Authenticity

[GliderGuider]

My position is this:

Stepping into authenticity means allowing the innate perfection of all that is to unfold as it will, moment by moment - without resistance or expectation, but with acceptance, compassion and gratitude.

Essentially it's a secular, nondualist position, aligned with the teachings of people like Eckhart Tolle, Adyashanti, A.H. Almaas etc.

What does personal authenticity mean to you? Does it factor into your spiritual worldview? Is it essential? If so, how do you arrive there? What do you feel holds you back?

[BanzaiBonnie]

1. Authenticity means to me

And this is not fully fleshed out, but pretty much off the cuff -


Personal authenticity means that insofar as I am able, I acknowledge personal, family, and societal patterns of behavior and act out of choice rather than habit.

[GliderGuider]

4. I think acting from choice is crucial

Most of us are walking bundles of tapes, scripts, patterns and programs. Some are convenient, but all of them interfere with the full expression of the Self to some degree. Without the ability to make conscious choices about how to respond to life, we are essentially robots.

[rrneck]

2. Authenticity is giving.

As we invest ourselves in what is around us we learn about ourselves by observing what we are able and willing to give. We are then able to invest in ourselves based on what we learn.

That's about as close as I can get so far.

[BanzaiBonnie]

3. I'm fascinated by the answers

What a rich picture developing. My feeling is that there is no "right" answer, but many answers that enrich us all.


What a amazing life this is.

[rrneck]

8. Here's an interesting book you might like.

While our culture generally trusts experts and distrusts the wisdom of the masses, New Yorker business columnist Surowiecki argues that "under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them." To support this almost counterintuitive proposition, Surowiecki explores problems involving cognition (we're all trying to identify a correct answer), coordination (we need to synchronize our individual activities with others) and cooperation (we have to act together despite our self-interest). His rubric, then, covers a range of problems, including driving in traffic, competing on TV game shows, maximizing stock market performance, voting for political candidates, navigating busy sidewalks, tracking SARS and designing Internet search engines like Google. If four basic conditions are met, a crowd's "collective intelligence" will produce better outcomes than a small group of experts, Surowiecki says, even if members of the crowd don't know all the facts or choose, individually, to act irrationally. "Wise crowds" need (1) diversity of opinion; (2) independence of members from one another; (3) decentralization; and (4) a good method for aggregating opinions. The diversity brings in different information; independence keeps people from being swayed by a single opinion leader; people's errors balance each other out; and including all opinions guarantees that the results are "smarter" than if a single expert had been in charge. Surowiecki's style is pleasantly informal, a tactical disguise for what might otherwise be rather dense material. He offers a great introduction to applied behavioral economics and game theory.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51YSE0YH9CL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

[GliderGuider]

17. I've observed that the aggregate IQ of any crowd is a constant.

Since the collective IQ is constant, the bigger the crowd the lower the individual IQs.

I've seen this effect most often in crowded shopping centers...

[rrneck]

20. Surowicki makes an important distinction

between crowds and herds. Shopping malls are herd factories.

[GliderGuider]

5. Eastern traditions call it "seva"

Meaning "selfless service". It's good for society, it pulls us out of our own egos and it provides a larger classroom for learning about ourselves.

Thanks, rrneck.

[rrneck]

7. I don't know much about eastern religions

beyond what seems to be their generally circular nature. It seems to be a way of thinking that is more efficacious than the linear western forms of thinking. At least for now and the particular problems we are facing as a species. I sometimes wonder if we are not on the cusp of another axial age?

[GliderGuider]

6. In order to arrive there

I try and identify those qualities in myself that are inauthentic - the ones that were implanted or taught by forces which I couldn't (or didn't) control. As I continue that process, the ratio of authentic to inauthentic qualities increases. This seems more effective than trying to search for my authentic self directly. Unless I get rid of the scripts and filters no amount of self-discovery will yield authenticity. As I get rid of them my authentic self (which was always there) emerges without any further effort.

The thing that holds me back is, of course, fear. Fear of disapproval, of loss of love -- paper tigers that I was introduced to when I was very young, and reinforced by the norming influences of family and society.

[rrneck]

9. It could be

that the search itself is authenticity. I had always told art students to "paint it wrong first". That does several things. It creates manageable risk because giving first implies risk. It creates something outside ourselves to actually react to and work with instead of some closed loop of interior cogitation. Most importantly, it gives one someplace to start. To me art, much like life, is much more about beginning than ending; more about asking than answering.

No answer lasts forever. Some only last an instant. We've been searching since we walked out of Africa 200,000 years ago. No point stopping now.

