“Be yourself.”
This is the sage old advice your Mother and friends have given you countless times. But why is it so hard to apply to your life? Why is it so hard to “be yourself”?
Perhaps it’s because you don’t know who you really are.
As a teacher of soulwork the first obstacle I see fellow travelers come across trying to find their path in life, is the realization that they don’t know who they are.
They fail to listen to their inner souls, and instead create mental ideas (dreams) of what they should be like and begin to doubt themselves whether they are living up to them. Afterwards they seek comforting validation by asking me questions like: “Is this what Spiritual People do?”, “If I can’t do ____ does that mean I’m not an Introvert?”, and “Do all Old Souls like ___ and _____ ?”
In this article I want to explore our lost authenticity and how we can learn to find our genuine selves by learning to love ourselves.
A Child’s Authenticity
Watching children play and hearing their genuine laughter is one of the greatest beauties in life.
We were all born as children filled with life, a sense of wonder, and the desires to explore or create and live in the moment. Children have no past baggage or future anxieties so they express what they feel and aren’t afraid to love unconditionally.
After the age of 3, however, children start to become more tamed. This happens to all of us. Something changes within us and we begin to lose that wonder, that innocence of childhood. Our thoughts become more dominant putting our authentic feelings in the background. Slowly we begin to focus more on these thoughts, and in doing so, we begin to accumulate past baggage and future anxieties.
The Birth of Dreams
This process of losing your authenticity and replacing it with thoughts in the form of fears, shameful memories, rules, social values and beliefs is known as domestication.
Our domestication can turn into a disease if our parents do not have the awareness and wisdom of what they are passing on. Just like pets, we are domesticated with an emotional reward or punishment system. If our behavior is desirable we are rewarded with attention and affection. If our behavior is not acceptable we are punished by the rejection of our parents or peers.
As children we didn’t care about people’s opinions or judgments, we lived in the present and our self-worth came from our authenticity. Now, however, our thoughts are more predominant. With thoughts come fears, and suddenly our need to be accepted grows. Our self-worth is now put into the hands of other people and their opinions of us.
This new self-worth system forces us to change. It forces us to create a false image of ourselves, a dream. Slowly we begin to notice that different people expect different things from us; our parents, our teachers, our friends, our priests, our bosses, our siblings, our lovers, and so we are split up into dozens of different versions of ourselves. We become so good at living up to these different images of ourselves that we forget who we really are.
When your self-worth comes from your false image instead of your authenticity you constantly feel off-center, anxious and incomplete. Deep down your unconscious knows this image of yourself isn’t true, deep down you know that you’re pretending. The danger is for example, that if your false image is that of being a “smart and witty person”, you are prone to having your self-worth shattered publicly if someone outsmarts you. This is when we learn to hate ourselves.
With a shaky sense of self-worth comes insecurity problems. Insecurities are formed when you expect to externally live up to an image you envision for yourself, but deep down you know the internal image of yourself is different. The greater the discrepancy between these two images, the more insecure you will feel.
This false image is what in psychological terms is known as your “ego“. It is responsible for that need to always be “right”. We need to feel right and prove that others are wrong because we want to protect this false image we project to the outside world, to feel reassured that we aren’t lying to ourselves.
This need to be “right” is what gives birth to that constant struggle for perfection, and the approval of others. We suffer so much and try so hard to be important, successful, rich, famous, powerful, and we do this by forcing our dream, our false illusion, to be real and more valid than other people’s dreams.
This suffering we undergo in order to be perfect is essentially to please other people. It is a lie we fool ourselves into believing that we should be a certain way in order to acknowledge that we are good, in order to accept ourselves. I have previously explained that perfection doesn’t exist. You are never going to be good enough, healthy enough, smart enough or pretty enough because you are chasing an ideal that is a false illusion, a dream.
Wake Up to Your Authentic Self
Can you imagine the chaos that trying to find love and approval outside of ourselves creates in the world? You don’t have to, just look around you.
We search for love outside, but love is already around us and within us everywhere. We are so afraid to love and accept because we are so afraid of getting rejected. But until we learn to love ourselves, we will never be able to truly love anybody else.
How do we stop rejecting ourselves? How do we stop being self-destructive? We have to stop pretending to be something we are not and find our authenticity again.
These are some practical suggestions that I have experienced myself, and witnessed, to work quite well:
1. Truth
To find your authenticity again you are going to need one key ingredient: truthfulness. Being truthful with yourself will teach you how to trust in yourself.
