I'm Still Confused By What We Mean By Acting Authentically

[Joseph Maynor]

I watched Leo's video on authenticity.  But, from a practical standpoint, I still don't understand what it means to live authentically.  If my highest self is nothingness, what the hell does it mean to act authentically?  There is no authentic self.  That's an illusion.  Honestly, I do not understand this concept.  I understand living virtuously, but there is no authentic core to you.  That's all ego.  Personality is all ego, all illusion.  Maybe we should be resisting the notion of authentic self.  It solidifies us into thinking that the egoic self is the true self.  Please watch these two videos back to back and then comment.  

 

Edited July 13, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[dorg]

Right, there is no authentic self.

Now you are the authentic self.

[Truth]

The Authentic Self isn't referring to your self image or self concept it's your true nature --> awareness, consciousness, it's beyond YOU. meaning it's beyond your logical, rational, sound thinking, if you still believe you are your thoughts you're gonna run into some problems with this one. Living authentically means living from your true nature. Not your thoughts. 

 

 

[Joseph Maynor]

 

@Truth. I think I understand it, but it's tricky to put into words.  You do have a deep sense of your highest values.  But what if those traits are simply egoic?  How can I really have traits in reality?  Traits are all thought-stories.  Sure, maybe you have some deep traits embedded in there, but none of those traits exist in Truth.  Reality lacks traits.  Traits are beliefs, thoughts, all egoic.  What you are is the observer, and the observer lacks authenticity because it is not a thing.  Maybe if a person did enough shadow-work they could scrub themselves of all vestiges of authenticity.  Just a hypothesis. 

Edited July 14, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[Truth]

15 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

 

@TruthI think I understand it, but it's tricky to put into words.  You do have a deep sense of your highest values.  But what if those traits are simply egoic?  How can I really have traits in reality?  Traits are all thought-stories.  Sure, maybe you have some deep traits embedded in there, but none of those traits exist in Truth.  Reality lacks traits.  Traits are beliefs, thoughts, all egoic.  What you are is the observer, and the observer lacks authenticity because it is not a thing.  Maybe if a person did enough shadow-work they could scrub themselves of all vestiges of authenticity.  Just a hypothesis. 

Yep. This is why we're doing thousands of hours of deep contemplation and self inquiry work. To find out who and what we are existentially. Leo has a good video on the true self that I think could clear a lot of things up for you. The Enlightened (or authentic) Self - A Description of Your Existential Nature

 

[Prabhaker]

13 hours ago, Joseph Maynor said:

what it means to live authentically

Remember, that doesn’t mean that you have to unmask others. If they are happy with their lies it is for them to decide. Don’t go and unmask anybody, because this is how people think. They think they have to be truthful, authentic; they mean they have to go and make everybody nude – “Because why are you hiding your body? These clothes are not needed.” No. Please remember, be truthful to yourself. You are not needed to reform anybody else in the world. If you can grow yourself, that’s enough. Don’t be a reformer, and don’t try to teach others, and don’t try to change others. If you change, that’s enough of a message.

To be authentic means to remain true to your own being. How to remain true? Three things have to be remembered.

One, never listen to anybody, what they say for you to be. Always listen to your inner voice, to what you would like to be; otherwise your whole life will be wasted. Your mother wants you to be an engineer, your father wants you to be a doctor, and you want to be a poet. What to do? Of course the mother is right because it is more economical, more financially helpful to be an engineer. The father is also right: to be a doctor is a good commodity in the market; it has a market value. “A poet? Have you gone mad? Are you crazy?”

Poets are people who are cursed. Nobody wants them. There is no need for them; the world can exist without poetry. There will be no trouble if poetry is not there. The world cannot exist without engineers; the world needs engineers. If you are needed you are valuable; if you are not needed you don’t carry any value.

But if you want to be a poet, be a poet. You may be a beggar. Good! You may not get very rich through it. Don’t worry about it, because you may become a great engineer and you may earn much money, but you will never have any fulfillment. You will always hanker, your inner being will hanker, to be a poet.

