Recently I worked with a client to update her resume. We tinkered with everything from phrasing to format, and I encouraged her to use powerful words to convey the true depth of her talent and accomplishment. She was hesitant because, in her words, she “didn’t want to appear too full of herself.” Her genuine concern was that she didn’t want to inflate or otherwise misrepresent her actual experience, which I certainly did not want to do, either. Yet her choice of words revealed another dynamic at play: that of the ego trying to portray a persona that would garner others’ approval. In my client’s case, as is frequently the case with women, the persona she was taught to adopt is one of modesty, perhaps even restraint.

Let me be clear – I am not advocating an arrogant assertion of untested talent or unproven skills, a stance of swaggering bravado. That, too, would be a persona adopted to elicit specific reactions from others. I’m challenging our (often unconscious) need for personas at all and, in particular, I’m noting the irony of this specific persona, the modest “I’m-not-full-of-myself” posture. It is ironic because if we could allow ourselves to be completely full of ourselves – our true selves - we would have no need for personas at all.

I’ll try to explain. Within each of us is a spark of brilliance, a magnificent light that wants nothing more than to burn as brightly as it can and extend its radiance to the world, to fulfill its capacity for creativity and love. But buried as it is under layers and centuries of cultural and religious conditioning, most of us are not aware of it. In fact, most of us harbor a deep-seated belief in just the opposite: that there is something fundamentally wrong with us. This belief is pervasive even if it isn’t fully conscious, and it forms the core of an entire constellation of beliefs we hold about ourselves and what it takes to be safe in this world.

Enter personas, which are the masks we put on to assure our acceptance by others. After all, if who we are deep down is flawed, then we’d better not allow our “true” self to be seen. We adopt a persona – or several – that will convince others we are okay. (We’re also trying to convince ourselves that we’re okay, but that’s a subject for another article.) The masks are many and varied according to our particular family, community or culture, but they all have one thing in common: their purpose is to hide something. They are fundamentally dishonest. And the deep irony is, we end up hiding not just our misperceived wretchedness but our true luminosity.

Some masks are easier to spot than others. Certainly a persona of over-the-top self promotion is recognizable to many as arising from ego, the ultimate mask-maker. It may “work” in certain circles or professions where displays of external power are expected, but most of us see that kind of behavior as egotistical. Other masks are far more difficult to discern. For example, it’s easy to mistake a mask of modesty for the kind of humility that is often aspired to on a spiritual path. It’s the antithesis of egotistical, yet it can be a mask nonetheless. And what makes it a mask is that we don’t believe in our own goodness, so we think we have to pretend to be good so in order for others to like us.

Which brings me back to being full of ourselves. Many wise spiritual teachers have told us that our true magnificence is almost incomprehensible to our small-minded selves, and I have an intuitive sense that they are absolutely correct. As Marianne Williamson famously said in her groundbreaking book, A Return to Love, “We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do…” If we were truly full of ourselves in that sense, we would be free of the shackles of self-doubt that keep us small, free to give completely of ourselves to the world. And that is what it means to be selfless.

The ego sees “selfless” as ceasing to exist, since its very identity is forged from the false belief that we are separate and therefore not enough. Humility, then, is very threatening to the ego, promoting as it does a transcendence of that small, isolated self. But at the level of soul, humility and exultation are one and the same. The key to understanding this is to recognize that we are equally brilliant, even as we are infinitely diverse. I love the way best-selling author Gary Zukav expressed this in his most recent book, Spiritual Partnership: The Journey to Authentic Power: “Equality is the perception that nothing in the Universe is more precious than you and nothing in the Universe is less precious than you.”

So be full of yourself, full of your preciousness and energy and generosity and love. And be willing to see the preciousness in everyone else. Drop the masks of false bravado and false humility and let your true light shine. The world needs you just as you are.

Copyright © 2010

Suzanne E. Eder