The desire to be honest with yourself with help you reveal what is real in yourself and what is a lie that you have either inherited from your domestication (beliefs, values, ambitions), or unconsciously created as a defense mechanism to protect your false image’s self-worth. “Do spiritual people do this? Do introverts do that?” This is your mind finding a label to try to live up to with a false image. Never aspire to live up to a label, labels are symbols to guide your attention to further exploration.
2. Forgiveness
You can be your own worst enemy. One of the first steps in finding your authentic self is to stop judging yourself, and whether or not you’re living up to the false “perfection” standards and expectations you have set for yourself. The easiest way to overcome self-judgement is to learn how to forgive yourself.
Say for example you eat a pizza and feel guilty afterwards because your false image feels “fat”. Afterwards your mind will go around in circles repeating to yourself how fat you are, making you anxious and creating the urge to soothe yourself with more food. It becomes a vicious circle. Your body has needs and once they’re satisfied it becomes quiet. But your mind is not as simple; it unconsciously gives you its own needs for emotional comfort. Your conscious attention locks itself in a repetitive loop (self-judging thoughts) and doesn’t let go. Learning to forgive yourself allows you to take away the conscious attention from your mind and become more in-tune with your body and emotional needs.
3. Self-Love
Loving yourself is not selfish, in fact, it’s the only way we can bring about any positive change. We can never be happy unless we learn to love ourselves unconditionally.
To love yourself is to respect yourself, to treat your body like a temple (e.g. eating a healthy diet, cleanliness and exercise), as well as respecting your emotional and psychological health by avoiding the accumulation of emotional poison (e.g. grudges, hate, impatience).
4. Aloneness
I can never stress this enough: make time for solitude. It is in solitude that we create the space for authenticity. It is in solitude that we become aware of our domestication, realizing what we are truly like in our own company when we aren’t putting on a false image for other people.
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Authenticity will teach you to see the world as it is, not as you believe it to be. You are the manifestation of Kawsay Pacha (the word we use for “living energy“) within a body, coming through your soul. As you become more authentic you’ll begin to understand this; not with logic and your social personality, but by feeling it at the root of core, your very essence.
How do you connect to your authenticity? Please feel free to share in the comments below!
my thank will never be enough sir,
i’ve read few of your article and i’m glad to find tis kind of site. this year was really rough for me, it was enough to make me crumble into million pieces, i don’t know who i am anymore, i started to questioning everything in my live, everyone seemed to alienate theirselves from me, my parents just push everything in their mind into my mind, i started to grow hatred toward everything and everyone, and moreover i don’t know where to start or what to do to make myself whole again but now i most likely know where to start and what to do to make myself a whole person i was.
god may bless your beautiful soul
Though this tells you what you should do, exactly where and how do you start? I must be completely lost. I’m not sure where or how to begin my journey to authentication. My guess is to start wi
h my very low self-esteem.
Hello Crystal,
Our articles are all part of our ‘soul work’, none of them stand alone. I suggest you start exploring our https://lonerwolf.com/soulwork-articles/
Wherever you start, the destination is one and the same. What is important is to start somewhere. :)
So many convos here!
Every article I stubble upon is like the Universe is talking to me. Finding (again) your true self and assuming it takes a long time! I know I’m not who I pretend to be and it’s tearing me up inside – but I’m not sure I can be what I really want to be at this point in my life (responsibilities, finance, obligations etc.). I would like though to teach my kids to be who they are. I find that them being stuck in a routine, school, and the lack of time we give them rapes them from who they are and replaces it with how they SHOULD be (according to society). I’m just trying to find a way out of this vicious cycle. I’m walking in my mom’s footsteps and I don’t want my kids doing the same. I just don’t know how… How to really find myself in this world ….
I just finished reading Deepak Chopra’s Book of Secrets and it talks all about this! :D Thanks, kind of like a confirmation to read this article :) The book is free at a library, thank goodness. I want to congratulate Sol on her new Old Souls book. I have no money at the moment but I can’t wait to read it.
Hola Dawn,
Thank you for the kind words, It’s wonderful seeing all of us working toward the same direction.
The book is actually by Luna, so you’ll have to congratulate her; I only answered a few questions she asked me while writing the book.
ah okay then :) I will do just that.
thanks, this was a great article to read. made me think a lot about myself and how i haven’t been my authentic self for a looong time. i need to work on that.
