Chapter 11

Becoming Authentic

If you’re not always wanting, you can be at peace.

And if you’re not always trying to be someone

You can be who you really are

And go the whole way.

Tao Te Ching

Many of us have lost contact with our real selves. We lost that contact by constantly denying our own needs. Of course, if you are a mother with children or a carer looking after an elderly parent, their needs come first. But somehow, somewhere along the line, it is necessary to carve out a space for ourselves, no matter what the situation. The cost of not doing this is too high. The cost is our authentic selves. When we are split from our real selves, we have lost access to our energy core. When the child grows up and leaves or the parent dies, we find we are empty and lost. We have no Northern Star to guide us because we were so subsumed in the role of parent or carer we don’t know who we are without that job. We have over-identified with that role. Make no mistake, the search for identity is the search for our soul. We are like snakes needing to shed their skins to get a new one. It is as if, when the understanding dawns on us that we really, really are getting older and we really, really are going to die, then putting up with nonsense is such a waste of time. Periodically, as we grow, we outgrow some people, pursuits and places. We need new friends who only know us as we now are, as well as old friends who have known us forever. We humans have a need to know ourselves through the reflection of others; that is why it is important to be discerning about with whom we spend our time. It is no judgement on another if we let that friendship go. It is simply that we are different now, our energy is different, and we need different things. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, the only certainties in life are death, taxes – and change. Without change, there is stasis and a withering of our life force.

Speaking Out From the Heart

If there is something to say, one must not be silent. To be silent is to die.

Andalusian Goat Herder and Siguiya Flamenco Dancer

It can take us a long time to speak out. The inner self knows what the truth is. This is the self that will start asking inconvenient questions like, “Is this it? Is this as good as it gets?” These questions are uncomfortable but necessary because life is short. The older we get, the more we really understand this as we see friends and family members die. A panic can set in and that is no bad thing. Anything that serves to wake us up to who we really are and what we really want is good. We don’t have to wait until we are terminally ill to realise that life is precious. I believe in reincarnation, but live as if this is the only life I have. It may well be. I’m not taking any chances anymore!

Failing to speak our truth costs us at a soul level because the soul thrives on truth. A tart response springs to our lips but we suppress it to “keep the peace.” Whose peace? What peace? Not our own peace of mind, that’s for sure. We don’t want to upset the applecart. If the issue is trivial, this is not a problem. If it goes against our values, or means our rights are being contravened, big problem. “Explode or corrode” is a therapy term used to describe this state. And corrode we do. We become constantly tired, listless, lacking life energy for our daily lives. We may develop an illness, minor or major. The body never lies. It tells the truth of what is happening, if we will only listen.

One woman I know had four children. Her husband was a bully. She told him she was leaving him. It took her four years to gather the resources to do it. But do it she did. She was afraid of him, but she did it anyway. If she had waited until she felt powerful, she would still be living with him, with him bullying her and the children. It’s okay to be afraid. It’s not okay to be emotionally abused, or physically abused, or bullied. It’s not okay to allow it to happen to children. That woman now has peace of mind and the knowledge of her own courage. She gave her children a powerful life lesson too, in taking action to end oppression. She has regained her own power because she was true to herself.

The Blues

When I sing the blues, it comes from the heart. From right here in your soul, an’ if you’re singing what you feel it comes out all over. It ain’t just what you sayin’, it pours out of you. Sweat running down your face.

Muddy Waters

When we express ourselves from the heart, we are tapping into a huge reservoir of spiritual energy. We need to let our unique energy out there into the external world, whether it’s by singing or writing or baking cakes. Strong feelings need expression or they go underground and cause us problems. So get your ukulele, pen or mixing bowl out and let your heart speak its truth. Life gets better when you do.

Make no mistake, changing our lives for the better is anything but comfortable. Change is not easy. It takes courage. Our habits and routines make us feel safe. Some people say to me, “Things can only get better.” I disagree. That argument is a justification for staying stuck. Things can either stay the same or get worse. Einstein said the definition of madness was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Unless we change and DO something different, one day we will just look in the mirror and see an old person who says, “It’s too late for me to change now.” To make our lives better, we need to initiate change, fear or no fear.

We may know that deep down, our job does not fulfil us, but our logical mind thinks, well, I have another hundred years on the mortgage, so I’ll just have to stick it out. Sometimes our jobs can be a “honey trap.” The job provides security and perhaps has implications for pension payments in the future. That is okay if we are finding a way to honour our soul’s purpose. If we are not, then the job and its apparent security are a trap. Because there may not be a future. Would you stay in your current job if you knew you only had one year to live?

