Living our Authentic Self

Our enlightened folks tell us ‘be here now’, ‘be still and know that I Am God’, and not to mention the insight that we are ‘no-thing’. Many of us can resonate with these experiences. We of us have lived the blessed satori moments when time stands still, when when we can’t feel our body and realize that everything is just energy. Countless times we have felt the magic in the air. Alas, these moments are fleeting and reality knocks soon enough on our door. Alas, all these divine mandates are meaningless when we struggle; when our mind is racing, or when the wounds of the past bubble to the surface. What do we do then?

There is a lot of spiritual by-passing in our community. We want to be pleasant all the time. We want to be loving, happy, positive, and serene. That’s not life! Life grants us these moments, and when they show up we better not miss them, but we can’t define ourselves that way. It’s not our choice to make. You may have met Mr. Happy and Ms. Positive and may look up to them but what you don’t know about them is that they are inviting demons with this lifestyle choice. Living an authentic life we may not measure up to Mr. Happy and Ms. Positive but we are not helplessly exposed to everything life throws at us either. We can stand up to the challenges life throws at us and put our stamp on it. It is in our power to no longer to be sabotaged by our past. We can overcome a limited mindset. We do not need to tolerate abuse, and definitely not self-abuse. This is a choice we can make, as long as we are willing to do the work and have the flexibility to learn what our authentic lifestyle is all about.

We have to leave the burning bush experience up to the Grace of God. Our choice is to decide on the life we want to live and run with it. It has to be an authentic choice, not a a pie in the sky wish, and then we have to let life mold us. Let’s drop all spiritual by-passing and let’s face life instead. What to do when we struggle? Let’s remind ourself of who we are and express it despite swimming upstream. What should we do when the mind races? Let’s breathe until the vision of our authentic self appears. What should we do when the wounds of the past come to the surface? Let’s face them to the best of our ability. All these interferences do not need to prevent us from living an authentic life, we may just have to scale our expectations down a bit. Yet, we definitely have a choice to live an abundant and potent life. Spirituality is self-empowerment just as much as it is letting go of an outgrown self.

Eckhart Tolle had a nice description of the swan that swims gracefully on the lake but no-one can see how much he paddles beneath the surface. That’s exactly the state of authentic living. One day we just make a choice of who we want to be and do the not-so-graceful paddling beneath the surface. If we always need to disappear for a couple of weeks to make our life-story work we probably aim too high, but if we keep on blaming our past or others on our short-comings we may not paddle fast enough. One day there simply comes the choice that this is it. This is the first day of the rest of our life. With no expectation of the future and no regrets of the past we face the here and now to the best of our abilities, and keep doing that for the rest of our life.

Live an authentic life and run with it!