I look forward seeing you blossom in your journey :)
I would like to add one comment regarding the idea that children live authentically and don’t care what others think of them — I would really beg to disagree. I think we learn very early on in life that if you don’t please the authority figures around you, these big powerful people who take care of your needs like food and warmth and a group to live in, then at a very deep level we understand that we could be cast out of the group. In animal groups or in human groups, to be cast out means you’re going to starve to death — you will die. So I think that we learn *very early* to suppress things about ourselves in order to fit in.
It is probably only once we are loosed from the structure of the birth family that we can learn to be ourselves. I know there are people who seem to be born to be themselves and have that strength of character that is indomitable — and most of those people cause a lot of havoc and heartbreak for their parents and teachers until they can grow into themselves. And there are some really amazing parents out there who manage to both encourage their children’s authenticity as well as teach them how behave in societally acceptable ways without squashing the children’s spirits. It is a hard line to walk as a parent.
Hola Ellen,
Thanks for your thoughts. As I mentioned in the article up until the age of 3 we get to see mostly the authenticity of children, as you point out, after that parents and other figures in their lives begin the socialization process.
This isn’t exclusively the case as depending on the child’s sensitivity as is the case with HSP’s they may be affected even prior to this. The “Terrible Two’s” is the moments in a child’s life when you begin witnessing the friction between their authenticity and the development if their social personality in which they like to test the limits.
Thank you for this, as I am learning to be thy real, authentic self. Unlearning beliefs and leaving behind the expecations I placed on myself and by others can be challenging but I’m working on it. I believe in doing so I can live a life that truly resonates with me and bring much peace and amazeballs into my life. :)
“Amazeballs”, wonderful word :). I applaud all those who are courageous enough to try and leave behind all their learned and conditioned elements that have been hindering them from tasting their own authenticity.
Keep on doing what you’re doing and feel free to share your discoveries with us anytime.
When you say “learned and conditioned beliefs what are you meaning exactly?
Are you simply meaning stick firm to your own beliefs?
Ie: don’t go to college simply because your parents say you have too, or what’s expected, etc.
Perhaps an actual common or relatable example would be nice as I feel this sort of thing can get taken way out of context… and the next thing we know we start to go off the deep end with vague conversations about how negative “society” is etc etc.
Hope that is a helpful question idea and made sense, i will go now and stop hogging the replys.
Thankyou
I have a question/request,
I know i need to devote more time and meditate in mindfulness to grow more but i find myself running from it and making excuses, how can i give myself a kick up the butt and get on with it?
Any tips would be appreciated, an article perhaps? Many people seem to struggle with this Ive noticed, they get so far and realise so much in their heads, starting to join the dots and awaken but i think like myself it is a fear that keeps them from progressing, knowing that if they take the step it will change everything if they actually wake up, it is scary not knowing who you are but the knowing in someways is scarier because maybe you’ll wake up and not want to be in the same job etc and major life changes will result.
Hola Al,
It is a common problem in your journey, one of many stumble blocks you can find. Our illusionary sense of self, our ego’s, we’ll try find ways to avoid having to face its own nonexistence.
I’ve written on Soulful Energy which basically is the capacity to build up enough energy within us to act in a disciplined way. Will power is just that, an inner power or focus that we have allowing us to pursue what we want or avoid it from a lack of energy. In order to gather more will power, you need you be aware of how you use and how much energy you have within you.
Make specific changes that will help you increase your energy; better eat habits (more raw foods, less carbs and processed), exercise with a simple walk around the block, spend time in nature. With these simple tasks you’ll come more in touch with your inner energy and be more able to use it when you want to set aside everyday certain time to meditate or do other witnessing exercises.
Let me know how you go with this :),
Warmly,
Sol
Thankyou for this article and all of your articles, I either find myself inwardly nodding to them as discoveries ive also awakened to or find Im learning something new, this article fits very well with A.Lunas about HSP and she mentions the masks we wear putting the two together it is a very alike to my own realisations.
Thanks again
Hi, Sol
She certainly is; a beautiful lady whose taught me a great deal, sometimes without even uttering a word :)
In regards to soulful intensity is it a positive sign when the energy of meditation penetrates into the concious mind. Sounds odd, but formerly exams and other stress evoking situations used to engender great fear, and anxiety but now that energy wordlessly conveys how everything is stable and one. Have you experienced this in your own journey?
