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Kino's Yogi Assignment Blog

In Search of Authentic Words By Kino MacGregor

A friend of mine told me hottest new app is a lip syncing app. Apparently the star of this new platform signed a record deal and but first needed to learn how to sing! I haven’t verified the story, but it seems fitting for in an age of fake news and verisimilitude. When illusion and reality are conflated, authenticity is a commodity of its own.

More than a few of my fellow yogis have told me that they pay a ghost writer to pump out blogs in their name. I try not be judgmental but writing is sort of a craft for me. I’ve always seen myself as a wordsmith. I dream in poetry and I spent years studying the literary form. It always shocks me when people ask if I actually wrote my four books. Some even laugh and say, hey maybe they’re your ideas, but you didn’t actually write your books, did you? And my reply is always the same, yes, I wrote my books, every single word and I worked hard and long at them all. I have a great editor at Shambhala, but my books are all my writing. And truthfully my writing is even more transparently me now than when I was working as a journalist or writing essays and dissertations in school.

I believe that anyone can do anything. If you’re not a great writer I believe you can learn to be one. It might take years of practice and study. You may need to apply yourself with effort, determination and dedication. But when you then find yourself writing and telling your story it will be your voice, your words, your heart and soul. And you will have worked for every word. This kind of sounds like the yoga practice, doesn’t it? Except in the practice you can’t hire someone to ghost practice for you. It’s just you on your mat with your body and your breath. I love the raw transparency of the practice and how you can’t fake it. There are some students who just want to be the best right from the beginning and they don’t want to put in the work. What happens is that they either quit because the mountain ahead of them is too daunting or they rise up, grow and accept the challenge. The challenge of yoga is to face a long and difficult path up the mountain of your dreams and then put in the work little by little to make them come true.

If you want to have a bunch of blogs published and author a book, but you don’t want to put in the work to learn the craft of writing, you may want to ask yourself why you want the blog or the book. If you want fame or attention, that’s only superficial. I challenge you to dig deeper. Or, work with a ghost writer and be up front about it. Include them in the by-line as a co-author. Maybe I’m sensitive to the whole image vs. reality because I live in between both worlds. Maybe I’m touchy about ghost writers because I consider writing to be an art form. I’m not sure, but I do know that I value authenticity and integrity in whatever form or action a person takes.

If you believe you have a story to tell, then tell your story through a medium of expression that speaks to your soul. Dance your story, draw your story, sing your story, play, paint, photograph, invent, speak, act, mix, create your story and let it be a resoundingly authentic, totally transparent view of you.

You’re beautiful and perfect. You don’t need to be anyone else. You need to be yourself.

Check out my new book, The Yogi Assignemnt, available on Amazon