Identity

The game for authority

11 posts in this topic

Ever since Leo made that video on authority, it had been very interesting to me to see the authority games unfold in practice.

Most of all, I see how I am playing the game myself. I am in a kind of in between space, where I am going from being a student to being an authority figure. 
Instead of being a student, I now teach at the university. I have my own business and am starting to give workshops and coaching, as well as a massage business.

At university, because I am the “tutor” students have my opinion in high regard. Yet I see how some students grasp certain topics at a deeper level than me. However, admitting that would threaten my position within the group. 
Same goes for my businesses.

At my massage practice, it seems like I have to put on the mask of being a “massage therapist”. On my website I talk about the courses I have followed.

At my training/education business, I have to be the trainer/entrepreneur/coach.

Hey, Martin what do you do now?

There again goes the salespitch for who I am. And it does seem to matter a lot what that salespitch contains and with what confidence I bring it.

Some other authority examples:

Today I was at a manual therapist. When I started to engage in a conversation that did not match her normal “Therapist-client” dynamic, she got defensive quickly. It started of by me just walking in and asking her how she is doing, to which she responded she is the therapist. Than later on when I made some suggestions as to why I have back problems, quickly she started making statements about her 45 years of experience, science, education and more.

The training company I work with, is also largely pre-occupied with creating an authority position. I helped to develop content for a training on leadership. Guess what the first 10 minutes where about? Citing all the references and theories, all the people that are behind this workshop, all their phd’s and experience and bla bla bla. “It helps for the participants to take us seriously” was the reason.

It seems that authority limits openness and creativity. Because there is someone who “already knows how things are” and this belief system and position needs to be defended. The defending of the authority position becomes a corrupting  factor in looking for the truth. Even if a relative truth.

Yet it seems crucial to have a sense of authority to survive in the world. People won’t hire me for workshops or coaching if I don’t appeal to certain credentials or experience or whatever. Just dropping a certain term, a certain positional status, makes all the difference.
 

How to navigate this game for authority in an authentic way? Is it possible to drop the game and still survive/thrive? Or is it more of a trade off?

Education interests me. One of the concepts that came to me was “do you know?” Where it would be a platform for open discussion. Where participants look for their own understanding and take responsibility for their own understanding. Where they learn to think for themselves instead of sucking on the tit of an apparent authority figure.

Anyhow, went on a rant here ? let me know what your thoughts are if you made it this far ?


Realizeyourgrowth.com

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Good!

What's even more of a mindfuck is when you realize that anyone who has authority was given it to them by only one person: you!


You are God. You are Truth. You are Love. You are Infinity.

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Yes I know, at some times... and then I forget.

That game must have been hard for you to play also, the spiritual teacher authority whilst being on the awakening journey.

Do you still feel a need to defend something, or can you be fully authentic? 
How do you balance this need for being a perceived a certain way for your position to maintained and authenticity?

 


Realizeyourgrowth.com

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@Identity You've got me contemplating relative authority and absolute authority. . . Last week, I took my car to a mechanic. This guy has a ton of knowledge and experience with vehicular mechanics. He identified a problem with the exhaust system and knew exactly how to fix it. In a sense, he is a relative authority. He has developed knowledge and skill over many years of training. I believe and trust that he diagnosed the problem accurately. We could say that I create my own reality and I am creating a trustworthy mechanic who is an authority on the top. So, I am giving him my authority. . . Another person may be more cynical and get a very different vibe from this mechanic. They may think he is full of BS and just trying to rip people off. 

Yet I've had direct experience with another form of authority. While hiking in nature, the self dissolved and there was an essence revealed - the source of all sages, shamans, enlightened beings. The transcendent "I" is that source from which all expressions of the source arise. The transcendent "I" is Jesus, Buddha, The Dali Lama, shamans, mystics, Rupert Spira, Adyahanti and all others. "I" am that and so are "you". That form of Authority has a different essence than the relative authority of the mechanic. This form of meta authority creates all the sages, shamans, mystics etc. When I watch someone like Rupert Spira, he has a relative authority due to his decades of practice, understanding and skill. Yet he is also a creation of that transcendent source authority, of which we all have access to since we are all that source. 

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38 minutes ago, Identity said:

How do you balance this need for being a perceived a certain way for your position to maintained and authenticity?