Might have mentioned this before but as your central nervous system conveys electrical energy in the forms of motor neuron responses (e-motio ) and words is meditation or any other kind of external energy influence the rate at which our internal energy reverbrates at and visa versa. Ergo can our thoughts really influence the external world? :)
Hope you’ve had a peaceful evening.
Blessings
Claire xx
Hola Claire,
That’s a great question about Soulful Intensity. I’ve long described Soulful Intensity as a purification of the available energy within us (for lack of a better language to express it). Anxiety, stress, all these are mental tensions that are experienced solely as a defense mechanism for the illusionary ‘self’. With enough ‘witnessing’ exercises like meditation; the mental tension we call our ‘ego’ transforms and purifies into a much more relaxed and accepting energy as the separation between the ‘self’ and existence increases.
I experienced this at the beginning of my journey, and with time your ego’s thoughts and emotions become less present in you. That’s what the Buddhist refer to as No-Mind, it’s not “Silent-Mind” because that would be an oxymoron for the mind to manifest itself it must make some ‘noise’ (thoughts, emotions, something). Instead it just exists as a sensation of ‘beingness’ (again, for lack of a better word) or presence.
Exploring the science of this is quite fascinating. It’s not only that our thoughts influence the world, but at a quantum physics level with stuff like Schrödinger’s cat, our world doesn’t exist at all except for our minds that bring it into existence. Physics is accepting what we all see as a massive hologram created by our minds and that the real ‘reality’ is a pure consciousness blackboard where everything is manifesting itself.
We, in essence, create our dream realities.
Much warmth,
Sol
Hi, Sol
Sorry for the late response. So true, our senses merely translate stimulus from the environment and with these consituants form the closest estimate of reality. ‘No Self’ is a concept which is so benefical to mitgate the emotional tensions which derive from our ego. Not only does it serve to seperate the esence of our being from it but also places our infintesimal being inperspective. A wise teacher of mine used to hang a water colour painting of these two silhotted figures adjecent to these two imposing and gigantic mountains. That painting still serves as a perfect illustration of how minute own individual exsistences are. (Not that we should believe ourselves unmerited for self love and progression)
Ultimately, though when enduring hardship or persecution this broader personal scope allows us to realise the transicent nature of that tribulation.
Unfortunately developing in a technological age there are a great deal of spiritual mirages or reflectors which steer us our from these simple realisations. The image of narciuss comes to mind. Thankfully social media also allows connection so we can empower and teach one another.
In regards to the shadow self your logic behind life and death seems to permiate into this concept aswell (and all other diameterically opposed extremes) .As the denial of the anthietical force ie. Death or inner darkness leads to disaterous psychological ramifications.
More than that by refraining from labelling incideous qualities as either good or evil it constrains their influence. Especially, accompanied by the revelation that this inner darkness isn’t dervied from some soul sucking spirit, but rather a manifestation of one’s insecurities, desires and fears.
Ergo with this empowerment you are able to observe these qualities in a ‘no mind’ state, more seperate from the ego and identify the triggers or channel them into creativity or some other outlet. After all… “Men who fear demons see demons everywhere”- Brom
Thanks as always for your expedient and thoughtful responses. Your words are always of inspiration.
Kind regards
Claire xx
Hola Claire,
It is truly amazing how important our ego’s make us feel; when the reality is that we are a speck of dust in the eternal and infinite. I’ve found those teachers with an artistic sense seem to have the greatest wisdom of them all; it’s only through art one can capture something beyond our sense of individuality. Realizing our insignificance, in my understanding, helps us actually apply more self-love to ourselves as we liberate ourselves from the self-destructive habits of creating expectations and judgment for our ‘meant to be perfect’.
Technology is definitely a double edged sword in our path of growth; but it might just work out to be the catalyst in helping us realize how absorbed we are in our sense of self, and how empty the pursuit is.
It seems like you’ve come to a wonderful understanding in the matter of polarity, darkness and the labeling of good and evil. It’s ridiculous how simple life really is and how we’ve complicated it beyond extreme with our mental labyrinths of riddles, fears, egos and expectations. As the Bhakti poet Kabir put it, “Whatever I say, nobody gets it. It’s too simple.”
