Cultivating Talent to The Level of Craft

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Transcript

Modern western civilization has a profound penchant for freedom.

And in America, which is perhaps one of the strongholds of modern western civilization, it is a brand.

Everyone that I know of, and I've interacted with a lot of people from different parts of the world,

Associate Freedom and the Love of Freedom with Americans.

And this aspect of our culture has filtered out into the rest of the world that is willing to resonate with modern Western civilization.

As they begin to adopt it, freedom becomes a bigger virtue.

And this is awesome.

I'm a lover of freedom and in fact it is also one of my favorite virtues.

But that doesn't mean that I see and apprehend its qualities as purely beneficial.

There are aspects of freedom which give us certain disadvantages and prevent us from being able to really lock on to our innate calling and vocation and being able to align with our soul's purpose.

So here's an example.

It's really common to hear these days that hard work will beat talent every time.

This is something that is said a lot in hustle culture and while that is likely very true in a lot of circumstances, there's also something that is more true and that is that nothing will beat the combination of talent

and hard work, as it were.

Or focused, dedicated, devoted work, I prefer to say over hard work, but that is the common saying that people use.

And this is important to understand because when we're talking about destiny, there is ultimately an aspect of vocation and of calling.

It's what we have come here to do, what the soul's vision and dream that it came preceded with to life is here to do.

And the signposts that help us navigate what that actually is, that help us decode the mystery, as it were, of the soul's purpose and the soul's calling is what we innately love to do and where our talents lie.

Talents are gifts that we don't have to work as hard for.

They are built in, carved into the very fabric of who and what we are in this life.

And whenever we encounter true genius, one of the hallmarks of that state is the fusion of innate talent and devoted, diligent, focused work over a long period of time.

We see a love and an obsession

for some particular craft or set of skills or fields of study mixed with a propensity towards what those fields ask for in the first place.

This is Michael Phelps who is built on a physical level to be a swimmer.

He is proportioned that way.

and at the same time devoted himself deeply to the art and science of becoming the best swimmer he could.

And he brought everything that he could to bear to make that happen.

And so the reason for bringing this up is to point out another dichotomy that emerges from this intersection between what people say about hard work and talent.

And that is that if you can be whatever you want to be in this life by the virtue of hard work, which is the natural conclusion of saying that hard work beats talent every time,

Then what you're doing is talking about freedom on a really grand scale.

You're talking about freedom at a metaphysical level.

That everyone comes here as a blank slate and can just choose whatever they want to do.

instead of choosing what they came here to do.

And this is the real point of this overall podcast, is that our talents show us where we are gifted.

They are pathways carved into the very essence of our being, built in, that we can work with to express power, to shift and alter reality.

This is where the authentic power of destiny really lies.

But one of the ways that that has to be brought into true fruition is through the dedicated, devoted, and focused work over a long period of time that we've been talking about.

So it's not enough to be talented, and this is something that you often encounter in the fields where people often promote the idea that you just need to be passionate and follow what you love to do.

Yes, that's absolutely true.

And there's something to be said about taking those innate talents and bringing them to the level of craft, bringing them to the level of true vocation.

Because it's not enough just to be talented.

We have to learn the field if we really want to bring the true potential that we have in that field to its culmination.

So if you just rely on talent, yes, you can absolutely accomplish and move forward with your innate capacity.

but it's not going to take you to where you can go without really studying.

So for example, if you're somebody who has a capacity for painting and you feel as if your destiny is to be an artist, well then there comes this point where your progress will be stifled unless you really start to learn about art.

You start to understand the skill of art, different types of brushes, different types of paints, different types of canvases.

What might be possible unless you play with your limitations and you explore different styles.

You go into arenas that you didn't even really knew were there in the context of art.

You try to create paintings that go outside your innate style to find where the limits of your innate style are.

You experiment with different brush strokes and you find ways inside the context of your life to create more skill.

What routines might be helpful?

What types of meditative processes?

What types of skill sets could you potentially bring to bear to make you a better artist?

And when you really start to get that if your destiny is to be an artist, to share your art with the world,

then you start to understand that everything in life can start to contribute to that, together, so that there's congruency.

It's not about working all of the time, so to speak, but it's about being able to prepare yourself the way that a soldier prepares themselves for battle, by training, by learning, by practicing, by

Studying the art of war and craft.

This is the same way an artist who's trying to align with destiny would be best served by approaching the process of creating art.

And then there'll come a point where learning in a traditional context will also begin to stifle and limit you.

And this is where art becomes a path, where that person who's called to the destiny of being an artist and a painter and sharing their art with the world has to really step onto a path.

the path of artists and to allow for a deeper existential alchemy to occur to where the art itself transforms and transmutes the individual on multiple levels in order to begin the deeper work that they came here to do.

for where we go from excellence to genius.

And that jump can only occur when the craft itself becomes a true path through life, a beacon, a north star guiding our progress, where we surrender to it, where we revel in it, where it becomes a pathway for bliss and a connection to the soul and our ability to

Bring the divine into the world as a creative act, as an act of actual creativity and not just creating something the way that a lawyer might create a contract, but to bring something into this world that did not exist before on levels that are only possible from this deeper devotion to a pathway.