Remember, be true to your inner voice. It may lead you into danger; then go into the danger, but remain true to the inner voice. Then there is a possibility that one day you will come to a state where you can dance with inner fulfillment. Always look for the first thing is your being and don’t allow others to manipulate and control you. They are many: everybody is ready to control you, everybody is ready to change you, everybody is ready to give you a direction you have not asked for. Everybody is giving you a guide for your life. The guide exists within you; you carry the blueprint.

To be authentic means to be true to oneself. It is a very, very dangerous phenomenon; rare people can do that. But whenever people do it, they achieve. They achieve such beauty, such grace, such contentment, you cannot imagine. If everybody looks so frustrated, the reason is that nobody has listened to his own voice.

You wanted to marry a girl but the girl was a Mohammedan and you are a Hindu brahmin. Your parents wouldn’t allow. The society wouldn’t accept; it was dangerous. The girl was poor and you are rich. So you married a rich woman, Hindu, brahmin by caste, accepted by everybody but not by your heart. So now you live an ugly life. Now you go to the prostitute, but even prostitutes won’t help you. You have prostituted your whole life; you wasted your whole life.

Always listen to the inner voice, and don’t listen to anything else. A thousand and one are the temptations around you because many people are there peddling their things. It is a supermarket, the world, and everybody is interested in selling his thing to you; everybody is a salesman. If you listen to too many salesmen you will become mad. Don’t listen to anybody; just close your eyes and listen to the inner voice. That is what meditation is all about: to listen to the inner voice. This is the first thing. 
 

Then the second thing – if you have done the first thing only then does the second become possible: never wear a mask. If you are angry, be angry. It is risky, but don’t smile because that is to be untrue. But you have been taught that when you are angry, smile; then your smile becomes false, a mask...just an exercise of the lips, nothing else. The heart full of anger, poison, and the lips smiling; you become a false phenomenon.

Then the other thing also happens: when you want to smile you cannot. Your whole mechanism is topsy-turvy because when you wanted to be angry you weren’t, when you wanted to hate you didn’t. Now you want to love; suddenly you find that the mechanism doesn’t function. Now you want to smile; you have to force it. Really, your heart is full of smile and you want to laugh loudly, but you cannot laugh, something chokes in the heart, something chokes in the throat. The smile doesn’t come, or even if it comes it is a very pale and dead smile. It doesn’t make you happy. You don’t bubble up with it. It is not a radiance around you.

When you want to be angry, be angry. Nothing is wrong in being angry. If you want to laugh, laugh. Nothing’s wrong in laughing loudly. By and by you will see that your whole system is functioning. When it functions, really, it has a hum around it, just as a car, when everything is going good, hums. The driver who loves the car knows that now everything is functioning well, there is an organic unity – the mechanism is functioning well. You can see: whenever a person’s mechanism is functioning well, you can hear the hum around him. He walks, but his step has a dance in it. He talks, but his words carry a subtle poetry in them. He looks at you, and he really looks; it is not just lukewarm, it is really warm. When he touches you he really touches you. You can feel his energy moving into your body, a current of life being transferred...because his mechanism is functioning well.

Don’t wear masks; otherwise you will create dysfunctions in your mechanism...blocks. There are many blocks in your body. A person who has been suppressing anger, his jaw becomes blocked. All the anger comes up to the jaw and then stops there. His hands become ugly. They don’t have the graceful movement of a dancer, no, because the anger comes into the fingers – and blocked.

Remember, anger has two sources to be released from. One is the teeth, another is the fingers: because all animals, when they are angry, will bite you with their teeth or they will start tearing you with their paws. So the nails and the teeth are the two points from where the anger is released.

I have a suspicion that wherever anger is suppressed too much, people have teeth trouble. Their teeth go wrong because too much energy is there and it is never released. Anybody who suppresses anger will eat more; angry people will always eat more because the teeth need some exercise. Angry people will smoke more. Angry people will talk more; they can become obsessive talkers because, somehow, the jaw needs exercise so that the energy is released a little bit. Angry people’s hands will become knotted, ugly. If the energy was released they could have become beautiful hands.

If you suppress anything, in the body there is some part,a corresponding part, to the emotion. If you don’t want to cry, your eyes will lose their luster because tears are needed; they are a very alive phenomenon. When once in a while you weep and cry, really you go into it – you become it – tears start flowing down your eyes; your eyes are cleansed, your eyes again become fresh, young, and virgin. That’s why women have more beautiful eyes, because they can still cry. Man has lost his eyes because they have a wrong notion that men should not cry. If somebody, a small boy cries, even the parents, others, say, “What are you doing? Are you being a sissy?”