Of course we have to find a way to pay the bills. We have to be practical dreamers with the courage to jump in. One man I know worked in a boring government job that guaranteed security. He hated it, but needed the money. He balanced it by carving wood, being in a choir and going skydiving. By honouring his desire for adventure, he honoured his soul. After a few years, the “real self” that emerged through these apparent “pleasurable hobbies” became too restless to contain. He went back to college to retrain in a completely different field. He then left the government job. He earns less now but the bills are still paid and he is content. That contentment is priceless. Note that the process took a few years. Best to get started now!

So get the show on the road. Allow yourself to become aware of whatever you need to do. Let it incubate in the fertile back burner of your deep mind if you don’t have the immediate wherewithal to do it. Ask your ancestors for prayers or help. Ask your angels and spirit guides for help. Ask human friends for support and good thoughts. When help arrives, and it will, accept it and say thank you. (Your turn will come to help others.) Daily mindfulness practice will keep you centred in the storm of emotion (yours and others’) that arises when you no longer want to cooperate with being unhappy.

Remember: there will never be a perfect time. Waiting until your ducks are all in a row is just another excuse. The right time is when you are as ready as you can be. I went to learn how to paraglide when I was fifty. Standing on the edge of a mountain, strapped to the instructor for my first tandem flight, she asked was I ready. Was I ready to jump off a high mountain attached to a bit of fabric? No. I wasn’t. “Er...no,” I squeaked. “But let’s go anyway.” As one of my cats, Tilly, says: “Feel the fur and do it anyway!”

When you finally meet yourself, “arrive at your own door,” as Jon Kabat-Zinn says, it can be an emotional experience. Tears may flow. That’s okay. It is just the frozen tundra of your heart thawing, opening to yourself, allowing integration with the true self to take place. It is a powerful moment. It is an empowering step on your spiritual journey. Things will never be the same again because you cannot unknow your essence, your true self. You then have to find a new way to be in the world. And more than that, meeting your True Self is no less than meeting the Divine. It is simple, unadorned and potent power to come face-to-face with yourself and realise who you truly are. There is no going back after that.

Integrity

To thine own self be true.

William Shakespeare

The word integrity means wholeness, uprightness, honesty, purity. It is important for us to move towards integrity, and in so doing, bring more of that wholeness into the world. How do we become whole? We listen to the quiet but insistent urgings of our souls, and take action on that guidance.

Acknowledging the Shadow Self

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness’s of others.

Carl Jung

The shadow self is the darker part of each of us that we fail to own. In order to mine the gold in the shadow self, we need to acknowledge our potential to think and act negatively. These destructive tendencies are reactions of the ego. A healthy ego is necessary to negotiate daily life, but it makes a better passenger than driver. By failing to accept these negative tendencies, we give them power. What we react strongly to in others usually points to something within ourselves that we are denying. In this way we project our negative aspects onto others. When we begin the process of accepting that we have the capacity to be unkind, cruel or destructive, the ego loses more power and the Higher Self can step in. After all, what is so bad about having these tendencies – unless we act on them? By accepting our dark side, we gain a huge amount of power and energy to fuel our creativity and the move to wholeness. Moment by moment, day by day we are faced with the choice to think, say or do what will bring us on the higher or lower path; to think, say or do the right or wrong thing according to our internal moral compass. We do not need to get it right all the time. Indeed, mistakes are unavoidable because we are here on Earth to learn, and we learn through mistakes. In Spirit, all is perfect, so that is why the Earth school is so useful. Doing the right thing is unlikely to be easy. And it can be especially hard when we see politicians or public power figures that have caused harm not only “get away with it” but be rewarded for it. It is better to look inside for guidance and bring awareness to how the body reacts to our actions. A feeling of relaxation or expansion indicates a good decision in line with our soul, and a feeling of contraction, tension or stress indicates that a better choice is possible.

Our daily practice of mindfulness or meditation helps us slowly, slowly, to become more whole. Our reward is that we are granted access to more of who we really are. Our true selves. We gradually become less Headless Chicken and more Zen Hen. We calm down. The ego, of course, resists. It does everything it can to throw obstacles in the way of our practice. “I’m tired,” it whines: “I won’t bother doing it today. Tomorrow will do. There’s a film on TV I want to see. There’s a friend I want to meet.” And so on. More than anything, the ego is threatened by wholeness. Just listen, nod – and do the practice anyway.

What emerges from the practice is the space to be ourselves. “To thine own self be true” – now that you are beginning to know who to be true to. And it will emerge in your daily life. Someone will say something that jars with you and you will notice. That is usually because they have a different set of values to yours. Your job then is to only say what is true for you, only agree to what is right for you, and to let go of old habits of people-pleasing or soothing or comforting. If you don’t have the energy to challenge the person, then take Seamus Heaney’s advice: “Whatever you say, say nothing.” Don’t sell your soul for the sake of peace because it doesn’t work. You just end up with less of your soul and still the strife remains. Being true to yourself may spark conflict with others because you are no longer dancing to their tune. You are marching to the drum of your own soul instead. Initial discomfort is worth the relaxation in the gut that comes with being true to yourself. It grounds you and makes you more solid, gives you back your power and gives you the energy to begin to change your world for the better.

