More Than Who You Are

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

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

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