What nonsense, because God has given you – man or woman – the same tear glands. If man was not to weep, there would have been no tear glands. Simple mathematics! Why do the tear glands exist in man in the same proportion as they exist in woman? Eyes need weeping and crying, and it is really beautiful if you can cry and weep wholeheartedly.

Remember, if you cannot cry and weep wholeheartedly, you cannot laugh also, because that is the other polarity. People who can laugh can also cry; people who cannot cry cannot laugh. You may have observed sometimes in children: if they laugh loudly and long they start crying – because they are joined. In the villages I have heard mothers saying to their children, “Don’t laugh too much; otherwise you will start crying.” Really true, because the phenomena are not different – it is just that the same energy moves to the opposite poles.

The second thing: don’t use masks. Be true whatsoever the cost. 

The third thing about authenticity: always remain in the present – because all falseness enters either from the past or from the future. That which has passed has passed; don’t bother about it. Don’t carry it as a burden; otherwise it will not allow you to be authentic to the present. All that has not come has not come yet. Don’t unnecessarily be bothered about the future; otherwise that will come into the present and destroy it. Be true to the present, and then you will be authentic. To be here-now is to be authentic. No past, no future: this moment all, this moment the whole eternity.

Osho, Yoga: A New Direction, Talk #7

[krazzer]

@Joseph Maynor Authenticity, listening to your intuition, living according to nature, doing what god tells you to do. All these things point to the same thing.

I believe that the more silent your mind becomes, the better you are able to distinct ego from intuition. 

Don't overthink this too much. Do the work, be patient, and trust that the answers will come naturally.

[Prabhaker]

@Joseph Maynor

Osho on Authenticity

To be authentic means to be true to oneself. it is a very, very dangerous phenomenon; only rare people can do that. but whenever people do it, they achieve. they achieve such beauty, such grace, such contentment that you cannot imagine....

Never wear a mask. if you are angry, be angry. it is risky, but don't smile because that is being untrue. you have been taught that when you are angry, smile, but then your smile becomes false, a mask--just an exercise of the lips and nothing else. the heart full of anger, poison, and the lips are smiling; you become a false phenomenon.

Then the other thing also happens: when you want to smile, you cannot smile. your whole mechanism is topsy-turvy because when you wanted to be angry you weren't; when you wanted to hate you didn't. now you want to love; suddenly you find that the mechanism doesn't function. now you want to smile; you have to force it. really, your heart is full of smile, and you want to laugh out loud, but you cannot laugh. something chokes in the heart, something chokes in the throat. the smile doesn't come, or even if it comes, it is a very pale and dead smile. it doesn't make you happy, you don't bubble up with it. it is not a radiance around you.

When you want to be angry, be angry. nothing is wrong in being angry. if you want to laugh, laugh. nothing is wrong in laughing loudly. by and by you will see that your whole system is functioning. when it functions, really, it has a hum around it. just like a car hums when everything is going well--the driver who loves the car knows that everything is functioning well. there is an organic unity; the mechanism is functioning well....

If you suppress anything, there is some corresponding part in the body to the emotion. if you don't want to cry, your eyes will lose their luster because tears are needed; they are a very alive phenomenon. when once in a while you weep and cry--really you go into it, you become it, and tears start flowing from your eyes--your eyes are cleansed, your eyes become fresh again, young and virgin.

That's why women have more beautiful eyes--because they can still cry. men have lost the beauty of their eyes because they have a wrong notion that men should not cry. if a small boy cries, even the parents say, "what are you doing? are you being a sissy?" what nonsense! because god has given you--man and woman--the same tear glands. simple mathematics. why do the tear glands exist in men in the same proportion as they exist in women? eyes need weeping and crying. and it is really beautiful if you can cry and weep wholeheartedly.

Remember, if you cannot cry and weep wholeheartedly, you cannot laugh, either, because that is the other polarity. people who can laugh can also cry; people who cannot laugh cannot cry. and you may have observed it sometimes in children: if they laugh loudly and long, they start crying--because both things are joined. in the villages i have heard mothers saying to their children, "don't laugh too much; otherwise you will start crying." really true because the phenomena are not different, just the same energy moves to opposite poles....

