual work, written work and artistic work suffered all because I believed I had to choose.
I remember when I started to let it all go and began to create whatever my intuition led me towards. I still recorded albums but I also made paintings, wrote stories and books, learned new instruments and finally allowed myself to truly build my spiritual work and while I was enjoying myself and those closest to me could see how happy I was the reaction I got from people outside my circle was often strange or hostile. I got plenty of sly digs and bitchy comments, “Jack of all trades, master of none!” was the favourite thing slung at me and I genuinely couldn't understand why it generated such a problem. I think it's all connected to an aspect of our work addicted society. We brand ourselves as our careers so much. We hear it all the time, “I'm a plumber.”, “I'm an artist.”, “I'm this!”, “I'm that.” and that's fine for creating your work on the planet and asserting appropriate boundaries but we often treat each other as if that's ALL that we are. When I am singing on stage the people in the audience generally have no idea about my spiritual work and when I am giving a reading clients rarely know about my music, art or other interests and for years I tried to keep them separate. These days I allow everything to bleed into each other and I allow myself to be free of any internal “branding” that keeps me out of the space of freedom.
This internal branding is not just limited to career choices or interests. We see it all the time in culture. How often do people limit themselves or are limited by those around them because they are a “mother”, a “father”, a “child”. How often are these definitions of character used and manipulated as ways to keep you from being anything else? Every label you have for yourself is nothing other than a decorative stepping stone into the amazingness that is you. You have many stepping stones, we all do. I made the mistake of confusing a stepping stone with the real me. I built a castle where a house should have been. Spending time in all these aspects of who you are is inevitable and you will be drawn to each one as and when you need to express something through it but never confuse it with the real you. Never confuse it with all that you are. You are all of it AND so much more. Give yourself that freedom, you'll feel so much better for it.
Thank you for listening,
Big Love,
Ryan James
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