“You come to harmony with others not through
conformity, but through authenticity.
When you have the courage to be yourself, you find the highest truth you are
capable of receiving.
That truth is what enables you to reach across the aisle to your brother or sister.
That truth is what enables you to reach across the aisle to your brother or sister.
You do not have to agree with others to value them and respect them.
Because you accept your own uniqueness, you can honour the unique path that others take.
Finding the truth in yourself, you recognize it when you see it manifest in others.”
Paul Ferrini (Everyday
Wisdom).
The Path of Deepening
Authenticity
(Part 2 of 3 of “Why
Authenticity?”)
So if being fake brings
unease and authenticity brings peace, what fool would keep choosing to fake
it? Apparently most of us most of the
time! Whether consciously or unconsciously, we seem to prefer unease or
dis-ease, even if we adamantly deny it. Sounds like another layer of
self-deception? Certainly confusion.
So much confusion.
How then do we get
real? How do we distinguish the true
from the false, the authentic from the inauthentic? For me, it is certainly a journey, a
deepening process of discernment.
Surely we all know the
excruciating guilt of feeling we have not been true to ourselves. We are often
haunted by it. Well, what if all disquiet is at root the pain of self-betrayal?
If our truth is oneness, then all attack, all judgement, all rivalry, all
resistance, all separation from perceived “other” is an act of self-betrayal
because it feels like we are betraying our oneness. And we feel really bad
about it even if we don't immediately recognize why we feel bad.
Our first line of defense is
typically to blame someone else. If only he or she were different, then I could
feel whole again. And then there are those of us whose torment takes the form
of scapegoating our own perceived wrong-doing.
Our mind flits around and spots, say, the time I was unkind to so-and-so
(substitute the gazillion possible scapegoats and false idols we could adopt).
It becomes an “idée-fixe” circling round and round in the mind endlessly. It
exhausts us; it reduces us to despair.
The blame, the guilt, the shame seem relentless, and underneath it is
the sinking conviction we must be unredeemable.
Even the quest for
authenticity, like anything, can be co-opted by ego, and become a tyrant: “I can't move forward for fear of committing
the ultimate sin: being inauthentic!”
What I didn't understand for
a long time is that feeling bad is actually, in a funny sort of way, a good
thing. Guilt, shame, grief, anxiety are our allies if we understand them to be
red flags of our inauthenticity. What if
that is their only significance? What if the pang or stab of guilt is just a
scalpel that points out our fakery? What
if the nausea and lightheadedness of anxiety are simply serving notice that we
have chosen the separated state of ego-land again?
So we have a great system
for discerning between the inauthentic and the authentic. Unease is the hallmark of faking it. Peace is the hallmark of authenticity. Our job is always and only to restore our
peace. Spirit guides with peace. The absence of peace is the tip-off that we
have strayed from the path of authenticity.
What I am learning is that nothing but this is going on. All the complexity and confusion is simply
losing sight of the truth of this.
So what does restoring our
peace actually look like? How do we go
about it?
(to be continued)
Annie
 |
| Speaking my Truth, study 1 |
The Path of
Deepening Authenticity
(Part 3 of “Why
Authenticity?”)
So, what does
restoring our peace and living authentically actually look like? How do we go about it?
First, I would
say, it is helpful to be clear on the one and only equation: all my disquiet boils down, beneath all the
projections onto scapegoats, to the belief that I committed the ultimate sin,
betrayed my oneness. I have betrayed love and the only fit punishment is to be
cut off from love, terminally ostracized, and soldier on alone. Understandably
this feels really bad, so bad that I would do just about anything not to feel
it or look at it. This, I am learning, is the equation to be kept clear.
Nothing else is going on.
Second, from the
platform (or altar) of present moment awareness, that is, a palpable resting in
the
Here and Now (the
only place we experience oneness, true joining, non-separation, Christ
awareness, authentic guidance), I welcome the disquiet that it is so tempting
to resist (and its apparent source, be it an unfaithful friend, a cheating
partner, an illness, financial scarcity, etc.). This does not mean I welcome
misforture; it means I welcome back that part of me that believes it made a big
mistake, is cut off from love, and deserves to be punished. My role is to see it, acknowledge it, listen
to it, soften towards it, open to
joining with it, offer to feel it fully, and embrace it as I would a long-lost
best friend. And in this willingness to
surrender resistance, this opening to unconditional love, I invite and
patiently await the voice of authenticity to guide my insights and
actions.
Now this does not
mean “anything goes.” Authentic action
or insight means discerning the false from the true, not assuming that because
everything is “Love and Light,” I should accept it all. Afterall the
“should-word” is a dead give-away of inauthenticity. As Byron Katie so wisely
observes, we can't act from a place beyond our own evolution. That is the journey. Not to fake it. Not to hurry past our lessons, our forgiveness
opportunities, our grievances. If we are not authentically ready or inclined to
understand or do something at a felt level, that's okay, that's precisely what
we are being asked to discern: what is
it that truly offers us the juiciness of authenticity, not the sterility of
fakery? What truly lights our fire? What
is our passion? What is nourishing, not
wearying? What is whole-hearted, not
faint-hearted? What is unforced, not
efforted? What is empowering and
resonant with authority?
This path, between
disquiet and fakery, on one hand, and authenticity and peace, on the other, is,
it seems to me, the cutting edge of our healing and growing awareness and
trust.
Annie
.