When you are angry, you don't show your anger--you are afraid it may destroy your image because people think you are so compassionate, and people say that you are never angry. they appreciate it, and it is so gratifying to the ego. now, being angry will destroy your beautiful image, so rather than destroying the image, you repress the anger. it is boiling within, but on the surface you remain compassionate, kind, polite, sweet. now the division is being practiced. people are practicing it though their whole lives; then the division becomes absolutely settled. even when you are sitting alone and there is nobody, and there is no need to pretend, you go on pretending; it has become second nature. people are not true even in their bathrooms; even when they are utterly alone, they are untrue. now it is not a question of being true or untrue; it has just become their habit. for the whole of their lives they have practiced, and as you practice more and more, the distance between the two parts of you becomes bigger and bigger.

When it becomes unbridgeable, we call it schizophrenia. when you cannot contact your own other part, you almost become two persons instead of one; then it is sever mental illness. but everybody is divided, so the difference between the schizophrenic and the normal is only of degree. it is not very basic, not of quality but only of quantity.....

Truth means authenticity, truth means sincerity. truth is not a logical thing. it is a psychological state of being true--not true according to some ideal, because if there is some ideal you will become false. if you think that to be like a buddha is to be true, then you will never be true because you are not a buddha, and you will impose the buddha on you. you can sit like the buddha, you can almost become a marble statue, but deep down you will still be the same. the buddha will be just a posture. and if you have an ideal, you cannot be true to the moment because the ideal is always there and you have to imitate the ideal.

The true man has no ideals. he lives moment to moment: he always lives as he feels in the moment. he is utterly respectful towards his feelings, his emotions, his moods. and this is what i want people to be: authentic, true, sincere, respectful toward their own soul.

Always listen to your own feelings, there is no need to look around. and by looking at people, you cannot see exactly what is happening to them because their face is not their reality, just as your face is not your reality. their outside appearance is not their inner, just as your outside appearance is not your inner.

That is the whole hypocrisy of society--not to show your inner, your center, your real face. hide it. show it only to someone who is very intimate and who will understand. but who is intimate? even lovers don't show their faces to each other....each becomes like an island, closed.

Don't look at others, look at yourself. and let what is inside of you come out, whatsoever the risk. there is no greater risk in life than suppression. if you suppress, you will lose all zest for life, all enthusiasm. you will lose all life if you go on suppressing. it is toxic; it poisins the being.

Listen to the heart, and whatsoever is there, bring it out. soon you will become efficient in bringing it out, and you will enjoy it. and once you know how to be true, it is so beautiful that you will never settle for being false. we go on deciding to be false because we have never tasted the real. from the very beginning of childhood the real was suppressed. before a child becomes aware of what is real, he has been taught to suppress it. in unconscious ways, mechanical ways, he goes on suppressing without knowing what he is doing.

Be true to yourself--there is no other responsibility. one has to be responsible toward one's being. you are answerable to your own being, and god is not going to ask you why you were not somebody else....

This is the whole problem, how to be oneself. and if you can solve this, then every other problem becomes nonproblematic. then life is a beautiful mystery to be lived--not a problem to be solved but just to be lived and enjoyed.

*excerpted from osho's "intimacy: trusting oneself and the other"

[Sean Johnson]

True authenticity is dropping the self-agenda and seeing everything as you without discrimination. 

[Azrael]

16 hours ago, Joseph Maynor said:

I understand living virtuously, but there is no authentic core to you.  That's all ego.  Personality is all ego, all illusion.

I can still smell a kind of hate when you write that. A kind of disgust.

First of all personality does not equal ego. I hate when people get that wrong because it's such a sad concept to work with. Ego is we could say pretty contrary to personality. Ego is keeping your personality "in place". I resists your personality so that it doesn't go too far. That it doesn't make a mess. It's like a guardian for the personality.

Picture your personality as a little child and your ego as a protector that needs to make sure the whole system survives. If you are not aware of this distinction it is natural that both of these sides will get in conflict because they have different goals to achieve. The personality wants to express itself in the very individual way it is and the protector tries to make sure the personality doesn't go too far with that.