Freedom

Freedom is not doing whatever you want to do; freedom is wanting whatever needs to be done to grow to our full stature.

Mark Patrick Hederman, Abbot of Glenstal Abbey

There is no “one day.” There is only today. Now is the moment of pure potential.

What does freedom mean to you? Are you waiting for permission to do something with your life? Once you are an adult, you have no excuses left. There will never be a good time. True, there are some times that would be impossible. But there is never a perfect time to switch off the television and pay attention to your dreams. Freedom means taking responsibility. We have no-one to blame anymore. There is only us, today and what we choose to do with it.

Permission

To be what we are and to become what we are capable of becoming is the only end in life.

Robert Louis Stevenson

We hold ourselves back in so many ways. We are frequently less than we could be. In my work as a past life regression therapist, I always ask a client who is undergoing regression what regrets they have as they look back over the life they are exploring. The most common regret is “I should have loved more.” I never once heard anyone saying “I should have made more money.”

Love themselves, love others. It’s all the same love. Years ago, I took my beloved cat to a healer because she had cancer. “Is it different from the healing you do on people?” I asked. “No,” he said. “Healing is healing.” It is. I know that now, having become a healer myself. And love is love. We can only love others to the extent that we love ourselves. In giving permission to ourselves to sit and be with ourselves for a whole ten minutes of mindfulness practice each day, we are indirectly giving ourselves permission to be as we are. We begin to open the door of understanding to our innermost hearts.

Anita Moorjani, who had a Near Death Experience (NDE), writes: “When we say that people are of a higher vibration, we probably mean that they’re letting more of their authentic magnificence come through.....consequently their positive energy and physical presence are strong.” ¹⁰

So being ourselves is the choice for strength and power. When our life force is strong, our aura becomes more charismatic or “attractive,” attracting more of what we want (and will allow) into our lives. It is enlightened self-interest to become our real selves.

Practice and the Ego

The ego wants us to be safe. It wants us to believe we are small and should not take chances. This is a lie. Our true selves are limitless, expansive, eternal, and powerful with the capacity to feel great joy. So when your soul beckons, the ego becomes afraid.

For example, my ego resisted my attempts to meditate regularly for years. Oh, I tried. And I did meditate. But I couldn’t do it consistently. It’s as if my ego knew how powerful such a simple process could be. How transformative. I once did a constellation therapy day. It’s a kind of group therapy energy work based on Bert Hellinger’s work. It acknowledges that we may not only be carrying our own suffering but the unresolved suffering of our ancestors. I chose someone to represent me and observed the outcome. What transpired was that I was at odds with myself. I was approaching my True Self but not integrating her. “Years of resistance,” said the facilitator. He was right. Years of not being myself. Years of abrogating my needs for the needs of others. I had thought I was doing the right thing. But it turned out that one thing I needed to do was carve out the time and space to be myself. To give myself the chance to listen, feel and act on my OWN behalf. So many of us put our lives on hold for months or years. Then suddenly we are in our sixties or seventies and time is running out. When you are young, you believe you are immortal. And indeed, your soul and spirit are immortal. But your physical body is not. It wears out. The grains of sand in the egg timer run out and that’s it, you’re dead.

When your soul makes you aware that all your life you have wanted to be a gardener or an artist, you ego will immediately jump in and say, “Don’t be ridiculous! You couldn’t do that. Just put up and shut up. Forget about it.” The voice is persuasive and pervasive. It probably sounds like the bully who sneered at you at school or the teacher who squashed your dreams with a few well-chosen words. The ego is threatened by anything that may be positive, transformative or life changing for the better. It thrives on routine and fear.

But there is a way around it. In order to fly under the radar of its resistance, we have to be devious. One way I have found is to label important work as “practice.” Oh, I’m not really writing a book – I’m just practising. The ego subsides, reassured. After all, she’s not doing anything important or useful – she’s just practising. Oh, I’m not meditating or being assiduous with mindfulness – I’m just practising. The ego subsides.

In the space that is created, there is an opportunity to be creative, to tap into the deeper levels of ourselves and nurture our souls, by writing or sitting looking at our breath, or gardening, or playing with the cat – the myriad simple things that we love doing but rarely give ourselves permission to do. There are so many other apparently important things to do, while our souls languish from lack of nurturing. The small, simple things are full of soul satisfaction. They allow us moments of joy, of contentment in our own skins.