In every case go with Consciousness, Truth, and Love.

Those require effort. Until they don't.


You are God. You are Truth. You are Love. You are Infinity.

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@Serotoninluv in sense of future hiking tours the mechanic is an absolute authority - or maybe you just imagine the hiking in the future. or you buy a new car. or maybe choose public transportation in the future.

Edited by remember

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@remember That’s not how I’m using the terms relative authority and absolute authority. You are assigning different meaning, which is fine - you are free to do so. 

In the context of how I’m using the terms a mechanic is a relative authority on cars. For example, a mechanic is an authority on cars relative to a blind circus clown. 

According to my term usage, Absolute authority is a direct experience that is not constrained by thoughts or personality constructs. It is realized through direct experience - as all absolutes. This thread discussion is about relative authorities among people. Some may not resonate with how I am using these terms and thats totally fine. 

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I was struck when a young woman that I have known all of her life and who struggled to learn how to paint nails and then learned massage, then Reiki, then sound therapy with Tibetan bowls and finally teaches seminars on something (I am not sure what) was lamenting not having enough clients and I suggested combining her old nail practice with her massage and sound therapy sessions. I think she felt insulted and unequivocally stated that her clients did not want to be taught or healed by their nail polish lady. Oops! That wouldn't have occurred to me.  It would appear that she wants to appear to be an authority and believes that is what is expected of her.

Since then I have noticed how a woman that I have come to reknow will not take direction of any kind from anyone.  The way that I know her is that 50 years ago I recruited her into a cult which I got out of but she remained in for a total of 7 years. She will permit no one that is in any way her equal, to be an authority. It appears to me that there is a lot of confusion regarding being controlled on her part. 

There is an old woman that I love that will do nothing for her own health unless an authority tells her to do it first. This old woman is my mother and we have always clashed with regards to authority all my life. "But Becky, you just can't do that!" still resounds in my ears. 

I taught primary school for many years and the thing that I found most annoying, day in and day out, was having to be the authority figure. "Mercy! Can't we all just GET ALONG?" And I recently pointed out to a woman who earned her Ph.D. in chemistry, yet who finds herself vying for the attention of the instructor of an adult ed class on local herbs with the other ladies in the class, that everybody always wants to cozy up to the authority figure.. regardless of anything.

So I think it is a false construct and that if one IS authentic, and knows their subject, area, topic, self, then it is not even a valid consideration. It is Ego. So we are talking about the duality of being a human being in a material world.

I wrote the above before I watched the 'Authority' video.

Now I'm into the video and concurrently thinking about a story that I told myself yesterday. In my story, I told my listeners/readers that I Am An Imp and that I have always been and will always be and that I got an idea about how I could know myself and so I became material worlds and material creatures and on this world I gave some of my creatures the ability to do the same thing. Being the Imp that I am, and knowing everything as I do, and being a very curious Imp and not one that is much for authority figures, I told my first creatures to definitely, under no circumstances, eat from that tree over there in the middle. Cause if they did they would be just like me and would be able to create anything that they wanted and then they would be 100% responsible for everything and woudn't need me anymore. Then I giggled to myself and turned myself into a snake so that I could hide in the branches and watch. Cause I knew darned well that my darling creatures were gonna make a beeline for the tree to taste it's delicious fruit. It was a set up from the get go! Of course they were going to eat it! They were me and that's what I would do!

So that was my little story and I swear to GOD that it's the GOD'S honest truth and it happened just that way and don't you believe that old snake for one moment.

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@Serotoninluv mhhh, a blind circus clown is never an absolute authority - it is an authority that can be chosen on the base of free will. i assign absolute authority to bottleneck personalities in our relative realities. means if someone wants to go to a club and the security at the door says: no. the security in this case is an absolute authority and will block the door or won’t. if i can repair my car myself a mechanic is not an authority anymore. of course i would give a circus clown absolute authority in case of expanding consciousness, love, happiness and truth...but that is relative even though it’s absolute.

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@remember We are using the terms in different contexts and won’t be able to have a comprehensible discussion. We aren’t on the same frequency, which is fine. 

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@Serotoninluv i know - you might never have been in that situation, but if you set your mind to protect a blind circus clown from his/her self that also becomes absolute authority.

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