The Deep Spiritual and Life Lessons in "Hi Ren" by Ren

In this blog feature, which I call music with a message. I react to videos and explore the deeper messages, and lessons that we can take away from that particular piece of music. Today, we're going to take on a real blockbuster of a song, and it's "Hi Ren" by Ren. This song was rleased three years ago at the time of this post, and has been viewed by over 70 million time. And there are good reasons for that. Certainly the first time I saw this video, I felt really emotional. I felt chills. Because it was such a powerful message. and I am going to explore this video/song and look at some of the deeper spiritual messages and life lessons that we can take away from this amazing song.

Clearly, what is happening in this video is that Ren is having a conversation with his subconscious. More specifically. Ren is having a conversation with his shadow self or his inner critic. And this is a concept that has been explored over a long time. Certainly Carl Yung, the famous psychoanalyst articulated the idea of the shadow persona. The shadow persona is developed in response to experiences, we have, sometimes traumas we've been through and usually they are created as a way of protecting us. And so a lot of our shadow personas take on a voice of the inner critic. One that is driven by fear. One that is limiting us and telling us not to be all that we can be. This is also often fed by our socialization as we're growing up and the messages we've received from our families and from our communities. We're frequnetly told that we need to keep ourselves under control and that we must present ourselves in the way everybody wants us to present.

The shadow is often representing a voice of uncertainty and fear and in this first part of the video Ren is making reference to the fact that he went through a pretty rough time. , and that he is still continuing to go through a bit of a rough time with his health. Starting from when he was 17, he started to get sick and he was misdiagnosed and nobody knew what was happening. And he was misdiagnosed as having bipolar disorder and psychosis. He experienced pain and suffering and mental distress throughout this time. Eventually he was diagnosed with Lyme disease, which is a really tough condition to have, and very hard to treat. And He's still undergoing treatment for Lyme disease today,in Clagary Alberta at times.

The song also highlights the importance of "purpose" in life. Ren is talking back to his shadow self and telling his shadow that he is doing quite well. He says that his music's doing well, and the critical shadow self responds "Oh, you're not doing that great. Like, where are your Grammys? Where are your interviews with Oprah? How do you know you're being successful?" And Ren is basically says that he does not measure his success based on these egoic markers of success. Like where he stands in the charts, how much he's getting listened to on the radio, how much money he's making. He is glad that his music is connecting with people and then he's able to express himself in the world.

The inner critic continues to try and tear him down, and says, "you're not that big a deal". "Don't be so delusional". We can probably all identify with this kind of inner dialogue. We are often afraid to step into our full power. Step into our full ability to be creative and share our perspectives. Because we're afraid that somebody is going to be upset by that.

So here, the inner critic goes into a familiar. pattern of saying there's nothing special about you. There's nothing original about you. We've heard all these things before.

But the truth is in life, everything's a remix. Nothing is entirely brand new. And so that shouldn't stop us from being creative and sharing our perspective. It doesn't always have to be entirely unique, entirely different. or novel for r it to be worthwhile.

Keep this in mind when you're engaging with life and you're thinking, "oh, my idea is not that special. Someone else came up with it before".

Inevitably with all ideas and insights, somebody lilely came up with it before. It's best not to assess our worth based on novelty.

Ren, brings in the idea of the devil. Now. I think this representation of the devil. as being part of the inner critic is really not meant to be an objective statement that the inner critic is the devil per se. It's rather that the devil represents the negative pole in life. The darkness, the fear, the uncertainty, the constriction that makes us smaller. This is very consistent with the ideas that an author called Napoleon Hill talked about in his book. in the 1930s. The idea is that the devil is ultimately all those negative things in life, which keep us from getting where we need to go. Keep us from being productive. Keep us from sharing our light as individuals in the world. And so the opposite of that of course, would be God, which is about love and hope and possibility. Infinite possibilities. And so it makes sense that the inner critic is taking on the persona of the devil, because the inner critic is also trying to keep us smaller and limit us. And certainly this shadow critic was probably constructed to try and keep us safe in some way because of our past experiences.

The shadow critic (devil) is fighting Ren, keeping him from stepping into his full sovereignty.

The next section in the song always gives me chills when I watch it. It's incredibly powerful. Ren starts off by saying that he spent some time with himself, that he's been taking some time to be still. And really, this is the path to all of us achievie our full potential as individuals. It's taking the time to be still and notice what is influencing us and learn to love ourselves. And really what he's talking about here is embracing the positive pole of life. That's associated with God ,Source,. Infinite. Potential, and stepping into his sovereignty.

