Sensitivity is simply a trait that people tend to be born with. It's probably significantly genetically determined. And the more sensitive you are, the word sensitivity itself comes from the Latin word for feeling.
The sincere means to feel. So the more sensitive you are, the more you feel. Now, the more you feel, of course, the more you... absorb and sense and get in tune with the environment, which is what artists do. Poets, artists, actors, creators, you know, sculptors, actors, you know, dancers.
It's like they have this antenna that just pull in energies, you know, which really promotes what you call the superpower of creativity. But that same sensitivity also makes them more susceptible to pain. Because the same touch that would be experienced as trivial by somebody less sensitive really might hurt the sensitive person. So when you get sensitivity combined with trauma or stress, you get a lot more need to protect yourself.
Hence the high rate of addiction amongst, say, actors and musicians. Because they're the sensitive people, they're hurting more. They more of a need to escape from their addictions.
And you get one Hollywood story after another of some big star divulging their addiction. So that same sensitive temperament in a supportive, loving environment just becomes a wonderful, creative leader, joyful. intuitive person but in an unsupportive environment they become more distorted more hurt more defensive um the creativity doesn't go away but it the creativity starts to serve the personality and so you look at all these great artists and actors and musicians who their creativity was so amazing that leads them to stardom but on a personal level they're they just die and sometimes literally they die and maybe there's so many examples of it yeah it's like the sensitivity is almost we would have a piano and from all the way to the end to the top is like the full spectrum the more sensitive we are the more we have access to within the spectrum of like the human experience exactly um so It's a beautiful thing to have access to the full piano, to the full spectrum of our emotions, to this human experience.
But I think, you know, that invitation that you're sharing is to not have it to serve your personality, but to allow it to be an expression from your soul. Exactly. And not just our conditioning.
Exactly. Yeah. In the book, we give the example of Aretha Franklin, by the way, who... Wonderful documentary about her where she gives a concert. I think here in LA maybe in a church here when she was quite young.
And she's just channeling God. I mean, that's the only way you can put it, you know. And that's just coming through her.
And then she's got this song, R-E-S-P-C-T, Respect, which is kind of an anthena of the women's movement. And she herself was not respected at all. She was an abused child and an abused woman. She had great creativity, incredible talent, but she was hobbled from being her true self in her personal life. And it contributed to the illness.