Our minds work that way. The Buddha outlined eight clear steps to self- realization, but Buddhism became one of the most elaborately ritualized religions the world has ever seen, and the simple teaching was almost forgotten in the process. Moses presented ten commandments to the Hebrews, and an immensely complicated religion was the result. Jesus reduced the whole of the Law to two commandments, and the vast, world-wide complex of Christianity grew out of it. Mohammed channeled the Koran and developed a simple and straightforward religion based on the acknowledgment of God and five prayers a day, but to that was added the highly detailed codification of Islamic law. We keep receiving clear maps for happiness and then unconsciously blind ourselves so that we would have to find our way by trial and error.
It’s my pleasure to be able to participate in our readers journeys :).
Warmly,
Sol
Hi, Sol
An a article which is always benefical to re-read and contine to apply. As my grandmother said once “We are all where we are by rite of conciousness”, so perhaps the degree by which experience our authenticity is denoted by how we have progressed and learnt essential lessons like self-love, altruism and the confrontation of our own illusionary beliefs which inhibit us from living truly in the moment. You’ve written previously about this phenomenon as ‘kenosis’ which childern are more enabled to experience due to their lack of inhibitions and self imposed facades. Sadly as you’ve explored we often loose this innocence in order to socially conform, protect our psyches and attain admiration)
Perhaps one day we can learn to love one another unconditionally without these masks inhibiting us from authentically giving to one another :) I ardently believe that if we take greater accountability for our psychological states we can create our own reality and experience the world with awe of a child while still applying the prudent inutuion of our souls.
So grateful to be able to learn from your spiritual journey which is so abundant in the truths most of us are only able to just grasp at.
Warm regards xx
Hola Claire,
You’re grandmother sounds like a wise woman :). From my own experience I’ve found our authenticity does grow proportionately to our progress in our jounies of self-love and self-understand. As we begin to understand ourselves and come to see those learned hindrances that were getting in our way, we also develop an immense sense of compassion in realizing that our victimizers who taught us these erroneous perceptions were simply victims of other victims before them.
Kenosis is a wonderful experience that we can cultivate in order to allow our minds to calm down enough for us to observe these learned inhibitions and faces. This is also where I’ve found it necessary to introduce Soul Ages as not everyone is born with the same capacity and intensity to find these matters of any importance or interest. Those who are capable of applying more mindfulness and experience moments of Kenosis I’ve observed to be people who held a fiece Soulful Intensity, a desire for truth, that others did not.
But this too can be develop to a certain extent through much Self-Love work.
It’s wonderful to see the participation of sincere seekers in the comments that offer much of their own insight wisdom :).
Warmly,
Sol
I was lonely. Then I found a friend. Or rather, he found me. He introduced me to this website. I learnt a lot. Then I went to college. I spent time in solitude. I learnt more. I felt I could master myself. Whenever I felt something was wrong with me, I sat down and solved it myself. I learnt how to live by myself. Then I returned home, for holidays. I met my friend. And somewhy, it just seems he is not comfortable around me anymore. He constantly tries to argue with me. He tells me, try to act normal. He judges me for my past mistakes. Yes, I regret the way I acted before. But I didn’t know what was normal. I had been alone most of the time. I didn’t understand how the world worked.
I respected him the most. And I know he respected me too. Yet, must everything end, like this? I don’t know. I only feel tired. I can’t fix this. Help me. Please.
Solitude is a strange void of self-discover, a path that provides you with immense richness and wealth of learning about yourself.
We all learn at different speeds, we all travel the solitary journey with difference intensity. A time apart, a time in solitude, can change the dynamics of any relationship quite drastically. Some may have grown more, others may have grown a bit and then become frightened by what they found so decide to completely ignore that growth.
Must a flower live on forever or live through its seasonal period and then disappear just as mysteriously as it came? Some flowers are perennial and others simply annual…the climate of solitude dictates which is which.
Yeah and let’s also forget that no man is an island either.
Isolation or at least too much of it can be unhealthy for most.
I remember long ago, there was a tree in front of my home. At that time, I was a kid. I saw countless people, taking some of its leaves when they were going somewhere. I hated that. I really believed from the bottom of my heart that the tree was feeling pain. Then one evening, the kid me, stood in front of that tree and stopped each and every person from even getting close to its leaves. I remember how much I was ridiculed by every person in the society, and mocked by my mother. But I remember, I didn’t care. I remember thinking what I did was absolutely right.
