During a two week holiday on the Canary Island of Lanzarote, in June 2023, Trevor sat every day to transcribe spirit-inspired words. The following content is one of the collection of thirteen written during the stay. The photos are from Trevor’s collection taken during the duration.
DAY 12: AN ISSUE I HAVE ALWAYS STRUGGLED WITH
|| Session 12 of 13
“Laughing comes to crying,” my father would always bleat out whenever us kids showed a bit of humour. It had the affect of making me wary of showing too much personality at home.
I used to feel inferior a lot and I recall asking my mother if she thought I was ugly or handsome. She was quick to tell me I was not handsome. That remark stuck with me for years. She had always preferred my brother and where he could do no wrong, I could apparently do no right, and more often than not, didn’t.
So I grew up somewhat uncomfortable with my skin. I over-compensated for this by always trying to be the joker in the crowd, particularly at school. It was my way of getting people to like me. I hadn’t realised that they were often laughing at me, rather than because I was telling jokes and messing around. My parents had made me unsure of my identity, though of course, I had no ideas about such elements of life.
I sought praise when I thought I’d done something right and was constantly looking to be liked or approved of. My sister suffered the same treatment and equally grew up unsure of who she was. However, she was, and is, a lot stronger personality than me and a very successful business woman nowadays.
I believe that for the reasons I’ve touched on above, and other issues I suffered from, I grew up with no self esteem which left me vulnerable and always overly self-aware. My ego was over-inflated at times, and hardly noticeable at other times. My early life, until the age of forty, was filled with mistakes, disappointments, failures and me suffering severely with low self-esteem.
There is an old saying that when you point your finger at others, there remains three fingers pointing back.
In other words, we should judge ourselves more than we judge others. But although that is true, it also means that the traits we dislike in ourselves are often the traits we clearly see in others. The ego is one such example of an element we measure in others and subconsciously compare with our own.
I hate it when I see and hear other mediums inflating their own egos, and believe me, there are many of them doing just that on social media platforms. I have always been aware of this issue and have unfortunately, brought it into my own unfoldment.
In the noughties, I talked with my mentor at that time about the problem of egos, mine in particular, and why I didn’t want one visible. Mark Stone, medium & tutor, helped me understand this issue by telling me, “Everyone has an ego. It is an essential ingredient of our life.”
If you hadn’t already got it, I still struggle with egos to this day. My own, or others. In today’s session, the speaker comes up with some really good advice about this problem of judging others egos and how to create a better one for yourself.
I recognise that the spirit speaker’s words this session might not fit everyone, but they certainly resonate with me.
|| written on Saturday 26th August 2023
Nowadays, I tend to believe that over-inflated egos are most often a sign of that person over-compensating for something else they lack. Perhaps confidence, reassurance, or at the very worst, a public desire to be loved.