Being totally authentic
As soon as we come into the world, we begin being moulded. This is of course necessary for the body-mind, for children come into the world almost like a blank slate. Of all the life on this planet, human babies are perhaps the most helpless, with relatively little in the way of instinct to guide our behaviour. It is therefore necessary for children to grow up in a family and a society, which will inevitably mould them into a simulacra of themselves.
We start life, then, not so much as a unique expression of humanity, but as a person with expectations put on us. We are expected to be, and act, in a certain way, to conform with our family and larger culture. In the world as it is at present, this is somewhat unavoidable, for the stability of families and culture, which this conforming promotes, is ultimately necessary for survival. Yet it results in layers and layers of conditioning installed like an operating system in our minds.
This establishes the phenomenon of a kind of second birth. The first birth is our biological birth, but the second birth is when we mature and wake up from this conditioning, understanding that finally this programming can be transcended. However the second birth is not guaranteed, and there is a large amount of people who never experience it, all their life being trapped in the original operating system of their minds.
Of course, some, perhaps much, of the conditioning can be good, depending on how we were raised. But some of it is ultimately harmful. We may experience constant thoughts of not being good enough, remembering all those times when we didn’t meet the expectations of our family. We may have had an emotionally or physically abuse parent, and therefore we are afraid of not pleasing everybody. We may have been bullied at school, and so uncomfortable around others, especially large groups of people.
I’m sure you could multiply examples of harmful conditioning from your own experience.
The second birth begins with raising our awareness. Awareness is like the spotlight which shows up all the rusted-on strictures of conditioning, those programs which lead us into behaviours which we know make us unhappy. The forecourt to the Ancient Greek temple of Apollo at Delphi was inscribed with the words “know thyself”. Because this was inscribed in the forecourt of the temple, we can surmise that knowing one’s self is crucial for communing with the divine, or perhaps, coming into contact with that spark of divinity deep inside.
The second birth, then, is associated with self-enquiry. It is to step back from the flurry of activity associated with modern life, and begin to examine one’s own thoughts and behaviours.
“Why did I snap at my husband when he offered some gentle criticism?” “Why am I crippled with anxiety whenever I have to speak in front of a group of people?” “Why do I have such emotional highs and lows that follow my successes and failures at work?”
The answers to these types of questions will gradually reveal the various levels of conditioning that govern our behaviour, and restrict our path to happiness, freedom and authenticity. By just becoming aware of these programs we obtain some degree of freedom from them already.
The deepest conditioning, that which restricts our freedom and joy the most, however, is the “self”. Our whole society is based around the idea that you are some autonomous individual, in some way separate from the world - that you are a body, moving about reality. That you are a subject living in relation to a whole host of objects “out there” in the world.
However, again, by becoming aware of this conditioning, by questioning it, we can begin to break free of it.
How do you know you are an autonomous agent, when your very next thought comes to you without “you” controlling it? How do you know you are separate from the “world”, when, prior to thought, there is no separation, only knowing? How do you know you are a body when your body appears in consciousness, and the sensations of it come and go without consciousness disappearing?
These questions of self-enquiry can make you aware of the conditioning of “self” and open you up to the liberation from it.
When you are no longer this limited “self”, what do you become?
You become natural. There is no longer any acting, or coercing your behaviour to meet the expectations of others. This sort of behaviour is for a self who is concerned about their position in society, and afraid to step too far away from the comfortable bounds of expectation. If there is no self, however, then there is no longer any concerns about this.
“Your” actions just arise spontaneously from the Universe, from God, from the Emptiness of Awareness. There is an authenticity about them, because there is no separation. There is no longer the strong action of a thought-complex acting as a hermetic seal against the spontaneous actions of the Universe. Your actions and speech can flow freely, authentically, without having to be checked against an image we have of ourselves, and an image of judgement we have from those we interact with.
This is true freedom and authenticity. It is, as Meister Eckhart once said, where we don’t even have a space for God to act in us, but rather that God must be that space and that action - for there is no “in” and no “us”.
Life is then much easier, more effortless, for there is nothing to be done, no act to put on, no straining for people to like us, or to accomplish something grand. Just moment to moment spontaneity and authenticity.
Peace be with you all.