The less self-conscious you are about what you are about, the better in a way, that is to say technically. You have to get it in your blood, not in the head.
Interpretation
Being less self-aware can enhance your authenticity and technical skill.
Flannery O'Connor suggests that true mastery and expression come from an innate connection to one's craft rather than overthinking it. When a person is less self-conscious and lets their instincts and experiences guide them, they can achieve a more genuine and technically proficient outcome in their work.
In practice
An artist discussing their creative process at a gallery opening.
Let me make no bones about it: I write from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. Nothing is more repulsive to me than the idea of myself setting up a little universe of my own choosing and propounding a little immoralistic message. I write with a solid belief in all the Christian dogmas.
What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.
If you live today, you breath in nihilism ... it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.
There won't be any biographies of me because, for only one reason, lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy.
Knowing who you are is good for one generation only. You haven't the foggiest idea where you stand now or who you are
He loved her because it was his nature to do so, but there were times when he could not endure her love for him. There were times when it became nothing but pure idiot mystery.
The [Booker] prize was actually responsible in many ways for my political activism. I won this thing and I was suddenly the darling of the new emerging Indian middle class – they needed a princess. They had the wrong woman. I had this light shining on me at the time, and I knew that I had the stage to say something about what was happening in my country. What is exciting about what I have done since is that writing has become a weapon, some kind of ammunition.
As meditation goes deep you will feel less and less desires, more and more contentment with whatsoever you have. There will be less and less desire for that which you don't have, and more and more contentment with whatsoever you have. As meditation goes deeper, a very contented consciousness evolves. Ultimately there is no desire, only contentment.
I know only one method of operation: to be as honest with others as I am with myself.
The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
The deepest words _x000D_ of the wise man teach us _x000D_ the same as the whistle of the wind when it blows _x000D_ or the sound of the water when it is flowing.
No endeavor that is worthwhile is simple in prospect; if it is right, it will be simple in retrospect.
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