Authenticity

About a year ago, I went to a weekend seminar called "The Forum" as part of the Landmark Education Series. I really enjoyed the seminar and left with many interesting insights into the workings of the mind, defined by the context of the Forum as the bio-chemical brain, I define this as the part that acts as a signal processor from the physical world to the Spiritual one, a communications interface between the Physical and Astral bodies.

One of the areas the went into is the idea of "Authenticity" and how most people are inauthentic in their day-to-day lives. I understand this perspective, it is the same one that makes people like Bill Maher feel that all Religion is sheer foolishness and dangerous. When you judge something by the external representations given by men, it is amazingly obvious that many people would feel this way.

I think though, that Landmark and many others are looking in the wrong place for their perspective. The question is not if people are authentic, but WHAT they are authentic to? Simply put, EVERYONE is always authentic to something, but are they aware and/or honest about what it is they are being authentic to?

From the day-to-day perspective of people giving their word to something and then following through, most of us have become so bad at this that we come off as being quite in-authentic, hence the perspective of Landmark et al.

I had a discussion with someone a while back that was the most direct statement of authenticity that I can remember hearing, not only for the direct honesty, but because I truly doubt the person giving the statement had any clue just how honest they were being about the subject.

The details of the conversation are unimportant, but it had to do with the possible drastic measures that could be put into effect if people were not willing and/or capable of following through on their word. The received response was that if that happened that they would quit. The simple and direct statement was not only just a statement of pure authenticity, but showed that they were willing to put themselves through all sorts of extra efforts rather that follow through on the subject.

So what we need to do is not judge ourselves and others as being inauthentic, but to determine what it is that we are being authentic to. I will give you an example from my experience at the "Forum."

I wanted to take Spiritgeek.com from a side project and turn it into the central focus of my life, thus putting myself into the targeting sights of my Forum leader. At the time, I thought she was being really tough on me and not really listening to what it was that I was saying, but the issue was not hers, but mine. I was so listening to the justifications and reasons for what was happening that I had lost focus on what I was being authentic to.

In this particular case and time, I was being authentic to keeping a paycheck coming in, the stability of having my basic needs met by a job that was really beginning to cause me problems. I was becoming more and more unhappy with the current arrangements, but I was willing to pay for my stability, in a mundane sense, with the added stress of the work situation and the lack of peace that I was having in my day-to-day existence.

So the issue was not that I was being in-authentic, but what it was I was being authentic to. What areas are you authentic to that you are not necessarily aware of? Find them, decide if that is where you wish to be authentic in your existence and if not, change it.