That's why we say that the ego doesn't get killed when you get enlightened but that it integrates, meaning it gets into contact with the personality and learns to work with it ... instead of against it. That's why when you get enlightened you don't perceive ego or personality that much any more but just a flow. Because the system works fluently and no conflict is rising up. The very peak of that is if you see the personality and ego work together having a good time. That is very possible. There are a few other little "entities" that make up your whole system that I didn't mention here.

We could say that your expression in this world mostly consists of sadness, anger, inspiration and love. And all these 4 little factors grow into own entities with time and make up your reality. And all of them are in their pure expression beautiful and stunning but only when they resist each other they become a mess.

So, how do you act authentically then. Recognize these 4 factors in every expression you manifest. Every sensation, feeling, thought etc. Recognize how they work together and how they resist each other. Speak to them and ask them what they want and why they are doing what they are doing. And wait for an answer. They will answer.

Acting authentically is accepting all of these 4 factors and not trying to get rid of them. Because when that happens, the most amazing things follow. Be assured.

--

@Prabhaker, I really think I gotta stock up on some Osho books. Your quotes are way too amazing. It really resonates with me. Any suggestions where to start with his work?

[Martin123]

3 minutes ago, Azrael said:

It's like a guardian for the personality

More like an abusive prison-guard lol.

[Prabhaker]

1 minute ago, Azrael said:

I really think I gotta stock up on some Osho books.

Osho books are available on internet for free. These books are transcript of Osho discourses. These discourses are available in audio and video formats, even on YouTube.  

http://www.oshorajneesh.com/osho-books-free-download.htm

http://www.oshoworld.com/discourses/audio_eng.asp?cat=All

[Arkandeus]

why is a baby so authentic?it doesn't think
when does a kid stop being authentic? it starts thinking

when are we authentic? when we meditate
most thoughts are a distraction, a hypnosis, pulling you away from authentic feelings and acts. 

do we need to think?
how many calculations does our subconscious do automatically as we walk? how many muscles are moved at once in accordance with gravity and terrain?
to think is to dumb down, even the best philosopher in the world cannot smile as brightly as a baby, the greatest scientist cannot look with such purity and innocence like a baby does at even strangers. 

to be joyful is to be in touch with infinite intelligence, to be loving is to be intelligent, therefore the baby is smarter then the scientist and the philosopher combined.
our ego's don't like that idea, but a baby is basically the closest thing to enlightened being on earth, a baby arrives on this world with its spiritual perspective and energy and gets dumbed down by our civilization as it grows. 
to be dumbed down is to grow negative and hostile towards others,it is the hallmark of the absence of the infinite knowledge that we are all one. 

our ego will have us believe that intelligence looks like seriousness and logic, no real intelligence is joy and love. 
the one who knows why the universe is as it is, will smile in absolute harmony with it
you'd say how can a baby know the truth about the universe,it knows it subconsciously, of course it will not know it in a manmade conscious mindset of verbal debauchery that it will soon learn and adopt

so to answer the question of the topic, the less you think , the more authentic you will be. 

 

 

Edited July 14, 2017 by Arkandeus

[Dodo]

17 hours ago, Joseph Maynor said:

I watched Leo's video on authenticity.  But, from a practical standpoint, I still don't understand what it means to live authentically.  If my highest self is nothingness, what the hell does it mean to act authentically?  There is no authentic self.  That's an illusion.  Honestly, I do not understand this concept.  I understand living virtuously, but there is no authentic core to you.  That's all ego.  Personality is all ego, all illusion.  Maybe we should be resisting the notion of authentic self.  It solidifies us into thinking that the egoic self is the true self.  Please watch these two videos back to back and then comment.  

 

Be nobody.  Leo has told you already in one of his videos that what you want is actually to be noone, not anything else, even if you dont know it.

[Joseph Maynor]

@Dodo

14 minutes ago, Dodo said:

Be nobody.  Leo has told you already in one of his videos that what you want is actually to be noone, not anything else, even if you dont know it.

I know.  I watched that video.  It is basically a description of what it's like to be enlightened.  Here it is, watch it.  This video is awesome.  I outlined each of the items on a piece of paper.

 

Edited July 14, 2017 by Joseph Maynor