QA188 QUESTION: I have this tremendous drive to do creative things, to be good. Yet I don’t know whether my motives are because it’s really in me – or because I want acceptance.

ANSWER: Yes, there is a lot of that there, and there’s also a lot of the genuine striving of your spiritual self in you. It is the combination that is confusing to you. The need to be well thought of by others is very much connected with guilt feelings you have because you cannot yet quite accept rage and anger and similar feelings connected with this in you.

Therefore, my advice is that if you can do this – or obtain some help in doing this because this is very difficult, if not impossible, to do by oneself – your need for approval would diminish, and you will find your security within yourself.

You see, the need to be good, the striving to be good, can only come when you can fully accept the badness. And that, of course, applies to all human beings. If one strives to be good without accepting the badness, it is a very painful and strenuous and unrealistic process that leads to inner conflict – not to health and wholeness. This is why I say your goodness can come through only when this is done.

QA237 QUESTION: I have been all my life distorted about my art talent. I have rarely really used it to give myself pleasure. It’s been used as a showcase, and recently in my designing of clothes I’ve found an enormous amount of joy in doing it. And yet, it only comes in fragments. It’s very hard for me to really use the talent I’ve been given for my own pleasure, and I would like to ask your guidance on this.

ANSWER: The fragmentation of your experience and the outer manifestation is an exact reflection of the fragmentation of your inner commitment, focus, and giving and paying attention to. And you too – similar to the last question but in a different way – defocus yourself.

You spread yourself; you stay on the surface and you do not truly go deeply in. Wholeness of attention and a devotion to one specific activity or relationship or responsibility or task – to the degree you learn this, to this degree you experience more success. But this is still in some areas very much lacking, and this is why you experience your life as though it has no focal point.

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