Living Authentically

I’ve realized that living authentically is not a performance activity. It’s not about responding reactively to that which happens outside of ourselves.  It’s about responding intuitively.  It’s about letting go of everything that we let distract us from connecting with our higher Self – worrying about money and time and how others react to us and what they say and do, worrying about the content and the stuff, and giving that power over us.

When I went to a BSI™ session in August, I found myself crying and feeling afraid of the world which I did not create and which I’d felt that I was imprisoned by. And I realized that I wasn’t trusting mySelf to know what I wanted to create and then taking the steps to create it for me.  Now, I see and hear and I know that I’m choosing ‘not that’ – not to get bogged down in content, not to defer to an outside authority for permission or approval, not to wait for anyone but ME to tell me what my response should be.  And I’m consciously reminding mySelf that I do not need to see the world as others might and that, if I don’t, that’s exactly where I should be.

Until I started waking up to who I AM, I never thought about this. How barren it feels to think that humans are really deaf to the invitation to know themSelves in all their fierceness and greatness and that they are willing to accept being less than.

I learned in History class that what has happened in our history was supposed to provide us lessons so that we would not replicate the past. And I know that, until I was willing to move beyond the content of my life, I believed that I was my history and I made choices which mapped to what I believed from my history.  And as I got older, everything felt heavier and harder and rigid and inflexible.

Choosing to live authentically is really all about perception and judgment. In my past, judgment devolved into considerations of worthy/unworthy, good/not good. And that trapped me in performance and outcomes rather than doing and trying and experimenting and learning.

I remember a friend’s question to me when I shared with her what became one of my first posts on my blog: What was I looking for? Did I want approval from her of what I’d written?  And I knew that I had to write and share what I wrote and thought and felt to a wider audience.  And I also knew that I had to challenge mySelf to let go of looking for some form of adjudication of what I posted.  I had to decloak to mySelf in the writing and the creating.

I’ve given mySelf the opportunities to take part in different activities over these last few years and to know for mySelf if they add to my life and resonate with me. And if they do not, then I’ve let them go.  In doing that, I’ve had to be conscious of letting go of the very old habit of justifying why I’ve left.  That’s not always been easy AND it gets easier as I continue to trust mySelf to choose for ME.

I don’t fight waves of emotion when they come anymore. I don’t distract myself, talk my way away from what’s moving, forget to breathe. And I know that with each wave, as I allow whatever is moving in me to take the time and space needful to be metabolized, I am changed.  That’s what I now look for … the ‘what next’ … knowing mySelf as more.

In choosing to live my life this way, I am choosing to live my life authentically.