Authentic Self

There is a great deal being taught about being authentic, or finding and expressing your authentic self. But being authentic is very strange because it means you are accepting a huge paradox, but accepting it means you have in some degree gone in search of and even confronted the strange fact that you are a most peculiar and even strange mixture, a mixture that is completely contradictory.

The Contradiction

Most of us can accept that we have or are a body, and living as or with a body means you have to contend with experience of time and space, with all the quirks of human life, the pain and pleasure, the heartaches, the love and anger – in fact human life in the world. But there are aspects of being human that many people never ever discover or even have any idea of. The reason is we have been trained to deny what our real feelings and desires are. We are taught from an early age to control our bowels because mother wants us to do it in the potty. Or else we are told it is wrong to have emotions and even worse to feel angry. Often a parent has an urge for their child not to have artistic or musical interests, or they mustn’t touch themselves down there. Maybe none of those apply to you, but we cannot grow up in today’s world without being twisted, repressed or tragically hurt in some way, and so did not unfold fully. But quite apart from hurts we might not have uncovered that there is an even bigger divide within us. It is between our ordinary self and what gives us life. We forget that we are a creation of life which continues to uphold us with powerful spontaneous movements even while we sleep – breathing and digestion and heartbeat. Most of us are so unconscious of these miraculous life movements, so we say they are ‘natural’. Yet is is the natural that grew you from a tiny seed and continues to push you through your life – and it is the ‘natural’ that is the basis of your existence, that was the cause of your growing and being. 

We have to remember that no plant or creature grows from a dead seed, and each living seed carries within it all the past gathered from all its forebears. So, the seed in your mother’s womb is as old as and even older than human kind, and you carry that wisdom or memories in you. But in this life you developed a new brain, and the memories, education and programming you gathered this time are what you built your personality from, but beneath that is a very ancient self. To explore it see Opening to Life

The Huge you behind the little human person.

If you can accept that you have not yet reached your full potential, that there may be a lot more talent or abilities you have, that you have not fully unfolded, then perhaps you can realise that many of us are like the tiny tree on the left. It is an oak tree that grew in difficult circumstances on the edge of a sea cliff, shaped by the tremendous winds. Yet its potential was to grow to a tremendous height with mighty boughs, but it wasn’t able to. Each of us has a massive untapped potential.

So the massive contradiction and also paradox exists between the everyday you that has lived in the world, and the huge you that is latent within you.

 The Huge You

The human personality – the You that you call yourself, with a name – is only a tiny thing. It is moved and tossed around by all manner of drives, ambitions, emotions, fears, temptations, worries, love and desire with its pains and hopes; it is something we take so seriously and get carried away into awful situations. But we have to remember that having a personality with self awareness is a very new thing and has only existed for a short time. Before that we were like animals that lived only in the Life Will – what we usually call instincts. So the development of self awareness was an immense step, and left us very vulnerable, and still does. Many people as their awareness reaches beyond what they feel is their normal self feel scared. Or when a much more powerful and huge self begins to grow you may feel uncertain even lost in facing it! But it is only our small self image, our ego that reacts because it feels powerless, even though in reality the Hugeness is part of our totality. It is the enormous potential you have within you, it is Life you are frightened of or have been ignoring. The way to grow beyond the little self most of us are locked in is to allow ourselves to grow.

Example: A special thanks though for the few moments you and I were privileged to share together.  It was during those times that I was granted an opportunity to observe what authentic movement looks like.  I was fascinated by its pristine beauty, raw naturalness and unselfconscious power of expression.

Authenticity has very much moved into the foreground lately but I so much lack experience of it.  Seeing that I desire it for my son, I suppose I’ll have to somehow get the hang of it myself

See – There is a Huge Change Happening – Integration – Meeting yourself – Who are you really? – Jesse Watkins Experience of Enlightenment – Personal Growth