Living My Authenticity

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Authenticity - a lifelong search

Living according to my Authenticity means living in constant touch with and from my unique composition of qualities. Growing my awareness about my authenticity and growing my ability to live in touch with it, is for me an inspiring search with ever evolving discoveries. To me this is a never-ending and life-long process. It is a bumpy road, with ups and downs. And as I have experienced, time after time: one day the rain stops and the sun shines again. My challenge is to learn to enjoy both the rain and the sun and to let go of my urge to control either of them.

 

what i do is what counts

Behaving authentically means that the behaviour I demonstrate is congruent with and grounded in my unique qualities. I value what I do over what I think. In my life it is not about thoughts. Like any human being, I am free to think whatever I want. No fellow human being is impacted by my thoughts in and of themselves. What counts, what I am responsible for, is what I do and what I don’t do. What matters to me is pragmatic: how do I manifest my self, also in my relations with others? How do I impact my life and their lives through my behaviour?

 

i am who i am, i am not my behavior

Behaviour is the means for manifesting my self. So, I am not my behaviour. Behaviour equals the sum of body movements and words. Behaviour emerges from the contraction of muscles, which are informed by nerves, which in turn receive their pulses from the brain, which was in the first place informed by senses picking up data. The brain is central to shaping our behaviour because it filters the data and in turn, tags the energy sent to the muscles. The brain is composed of various elements filtering and tagging this information. The mind, the memory section of the brain, evaluates the data against the past. The mind is filled with the education, the socialisation, the conditioning and life experiences a human being went through. Next to the mind, our brain filters the data using our unique perspective, our unique will-power and our related inner compass.

 

my inner truth

Authentic behaviour requires that any human being learn to understand their inner truth – to understand their unique capacity for data filtering, their unique will-power and compass.  And, last but not least, to discern in the memories of the mind between what they want to keep and what they want to delete, or at least should no longer influence – (un)consciously – their perceptions. These discoveries are at the heart of clarifying and reconnecting to their authenticity.

 

living self reflective consciousness

We human beings, different from other species, carry the capability for self-reflected consciousness: evaluating for ourselves whether our internal filters, those which shape our thoughts and our behaviour, are truly ours or not. The result is a cleansing of the windows, providing access to what is going on inside of me. Through this continuous process of self-reflection, I can learn to trust that the directions and the resources in me for leading my unique life are all present and abundantly available. I have free access. It can be shaky to go there, because the current filters may not be our own and instead may be unconsciously received from cultural and family sources. If only I could cleanse all of the filters! Growing my ability for using my self-reflected consciousness is core to growing awareness.

 

growing awareness

Through using my capability for self-reflective consciousness, I grow my awareness. Awareness is my ‘in the moment’ tool for understanding what happens inside of me and what happens around me. Growing awareness has nothing to do with increasing control. My level of awareness reflects my ability to integrate my intuition, my feelings and my connection to the energy radiated around me with my expertise and experience. Combining self-reflective consciousness with (growing) awareness gives me the possibility to advance my inner truth, so vital to advancing living my authenticity. Growing awareness will give me an increased confidence in my senses informing me about what is indeed my reality in the moment. Less and less do I give the other authority to the memory-driven, often unconscious, constructs of my mind. Instead I live from my awareness and limit the use of my mind to what it is good at: providing experience and expertise based comparative information.