When I think of the kid me nowadays, I respect him. I feel that even though I learned much while growing up, but still I fall short of the courage shown by that kid. When, I sometimes compare him to me, I feel like he is the wiser man. I guess, I am jealous of my kid self. I know that, lingering in past only serves to depress me, but I just can’t stop myself from doing it. In fact, I feel like it is the right thing to do. That perhaps I can learn what I forgot.
Hola Eklavya,
I understand the feeling very well, our child selves are perhaps the most courageous an authentic ‘us’ that we’ve experienced. It’s only natural to remember and miss those times.
I applaud your child self for standing up for that tree, I also applaud your former self for realizing that value and wisdom in that child. To be aware of the authenticity that lies deep within us, in our origins, is the first step toward forgetting this false self we’ve created.
Our heads have been filled with so much ‘knowledge’, so much information of things we should strive for, care about and expect from life, that we’ve walked away from our centers, from these pure essence of ourselves that we experienced as children, and live in the lost template of thoughts and ideas.
Don’t long to become like your child self though, you cannot, that only turns us childish. That child was authentic because he was innocent, he was pure to knowledge. Instead you must try to observe and explore the value of the beliefs, values and expectations you hold from life. If they are truly worth pursuing, if they have any spiritual substance or significance.
Little by little as you become aware of the false lies and thoughts that exist within your mind, you’ll begin to drop all those notions that make you unhappy. Slowly you’ll rediscover that child-like, not childish, innocence inside of you.
Sir, I have been thinking about what you say about solitude. I respect that thought, but I also see around me that speaking out loud your thoughts to people who can understand you, makes you understand your own thoughts better. Don’t you think that perhaps solitude isn’t the only answer; that people need to listen to their thoughts as well, rather than just think about them.
Hola Eklavya,
It’s true that speaking about your thoughts with others helps in making intangible feelings in the back of your mind, into tangible words and ideas you can explain to another person.
But unfortunately, whenever you are in the presence of others, you’re ego automatically comes into play without your control. How to find the authentic you when you’re using your fake you to find it? In solitude the false you is less strong, less present. When discussing with others, often you end up losing yourself into a pursuit if stimulation, of power, rather than truth; you end up arguing over who is right and who is wrong, or trying to impress them with your wisdom, or trying to avoid vulnerabilities and insecurities about yourself because you’re afraid of judgement.
Solitude is not about thinking. Solitude is about learning how to listen to yourself, in your own company. Notice that there is a difference. When you are thinking you are lost in your own thoughts. When you are listening to yourself, you are observing, simply witnessing those thoughts, but you aren’t lost in them and they are separate from you.
If you want to have the tangibility exercise to understand your thoughts better, try writing them down on paper and then reading them and listening to your own self speak.
Sol is right of course, however I believe there can sometimes be an advantage to speaking your thoughts out loud to someone, especially someone like-minded. The advantage is that you are being careful about what you say to people, and at the same time you are checking yourself, hearing your own words, and determining if they really ring true for you. I found that I caught myself saying some things that I either actually didn’t believe and was just saying it because it was rote-like and was not really thought through. If that all makes sense to you. Also, there comes a time after having read a lot on a subject that you need to quiet yourself and allow your new knowledge to filter into your whole being and to give it a chance to permeate into a new awareness for you. Just my humble opinion.
I was watching a show, can’t remember the name, but it mentioned the big bang, which was the exploding of a star creating a new universe including our earth, then after millions of years we humans arrived. Basically we were all made out of stars, and I think that is very beautiful, no matter what we do for a living or how much money we make. A great book about the ego and it’s destruction of the true self is “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle. It also helps teach how to live in the present moment and quieting the intellectual mind through meditation. I get racing thoughts often and learning to meditate has been a huge help with my anxiety and self doubt. I’m not the most entertaining or social person and I used to hate myself for that, but I’m learning to accept who I am and love myself. Putting on an act for other people only hurts me more in the long run. I think that our world would be a much better and less violent place if we tamed the ego and let our true selves shine through.
Hola Sally,
The idea of being made out of stars is beautiful, I really don’t see why some people would get upset at our development into humans occurring as an evolutionary process.
I believe Eckhart Tolle has done a wonderful job at explaining the process of ego awareness and non-identification with your thoughts and emotions. Meditation is an essential tool to overcome many of the mental neurosis that seem to plague our modern minds.
Most people recognize, even if only vaguely, how the key to life is all about attentiveness to the present moment as Eckhart explains. It’s also true though that most people have a hard time truly employing the deceptively simple ideas of ego awareness and authenticity.