And on a slight tangent: http://www.physorg.com/news95954919.html :evilgrin:

[MorningGlow]

10. To me...

authenticity is striving to act according to inner instinct as much as is humanly possible (humanly being the operative word here). I agree with your definition, GG--"moment by moment - without resistance or expectation, but with acceptance, compassion and gratitude." Very nice. :)

[GliderGuider]

11. Here's a thought about acting from choice that just occurred to me

It's true that acting from conscious choice seems more authentic than reactively playing back our old tapes or dancing to the tune of our childhood wounds.

However, if we truly self-actualize, one of the key realizations is that at any level we care to examine, the self is revealed to be a fiction. There is no "me", just a suit of psychological clothing that we represent to others as "me". It's sort of an inverse of the Emperor's New Clothes, where the clothes are real but the emperor wearing them is not.

So if there is no "real me" there at any level, what does that mean for the notion of making choices? Who is making them? If no-one is making the choices, what is happening? At that point, is there a difference in "degree of authenticity" between acting (making conscious choices) and reacting unconsciously? If there is no me to be conscious or unconscious, how can there be any notion of authenticity at all?

Hmmm.....

[skepticscott]

12. Well, since it was science

and not mystical woo-woo, that provided genuine and verifiable evidence calling into question just how "conscious" some of our choices are, I wouldn't lay much money on woo answering any of your "big" questions either.

[onager]

13. Eckhart Tolle is about as woo as they get.

Tolle sometimes played in buildings that had been destroyed by bombs and he says he felt depressed by what he perceived as "pain in the energy field of the country". (Wikipedia)

The country being his native Germany. A country which, you would think, had maybe a few more issues causing "pain in its energy field" between 1933-45.

[GliderGuider]

15. Who is judging?

[GliderGuider]

16. The source of woo

It's entirely probable that Tolle was suffering from undiagnosed depression when he had the experience you reference. This was possibly one of the roots of Tolle's development of the concept of the "pain body", a psychological construct with as much utility (IMNSHO) as Freud's concepts of ego, superego and id.

Beyond that, Tolle's main advice is that you can reduce your sense of suffering by learning to be present and mindful in your life. This idea is quite similar to cognitive psychology. You may not like his language, but the ideas are hardly woo.

[onager]

18. Woo by default. He's Oprah's pet "philosopher."

Googling "Eckhart Tolle crackpot" and "Eckhart Tolle woo-woo" returns some interesting hits.

No need for you to respond, especially with 3 different posts. You're coming across as rather shrill and obsessive on this topic.

[GliderGuider]

19. There's a lot in that post worth thinking about. /nt

[GliderGuider]

14. I'm less interested these days in explaining things than in experiencing them.

So scientific explorations of consciousness are correspondingly less interesting than my direct experience of consciousness. YMMV.

The world has plenty of room in it for poets and philosophers as well as physicists.

[tama]

21. Consciouss choises and Libet

Libet's experiments are very interesting. Consciouss "choise" of moving hand happens after the neural mechanism happens. There are number of possible interpretations:

- We are just mechanical robots
- Consciouss choises affect only larger "things" and reprogramming of our mechanisms-habits
- Consciouss choises are quantum jumps that rewrite both history and future of geometric time

[wookie72]

22. That's essentially zen Buddhism

Or Evelyn Underhill's concept of Practical Mysticism. Underhill was a Christian mystic a la Meister Eckhart.

I'm not big on Tolle, considering his stuff watered-down Taoism repackaged for the Oprah crowd.

[GliderGuider]

23. Yes.

I seem to be converging on a stew of unstructured Zen and Advaita with a Taoist sauce. Although I understand the mystical side of people like Meister Eckhart, I'm completely allergic to the Christian flavouring - along with all other paths requiring any degree of devotional sensibility. I admit to taking great delight in the take-no-prisoners approach of Jed McKenna...

[GliderGuider]

24. If I were given to labelling people

I'd say Tolle was more neo-Advaita rather than Taoist. Labels like that don’t stick very well, though

There seems to be an emerging movement in the west that draws on a whole variety of non-dualist and “direct experience” teachings. It’s a relatively unstructured, deeply personalized movement, with the specific flavour depending on the teacher.

It contains strong lashings of humanist and cognitive psychology on a bed of non-dualism. The psychological influences include people like Freud and Jung, Eric Berne, Fritz Perls and Carl Rogers. The “spiritual” influences I’ve encountered come from Zen, Taoism, Hinduism (especially Advaita Vedanta), Jnana yoga, Sufi and Theosophy with a bit of Christian mysticism thrown in.

It’s a real dog’s breakfast, with something that will appeal to almost everyone :-)