"You are only your own as an artist. Do not attempt to be others' versions of a good artist, a talented dancer. The True, the Good and the Beautiful are not standards set by exterior schools and exterior expectations, they are energies, forces within yourself which move you surely and infallibly towards your own excellence if only you listen to their voices calling you from within, at the exclusion of all other voices, and follow their path at the exclusion of all other paths. The guidance of these forces is the only reliable guidance to which you must abandon yourself entirely.
"So stop looking at others whom you believe are good and try to emulate them. For each time you spend your energy into trying to emulate, you wander off the path which leads you to your own excellence, the highest level of excellence you can achieve as the human being you alone are. Each time you curb your Ideal to a set standard, you destroy the image in your mind, of the standard you have within yourself, which is the highest possibility, the greatest potential dormant within yourself of what you can achieve as a human being and an artist. Each time you envy another artist, another dancer, you kill the flame of spontaneity and inspiration which alone makes you a dancer.
"And now I've laid it down very clearly before you: coveting another's gift or capacities is not a sin towards others, it is a destruction of your own self. You can admire another artist because that artist inspires you to seek your own self as that artist did, and you follow by example: but you cannot wish to become that artist, for you alone have your beauty, your strength, your truth. You alone have all you could ever wish for, all you could ever achieve, all you could ever be, all that is glorious and human within yourself. You alone can be proud, you alone can be happy of what you are and what you can become. You alone can change, progress, evolve. And it is only at that point, when you have focused all your attention upon yourself, that you can start becoming again what you truly are: what you should ever have been, the highest, most glorious part of yourself."
-The Living Dancer
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