In my experience it’s because the ability to live present to the moment is not actually something acquired at the beginning of the journey. You only come about it (except in the rarest of cases) after you have passed through some of the most difficult pitfalls that await you through your spiritual path.
One of the reasons we promote Involution through its 7 different interconnected paths is because it aids us in deprogramming much of the conditioning that we require before we are actually capable of applying full presence and total awareness.
Keep up the great work, and I look forward to hearing more about your progress through meditation and your spiritual journey.
This article came to my life in the perfect time. Thank you so much. :)
Hola Yohana,
Sometimes our unconscious minds help us find what we need in that present moment of life to continue and keep going.
Thank you for reading it.
I remember at a very young age rejecting the gender roles of our society. I refused to adhere to the expectations that are put on females to marry and raise children. It would have been inauthentic for me as I have never had any essential desire to be a primary caregiver for a family of people. Had I ignored my inborn character and temperament to follow that path, it would have been harmful and unfair to those who depended on me as well as a betrayal to myself.
However, all through my adult years I have been regarded with disappointment, suspicion, disbelief and warnings from peers because of my chosen lifestyle. I wish I could say that their opinions don’t matter and that I have proudly stayed true to myself. Actually I suffer from panic, anxiety and depression that comes with the sense of being alienated. On one hand I want to be unique and true to myself; on the other hand it seems easier to just fit into the norm.
Thank you for your article. It beautifully explains the struggle between ego and authenticity that I have been trying to cope with and understand my whole life!
Hola Jane,
I am happy to see you found this article helpful in your struggle.
I understand perfectly how difficult it must be to try and live up to the expectations people you care about so much have imposed over you.
That is why I always offer solitude, distance from all these roles and expectations to allow your clarity of mind to arise. Wishing you could be any other way that what you are creates unnecessary further burdens as not only do you have expectations from others, but also from yourself.
Anxiety and panic begin to have a lesser hold over you the moment you don’t wish to fight on it. Thinking about it creates a vicious cycle; you become afraid of becoming afraid which is a never ending thing.
As you practice authenticity and cultivate your self growth, you will realize how to act spontaneously, to just do without any thoughts or fears.
Let me know how you go and progress through this :).
Hi Jane,
Hi Mateo,
This struggle between authenticity and ego is very well shown in Hermann Hesses book “Narcissus and Goldmund”. It is about the voices in us and what they tell us to do. I highly recommend Hesse to anybody looking for truth. If you read the biography of Hesse, than you will clearly see, where all his ideas and philosophies about solitude are coming and what an immense struggle it was for him. A infamous quote of him is in a letter he wrote to his father at age 15 or 16: “Dear Mr. Hesse, please send me a pistol or the money to buy one”
“Steppenwolf” is often mentioned on this site. But there are many other books of him, bringing his look on life in a very beautiful way.
All the best from Austria,
Flo
Hola Florian,
I was a great admirer of Hermann Hesse when I was growing up, he had the perfect balance of poet and psychologist.
Steppenwolf was one of the inspirations for the name LonerWolf. I’ve always felt we’ve become very disconnected from our natural roots, our “primitive” authentic side through our social conditioning and it has created immense neurosis in this culture. Siddharta is my favorite work by him followed closely by Glass Bead Game.
I have never read his biography though but after that infamous quote I look forward to exploring his life more. Thank you for suggesting it!
Agreed. Whats your take on all this new technology? I was ok with it until I seen how it’s changing relationships. It’s becoming too much. I don’t any one wants to live like a cave man but I do see how an over reliance on technology is hurting relationships and that’s just for starters.
This article really speaks to me. It is hard not to be swayed by society’s rules of what people should aspire to be. I hope to fully integrate with my higher self and ignore trying to be perfect. I just want to be me and be comfortable within my own skin, even if I have to ignore what my parent expect of me. I love and respect them, but they cannot live my life.
Hola Erie,
That’s a very mature and intelligent way of standing on your own two feet.
It’s easy to get swayed by our parents who have the best intentions for us and we feel a duty to make them proud by living up to their ideals for us.
But deep down, your parents will feel the proudest when you live true to yourself, find your authenticity and cultivate the happiness that comes with it.
With time you’ll learn to stop expecting so much from yourself, and the further down your path of Involution, the easier it will be.
Thank you for sharing with me your own experience with this, it’s an area we all struggle with whether we realize it or not. :)