Are you working on your pretend self? Trying to make it better? Read this article for clues…


I have students at all different stages of their personal paths.

I, as a coach, can do only so much. I answer their posts, and then I write my articles. And the rest happens where I am not. Inside them, in their interaction with people, in their interaction with stuff.

This is the hardest part.

My soul correction is Forget Thyself... meaning I want to be personally causing stuff... I did it, Me, Mine. Talking over people, having no patience for people doing things the "wrong way".

I have been gaining ground in my soul correction, but it is still wicked difficult. Especially when someone has a good result that has nothing to do with me... lol.

So my first reaction to a student breakthrough is feeling let down... I didn't do it... lol.

This is what happened this morning.

A student of mine had a glimpse, a momentary clarity of who and how he really is... His real self...

Here is what he wrote:

Ok, so today even before i had these numbers from you, i was stuck feeling so upset because of feedback from crystal. It must be the TLB score being higher than 1 that carried me through. I cook breakfast for the kids and her every morning before i go to work. Now the other day she messaged me at work around 10 or so.. saying how she didn't like cleaning up after me and it looked like I didn't care about keeping things clean for her. Now, this was excruciating for me.. I almost gave in to giving back labels and all that stuff. I hung on and looked, the voices are screaming.. doesn't she see what I'm doing? Doesn't it matter that I'm doing so much work for her? Is she blind? On and on they went. I felt like i was being choked nearly.

Finally this morning, after something in one of your articles sparked something in me,i finally, got to.. hey you know what? So what if I'm messy? I am messy.i don't listen very well. I am lazy . Something let go, i was nearly in tears.. almost like I was seeing someone i had thought i had lost? Happy relieved feeling.

Anyway then I checked your response with my current numbers.

It is all about my i. I have been living so many pretenses.. even this, lately I have felt lost and without a direction.

But i carry on trying to sound like iv got everything covered.

To others as well, i carry the persona ( I think is the word) of being high and mighty.. better because I'm learning how to be worth a damn.. it's everywhere.

I don't know what my own strengths are right now.

I have to wash all this off. All the pretend, the imaginary, the things i want to be so i act as if i am.

Somewhere along the way i must have thought, they like this, they want me to be this way, so , in a childlike way, I have been playing make believe. Except i live like its the truth. So it keeps me in struggle and strife, it's not what is.

I am not very good at anything except possibly some mechanical things. As i see it. I will look for strengths of mine.. as i find me again.

This is what it takes to get the two I's closer. The two selves. The real self and the made up self. This is what it takes to start to be able to have wider cone of vision and start seeing the bigger picture.

Here is the inner dynamic: you make up a persona that, to your eyes, is more able to survive than who you really are. They are smarter, they are more confident, they are more clever, funnier, more creative, more independent, more everything. 1

Or maybe the invented persona is more likeable, behaves better, is less independent, more to the liking of some domineering mother or father...

And then you attempt to live out your life as that persona, that "identity".

But you have to keep the lid of that persona, so the real you doesn't come out... because how are you going to explain it? How are you going to look? How are you going to survive? 2

Any time when life is about survival, about making it, your cone of vision has to be forced to be narrow... and when your cone of vision is narrow you are uncreative, and plodding...

You hear many voices talk to you or about you... after all your integrity is nil... you are not you, doing not-you things, trying to keep it together.

Not that there is anything wrong with the real you... there never was anything wrong with the real you. You just one day decided to be better... and killed your chances to be you, to grow as a person.

You cannot grow a pretend persona... it is not a real person. You are. The one you are trying to kill, the one you keep under lock. Suppressing it.

The truth is, you cannot get into the self-growth phase until you know who you really are, and then work with that you... not the delusional you, the pretend you, the façade you, the "not you".

The real you, the suppressed you, if you do the work, will show itself to you for seconds, as long as you have the courage to face it. It is not ugly, it is not stupid, it is not bad... it's just not what you have been pretending to be.

It's dramatic. But it's, after the fact, not as bad as you imagined.

For me it was being stupid. My real person, the real me, was doing stupid things. Not astute. Not being able to tell right from wrong, and I caused trouble with that.

As a little kid. Getting into trouble, and causing trouble for my parents. Not maliciously, no, not at all. From not being able to navigate the world I lived in.

Believing an adult that they were going to take me to my nanny, when I was three and a half.
Telling others what I learned from my parents' discussions when I was around 6~7.

I grew up in a "Communist" country, and in the period of the cult of personality: if you are not with us you are against us.

People were disappearing never to be heard of again.

Independent thinking, opinion meant you were not with the system, not with the leader... and my recounting what I heard could have gotten my parents killed.

I could not see that as a little kid... and to me, it meant that I was not OK the way I was. I had to get real smart... That was the root of my persona.

Not to get smarter, little by little... NO, all at once, by magic.

