So why is
authenticity significant? What IS authenticity?
And what does practicing authenticity even look like? These are among
the questions that we come back to again and again in our Lighttree circle.
For starters,
there are clearly some things that authenticity is not. If there is a “should” anywhere in sight,
anywhere in one's decision-making equation, it's a great tip-off that ego, not
spirit or inspiration or guidance or true knowing (whatever you want to call
it) is in the driver's seat. If you catch any whiff of “I should do something
because I owe her, I want to appear to be a good citizen, I'll feel guilty if I
don't, etc.,”it's a great opportunity to stop and inquire into what's going on
here.
Another great
tip-off that inauthenticity is calling the shots is the urge to
“people-please,” a variation of that seductive urge to “sweep something under
the rug.” And then there's that big one:
the temptation to fake how “enlightened,” aware, loving one is on the
“noble”grounds that, well, I should suck back my anger, grief, sadness, and
just be loving (as if when we are faking it we can even attune to what love
what look like in a particular situation).
And the list
grows, I find, as I become more aware of the slyness of ego/fear at
masquerading behind the various identities I cling to in order to try and feel
more safe.
Another way I can
spot inauthenticity or fakeness is that lousy feeling of self-betrayal, whether
it expresses as mild unease or a full-blown melt-down, in which I invariably
make someone else or something else a scapegoat for my own discontent. But even if I manage to pretend most of the
time and blame something other than myself for my unease, I, like us all, have
those moments of clarity when I know it is me who is the problem: I have not been true or authentic in a
particular situation and it is that that is tormenting me. In A Course in Miracles terms, the
reason inauthenticity feels so bad, is that we are “reliving” the excruciating
guilt we feel at imagining ourselves as separate from our truth, from our
oneness with all that is. Put another way:
if our truth is oneness then, of course, it feels like self-betrayal
when we act from what we believe to be a separated place.
And the way we
recognize authenticity is the peace it brings.
(to be
continued)
Annie
28 February 2013