The mind can assert anything and pretend it has proved it. My beliefs I test on my body, on my intuitional consciousness, and when I get a response there, then I accept.
– D.H. Lawrence
Becoming authentic is a long, winding process – like sliding along the narrow metal wire of a coil that begins at one’s core and springs outward.
The coil originates within all of us, where intuition, action and intent are one.
Imagine it: At birth, there are no behavioral discrepancies, no pretending, just continuity between internal and external. Infants and expression are one. They have not yet crawled onto the thin edge of the path that strays from what is true. If there is hunger, they shriek loudly and fiercely until that need is met.
They do not act polite.
If joy is felt, it reveals itself as giggles and coos. Each act is voiced and forgotten immediately. There are no stories dangling from events like annoying, grumbling relatives.
Notice that I wrote, “they do not act polite” rather than “are not polite.” In reality, our instructors usually require that we act a certain way to meet their desires. Those desires seldom have anything to do with us.
Hence begins the confusion between “be” and “act.”
“If you do this (now),” conditioning says, “then you will get that (future).” We are taught the concept of before and after; cause and effect; now and not now – always with the emphasis on not now.
If you are a good girl (cause), you will get a treat (effect). Good inevitably means whatever is convenient for or conditioned in the instructor.
If you play nicely (now), you can come back to the park tomorrow (future).
This guidance requires that the instructor be focused on not now.
By nursery school, we lug a growing bag of “should” and “ought to” and share them freely. As childhood progresses, the hypnotic world beckons and we go out where security surely exists, thereby advancing the journey away from Self.
Joy, we tell ourselves, will be found tomorrow or the next day. It will come when I get this prize, achieve success, find him, secure this, get rid of that.
Though it is impossible to be apart from the Source, we are mentally separated from that truth. Every now is spent thinking about future.
Of course, when we get there, wherever there is, we are thinking about the next future and miss that celebration, too.
In each disconnected step, we believe more deeply that something out there will make us whole. We crawl and grab; crawl and grab; crawl and grab.
At some point, we realize that everything we thought would fix us hasn’t. We realize that every act of giving, though it may have been dressed in spiritually elaborate pretense or intellectually defensible argument, contained an expectation of what we would get in return. We have run out of good ideas.
There is desperation in that realization.
There is a feeling that we will fall off the edge of our carefully charted path into an endless abyss. But we are at the end of our coil and there is nowhere else to go.
So, suffering turns us around, and we begin the roundabout voyage homeward.
Teachers appear and guide us because willingness invites them to materialize and allows us to listen.
Some people grope only as far as the next neighborhood before they turn inward. They quickly know that if authenticity and actions are aligned, love is expressed everywhere it goes. They venture into the world but never leave home because it resides within.
Others travel the equivalent of hundreds of miles away from their center before they turn back.
For me, the coil began in my gut and ended somewhere in northern Czechoslovakia. Thank goodness I’m a quick crawler.
The funny thing is that the coil is not long, nor is it even there.
The road to Self is without space or time; it contains no distance and can be realized at any instant. But remaining in that realization is the challenging part. Periods of pure awareness come and go, at least in my experience.
Emerging authenticity is full of self-awareness and self-obsession, self-analysis and self-absorption – all of which are necessary to arrive at the next Aha!
For a quick forgetter like me, remaining an aware and open channel takes practice and action and inquiry and lots and lots of spiritual protective work. For that, I need teachers and teachings and those on the path with whom I can share it all.
In difficult times, my husband reminds me that I’m well into the road home.
According to him, I’m hovering over Denver right now.
I’ll let you know when I cross the Continental Divide.