Authenticity is a buzz word in the personal development world. But what is it?
Authenticity can be loosely defined as being true to one’s own personality, spirit or character. In the words of William Shakespeare, to thine own self be true. But how many of us in the Western world can say we live up to these standards?
Inauthenticity = Karma
Herd Consciousness
Are we ever shown how to realise our own uniqueness? Or are we told time and time again that we are all the same? The issue is that the people telling us this nonsense are people with no self-hood. They themselves have no idea of uniqueness, and so it is the blind leading the blind until we end up with a degenerative society, driven by hedonism and little creativity.
A major symptom of this inauthenticity is the need to submit. Submit to the crowd, to big brother and to man’s own lower natures; feeding the hedonistic lifestyle that is rammed down their throat every day. And the inauthentic man will surround himself with others who do the same thing, because he needs to conform. How can he do anything else when he does not know who he is? He doesn’t have his own psychological and spiritual sovereignty, he has ideas and beliefs printed onto him by an insane society… and he begs for more of the same. ‘Please, switch me on society, for I don’t have the power to switch on myself.’
‘Pleasures’ and Distractions
We hide the authentic life with life’s seeming pleasures. Excessive alcohol, drugs, work, pseudo-spirituality, television etc. They stop you from becoming who you are. They grip you like clamps to the factory of society, in all of its insanity. But society only supplies this incessant demand for external pleasure.
The Authentic Man
The authentic man would be seen as the outsider, in a world of inauthentic conformity. He is travelling the Siddhartha road. He is not looking for the world to give him meaning, he is giving meaning to the world. The authentic man lights up the world with a refreshed and organic mind, ever seeking to become whole and pure in consciousness.