Do you live authentically?
Do you even know what it means to be authentic?
If you’re anything like me, you grew up learning it’s always better to be truthful and honest. But were simultaneously picking up the cues, that you needed to do what you were told, not rock the boat, and fit in with the family, and cultural norms.
But these two ways of being don’t always make sense together, as we discover when we accidentally hurt people with our truth, or are told at school that doing our maths homework is more important than drawing pictures or playing with our friends!
So is it really a surprise if the outcome is that we actually loose sense of our own authenticity?
Abraham Hicks says:
“If you are experiencing even a small particle of negative emotion, you are less than authentic…”
So does this mean that to be authentic, we have to be happy all of the time? Not a realistic prospect for most of us, however hard we try.
And there lies the key.
Authenticity isn’t something you have to try to attain.
Rather, authenticity is the acceptance of what is – both inside and out. Acceptance that may start with emotional detachment, but will hopefully lead to joy.
A lot of my work at the Moon School is in coaching people on how to use the ebbing and flowing lunar energies for both manifesting the new, and releasing the old, from their lives. So it may seem like the necessary starting point to these processes is to have an underlying dissatisfaction with life in its current form.
But this isn’t true.
In fact, feelings of negativity are expressions of resistance, and won’t allow the desired change to come about; they will simply reinforce whatever it is you are unhappy about.
Unhappiness, or resistance to what is, could be seen as the opposite of authenticity.
Fear-based, disempowering emotions are what we feel when we are actually furthest away from our authenticity, because we are desperately wanting things to be different.
That’s not to say that it’s wrong to want things to be different (there are soooo many things on my list!) but it’s crucial to realize that the present moment is an intrinsic step on the journey to get there. By wishing it away, we are failing to trust in the process that was set out for us, before we were even born.
Yes, it may take some (or a lot of) effort to correct your path, if you’re feeling like you’ve veered off course, (and that awareness is also important, and part of the journey) but allowing yourself to get negatively, emotionally involved in it for too long (like feeling angry, depressed or powerless for example) is a sure sign that you have drifted from your authentic self.
Authenticity is about perception.
I am a certain way – some things I excel at, some I hugely struggle with, and so my authenticity depends on how I accept and love all of myself, and how truthfully I express these aspect of myself to others, rather than hiding them away. To be authentic is to be vulnerable too.
I’ve created a life that is a certain way (and living in 3D, sharing this space with a few billion other people, there are bound to be a few of them who pop up to send things spinning out of alignment!), so my authenticity depends on how much responsibility I am prepared to take for what I have created. Because my dissatisfaction with any part of it really contains a deeper dissatisfaction with myself… which is a dangerous road to go down. So to be authentic is to accept life and then on the days when I have time to pause and soak it up … to remember to love it! It’s not easy all the time, but the alternative is a lot less fun.
So the next time you hear or read about becoming a more authentic version of yourself, instead of moving up a gear on the search to find the real you, try slowing down instead. The real you exists already, she just needs your comforting acceptance to safely emerge.
K
x