Of course inside nothing changed, I was still a stupid ignorant little kid who could not see the big picture, let alone understand it.

For quite a while I still saw that I was ignorant, so I started to read, learn in earnest, get straight A's, get good at everything... The distance between my pretend self and my real self didn't go very far from each other.

The bridge, #18 in the Starting Point Measurements never went above 10%. 3

The average number there is 70%. The higher that number is, the more energy it takes to protect your imaginary self from being found out, and the less you are able to grow.

Because you can only grow your real self. And for that you have to let go of pretending.

It's a process. I still do it, every day.

The measure of whether you are doing it or not, is your ability to see the bigger picture.

I practice it when I play Freecell. And attempt to break through and see both selves, and stop protecting the imaginary self.

Another measure is your "humility" measure: to what degree you think of yourself. What prevents you from being able to learn and grow is keeping your eye on the false self... protecting it. And everything seems to be working against you, when that number is high.

When the two selves start to move closer, the world and the voices seem to leave you alone more and more. So you can actually get stuff done.

Now, one thing I see that needs to be talked about:

You do know the truth about yourself. Mostly the truth you don't like.

You know that you are sloppy, that you are for cheap pleasures, that you want to dominate, that you are a liar... these are just examples...

And you tell me. And you think you did something.

But you are just repeating what the voices tell you. You are actually still protecting the pretend self.

If you read what the student I quote above says:


And you know what? That you cannot pretend. Not to me, not to yourself.

You either saw it the way he saw it, or you are just giving it lip service.

For me it came in many many many chunks. When I had to see that indeed I was quite stupid, that I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind, that I misheard things, misread things, that I had no idea what was really happening.

Because of my lifestyle (living on the edge) I had a lot of opportunities to be stupid. Make wrong and irreversible turns. And see that unless I grow that stupid self into someone who is less stupid, who sees more, who slows down, who contemplates before she opens her big mouth, I was going to have a miserable life.

And I started to work on my real self. In earnest. In ways that worked, and in ways that didn't.

I kept aware. And kept at it.

Today I still make mistakes but I catch them faster. And I am OK with the way I am. I still have a lot to grow. My "imaginary", invented self actually shows me the areas where growth is needed and possible.

Becoming better at taking care of myself instead of hoping that someone will do it for me.
Using the knowledge I have, instead of thinking: I don't know anything.
And trusting more that I can handle anything, and maybe handle it well...

Now, if your #10 and #18 are high, and you are not a student, you probably didn't understand a word I said.

But if you are a student, you now know what, in your inner environment, has been blocking your growth. And start working with me, working with the Amish Horse Training Method, to move those numbers so you can start becoming an expanding human being.

As you can see, it cannot be done without getting really good at the Amish Horse Training Method: hearing the voices as voices.

I will start the training next week. I will work with whoever has already registered.

I am thinking of Sunday 4 pm. That is 10 pm in Europe. 1 pm on the West Coast. 9 pm in the UK. 4 am in China...

PS: I noticed that unless you are well, you are in survival. And you cannot do this work in survival. Survival keeps your cone of vision narrow, so you cannot see your pretend self and your real self in the same glance...

So if you are not well, don't apply. It won't work for you. You can't make it work.

This is one of the main reasons I push my Water Energizer product. If your hydration is below 30%, you are in survival. So please... Don't try to get your pretend self higher: it is not that where you need to work.


  1. Landmark calls this strong suits... the birth of identity. Their wording is quite revealing... this fake self is your identity. You do have a personality, but that belongs to the real self. For example I an introvert... but when I am in my "identity" mode I am glib, funny, and an extrovert... very draining, by the way.
  2. Here is an important point: you made up your identity, your persona when you were a child, the latest maybe at 18 years... And your real person was at the beginning of its journey... not very refined, not very smart, not very anything... And because you never attended to your real person, it remained immature, undeveloped. Of course it doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground... how can it? It didn't have time, it didn't have experience, it didn't have guidance.

    So be prepared that it will take some work on your real self to make it able to do well in the world, to go from child to adult. Consider it a privilege... not a job.

  3. 1. your vibration (1-1000):
    3. the number of spiritual capacities you have:
    4. your soul correction (your machine):
    5. do you have attachments?
    6. the level of your health (1-100):
    7. the level of your cell hydration (1-100):
    8. your relationship to feedback and instruction:
    9. The level of discomfort you are willing to allow w/o trying to fix it. This is your TLB score...
    11. To what degree you think of yourself:
    12. # of fixed mindset:
    13. Ambition:
    14. Desire:
    15. Degree of inauthenticity overall:
    16. Level of integrity 1-100:
    17. how enslaved are you to memes? (what percentage of your life is run by memes?)
    18. do you have a bridge between your precious "I" and your actual I? your level of delusion
    19. To what degree you have access to your adult capacities %
    20. Recommendations:

Author: Sophie Benshitta Maven


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