He symbolizes this by standing up and saying that he's standing up against these words that are trying to keep him down and that he is making a unique contribution. He's basically a fractal of the divine. So many of us limit ourselves. We think that we're not that special. We think that we don't have something to bring to the world. But we each bring some amazing quality, or qualities, that when we embrace them and embrace our full sovereignty. When we embrace our full potential, we can make huge impact on the world.

We don't have to be good at everything.

We have our own life mission, and that's how we can make a difference. Obviously part of Ren's mission is sharing his music.

For some of us, there'll be other things. Some of us will be sharing ideas. Some will be sharing our time. Sharing our creativity in some other way. And so this is a really powerful statement about embracing who you are getting in touch with yourself. Standing against the negativity and fighting against that negative voice in your head that is trying to keep you from being your fullest potential.

There was so much in his final speech, the soliloquy that Ren givesat the end of the song. He talks about the fact that there's no winning or losing in psychological warfare, and really when we look at life in general, there's no winning or losing at life per se.

Life just is.

And we sometimes like to think of it like a game that you can win. But in reality, it's an infinite game as Simon Sinek would say.

All we can do is make contributions towards our purpose. Make our contribution to the world. And some days are going to be hard, and some days are going to be wonderful. Essentially, this is the pattern of life. It's the cycles that play out.

We face challenge We overcome the obstacles. We learn from these experiences and lessons and then go back into the cycle again. This is a common theme that comes up again and again, in so many different philosophical works. Joseph Campbell's the hero's journey talks a lot about this kind of cycle. It's not a single cycle in life, it's multiple cycles. We keep cycling through challenge, overcoming challenge, tthings going well, and things being torn down again, facing challenge and going through the cycle again. Likewise people who have studied the Tarot will know that the Tarot is, basically all about these cycles in life, and the seasons that we cycle through. We go through the new birth of spring. the good times of summer, the death in the fall (autumn) and a period ofrest in winter. Before being reborn again.

 So. Ren goes on to talk about the positive and negative aspects of life, the dark and the light and the pendulum swinging from dark to light.

What is considered dark and what is considered light is based on the values that we assign to it. Because even a bad experience can be an immense learning experience, and can have value. Even having something fall apart can be positive if it leads to something new and better in our life.

 A lot of the pain that we experience in life is hanging on to the idea that if things are really good, we can't let it go. We cling to that, or we want to avoid pain and suffering. We have aversion to that experience and we try and avoid it at all costs. One of the biggest challenges when people experience joy and happiness is that they are scared to death that they're going to lose it. Sometimes to the point where they're not even willing to acknowledge that they're happy because they're afraid someone's going to take it away from them.

But, we have to remember that it is always a pendulum swinging from side to side.

And. The good part of that is that if you're in pain, it's not going to be forever. It's temporary.

But we also have to remember that when things are wonderful, it's not going to be forever. So, we need to enjoy it while it's there, and this is why being present in the moment is really important.

Ren also talks about the fact that the more intensely the light shone, the darker, the shadow it cast. And this is also a very key thing to consider. We only know light because we've experienced dark.

And dark. Is created in relationship to light as well.

And we can't experience joy if we don't know what things are not joyful. And we can't experience melancholy and sadness unless we know what happiness is. This is the full range of human experience.

This is one of the things that Ren is alluding to at the end, when he says, "we cannot forget that we are human beings" is because it is the human experience to live this range of experiences and emotions. In many ways, as hard as these cycles are, going through these cycles is ultimately the beauty of being a human being.

He talks about it being an eternal dance, and it really is. It's this idea of moving and coping with the different conditions we're facing. It is a dance, and he said the more rigid I became, the harder it got.

Again, it's that idea of clinging. If we're clinging to something, or have aversion to something, if we're trying to impose a certain vision on things, then it's going to make life harder.

Whereas, if we take the position of rolling with it. If we enter the flow state, what Taoists referred to as Wu Wei. Flowing with the challenges, rising and falling with the positives and the negatives, recognizing that things will always change. Like a boat on the ocean, we might be at the bottom of the wave one moment and the top of the wave in next.

So the more rigidly we, we hang onto our beliefs, the harder it's going to be.

Another key message in the song is that we have to be kind to ourselves. We have to acknowledge that, Yeah, Sometimes things are difficult, and that we can curse ourselves for the choices we make, but it doesn't really help us. All we can do is learn from that, as we learned through the cycles of things. It is not failure, it is not difficulty that defines us, it is how we respond to that, and how we learn from that. And that is the beauty of life. That is how we grow, and that is how we spiritually evolve.

Anyway, I hope that you found some of my commentary on this useful. I would love to hear your thoughts, so leave me your comments at the bottom and let me know what you think.

And a huge shout out to Ren for all the amazing music, he is creating. I'm privileged to listen to it and get a chance to comment on it.