More Than Who You Are - Akira the Don

Bite off a little more than you can chew

You get stronger

And you do that in the gym

For example, when you go lift weights, you lift weights that are a little

heavier all the time

And as a consequence, you develop yourself physically and you turn into

Who you could be, you turn into more than you are

More than who — you are

(Who you could be)

More than who — you are

(More than you are)

More than who — you are

(Who you could be)

More than who — you are

(More than you are)

There’s a mythological trope that I discuss fairly frequently about rescuing

your father from the belly of the dragon

Or the belly of the beast

You see it in the Lion King

You see it when Simba is being initiated by the baboon and he ends up

contemplating himself in a dark pool and then his father appears in the sky

And then in the Pinocchio story

When he’s trying to become a genuine human being

Instead of a marionette pulled by other people’s strings or a liar or a jackass

'cause those are his alternate destinies

He goes down to the darkest place he could find the bottom of the ocean and

finds the biggest monster he can look at and inside he finds his father and

then rescues him

More than who — you are

(Who you could be)

More than who — you are

(More than you are)

More than who — you are

(Who you could be)

More than who — you are

(More than you are)

And the question is;

Why do you find your father when you look into the abyss?

Imagine someone’s pursuing a goal

Some of the things they have to accomplish or confront

On the way to that goal frightened them

And they start to avoid and then they get more afraid and their ability to

pursue their goal or to accomplish their goal deteriorates because they’re

avoiding it

If you’re a psychotherapist or even a friend or a supportive loved one

You’re gonna encourage the person to face the challenges that are making them

afraid to face them voluntarily

What happens as a consequence of that is that

The person usually is able to overcome those fears and develop the necessary

skill and to prevail That’s partly because

Not so much because they get less afraid

But because they get more skilled and more courageous

If you bite off a little more than you can chew

You get stronger

As a consequence

And you do that in the gym for example, when you go lift weights,

you lift weights that are a little heavier all the time

And as a consequence, you develop yourself physically and you turn into

Who you could be

You turn into more than you are

Okay, so if you face fears a little bit at a time

Fears and challenges and you do that voluntarily

Then you become

More than who — you are

(Who you could be)

More than who — you are

(More than you are)

More than who — you are

(Who you could be)

More than who — you are

(More than you are)

Okay, now let’s recast that in archetypal language and make it into a kind of

ultimate

If you wanna become everything that you could be

Then you look into the abyss itself

Which is the darkest place that you can possibly contemplate

The terror of mortality and insanity and of suffering and of malevolence,

all of those, it would be like looking into hell, I suppose

And then by voluntarily doing that

You call upon the strongest part of yourself to respond

And the strongest part of yourself is symbolized as the sleeping father nested

inside the beast

It’s like an answer to Nietzsches conundrum, if you look long enough into an

abyss then the abyss looks into you

It’s like, well, if you look long enough into an abyss

Past when the abyss looks into you, you see who you could become in the form of

the great ancestral figures nested inside the catastrophe of life

Then you can join them

You can incorporate that and become stronger

And none of that’s going to happen without the demand that’s placed on you by

willing to confront

The full terror of life

The reality of suffering and death

The ever-looming presence of malevolence in your own heart and in the heart of

other people, so it’s evil and suffering

If you do it forthrightly

Then you discover who you could be as a consequence and

Who you could be

Is the solution to malevolence and suffering

More than who — you are

(Who you could be)

More than who — you are

(More than you are)

More than who — you are

(Who you could be)

More than who — you are

(More than you are)

Such a brilliant conceptualization that inside the darkest place is the heroic

ancestor

Whose identity you could incorporate

Perfect

It’s perfect

And I really believe it’s true and what it does is it says that

The human being is actually stronger than the greatest challenge that can be

set before him or her