Website owner:  James Miller

Be yourself

   It is important to be yourself.  To be natural.  To follow 
   earnestly where your convictions and values lead; to be true to 
   them always, no matter what people may say.  Only then can you 
   really blossom.  Only then can your personality have force and 
   vigor.  To repress what you really are for fear of ridicule of 
   people, to be cowed by society and the crowd into hiding what 
   you really are, to pretend to be worldly to escape being called 
   Victorian and "old-fashioned" will only lead you into deep 
   confusion and spiritual sickness.  I know.  From experience.  
   There was a period in my life when I repressed what I really 
   was and pretended to be (and tried to be) worldly.  But it 
   wasn't me.  Deep down I am serious.  Deep down I am a lover of 
   honesty, goodness, righteousness and strict morality.  For a 
   period of years I was a hypocrite.  I was a coward.  I was 
   afraid to stand for what I knew was right.  For years I was 
   afraid to be myself.  I was afraid of being made fun of and 
   being disliked.  The voice of Satan told me that if I stood for 
   what I knew was right I would incur the dislike of my superiors 
   and peers on the job with the ultimate result that in the end 
   they would find a way to get rid of me.  I was cowed by society 
   into trying to be what I wasn't, into rejecting all that I 
   really was.  I forgot the meaning of the word "earnestness" 
   (for who can be a hypocrite and be earnest).  For years I lived 
   in fear.  Oh, how deeply confused and miserable I was!  One 
   must be himself.  And to be yourself you must know yourself. 

   For years I was actually apologetic and ashamed of a stand for 
   integrity and morality (it makes you a "square" and a 
   "Puritan") and tried to assume the ways and attitudes of evil. 


   Aug 1975