Living Authentically
It seems that many people have a problem with living authentically. Everywhere we can find people striving to be someone they are not. the pressure to find approval can be daunting. So what is authenticity and how do we live it?
Authenticity is a result of living as our Authentic Self. The Authentic Self is the true us, revealed as our illusions of identity get stripped away.
Authenticity begins when we identify and release our attachment to the ego. Our ego wants us to be important and that means we sometimes take on personas in order to appear we are more than we really are.
Living as our Authentic Self, and not through the lens of the ego, is far easier and with it, we can maintain a new level of sanity. It’s hard work to keep up facades. When it is always “showtime” we’re in a state of expending energy and that type of energy can’t last forever. I recall being able to put up a front for a time and then eventually crashing.
People who live inauthentically will always be found out in time. There is no way to keep up the pretenses indefinitely. It will always break down somewhere along the way.
In fact, it’s far more common for people to already have an intuitive sense that others are living through their ego. People like this are easy to spot. They flex their muscles or bare their body at every opportunity. They photograph and post the exotic places they go to or the expensive vehicles they drive. The express themselves through varieties of form that are deemed “important” by other ego-driven individuals.
A person who has found how to live authentically, however, has such a simpler life. There is a certain calm and peace that comes from living as who you truly are. Where we are constantly working to keep up with the demands of the ego, in our authenticity there is joy and rest.
Authenticity brings assurance that I am not only good enough, I am perfect and complete. It is a realization that my self-worth does not come in the opinion and expectations of others. Doesn’t that sound like a life of greater mental health?
Finding authenticity isn’t work in the sense of expending great amounts of energy. It comes first from awareness. This is the awareness that I am not my ego but that I am there faithfully and patiently waiting behind the ego to be revealed. Although this process is, I believe, available to all, awareness will unfortunately not be achieved by everyone.
The next step is acceptance and this is the natural extension of awareness. Truly, once I see my Authentic Self behind the mask of the ego it’s such a relief that acceptance is quite willing.
We don’t strive to achieve our Authentic Self. Rather, we strip away all that we are not. In so doing, we can find joy and contentment as we live authentically.
Closing Thoughts and Questions
Feel free to journal your thoughts or leave a comment or comments below to generate further discussion:
- In what ways have you acted inauthentically in your life? Did this serve to evolve you in any manner at all? Likely, it did not. Try to determine in what ways acting this way may have been hurtful to you or even others.
- Spend time finding and maintaining presence in your life. Seeking presence tends to let you slip behind your ego and access your Authentic Self much more easily.
Aaron Force is a blogger from Seattle, Washington. He writes to educate others about the nature of an expanded consciousness to evolve humanity. Aaron unexpectedly experienced his own profound awakening and ego transcendence in 2015 and soon understood that the qualities of his own experience (a greater expansion and evolution in his life) could be applied to mankind collectively.