Self-Expression and The Trap Of Prestige | The Power Of Authenticity (Part I)

Transcript

The word authenticity is an umbrella term that covers a wide array of concepts, and I’m only going to be briefly touching upon some of these topics in our talk today, but there’s a lot more to be said, and a lot more that I will say about these in the future.

The first thing I want to discuss is self-expression which is one of the concepts that authenticity houses.

I’m someone who’s always been relentlessly driven by the will to self-express as I call it, the will to authentically express all that I am in life. It’s one of my core Soul values and when I am not in alignment with this value, I feel it, I feel a lot of dissatisfaction with my life.

One of my deepest desires as an Artist and as Human Being, is to truly express myself, authentically, truthfully and precisely, in life as well as in my creative work, and to express myself in any way that I feel called too, through whichever medium that I feel drawn to.

Now for those of you listening who might not be Artists, you might be thinking that this subtopic of self-expression that I’m touching on, doesn’t apply to you, but I beg to differ it does. Many people conflate creativity with the Arts, so they think that because they’re not engaged in artistic pursuits, they’re not creative, but creativity and the Arts are two different things, similar, yes, but not the same.

You could be a scientist or a chef and be incredibly creative, in the same that you can be a singer or a painter and not be very creative. So creativity is something else, but to get back to self-expression.

What is self-expression to begin with ? This is how I define it.

Self-expression is not just the act of expressing your thoughts, ideas and emotions in a creative work, it’s so much more all encompassing, so much more fundamental and profound than that.

Self-expression is the act of embodying the truth of who you are, it’s the act of declaring who you are to the world through embodied expression. In its purest essence, self-expression is a celebration of the beauty of individuality and uniqueness.

But there’s a difference between self-expression and expression.

Expression happens every second of everyday. This whole universe is an act of expression. Everything that we are is an act of expression. Everything that we do, everything we say, the way that we think, the way that we dress, the way we move, and not just our bodies, but the way we move through life, every single one of those choices is an act of expression.

But not all of them are acts of self-expression.

Because in order for something to even merit the title of Self-Expression, then those choices must be expressing the truth of who we are, and this is where true self-expression becomes rare in the world.

Self-expression requires freedom, which is another core value of mine, both inner freedom and outer freedom.

And this is also why I consider authenticity to be one of the highest forms of freedom there is, because it is the freedom to be yourself, fully and authentically yourself, which is not a freedom that many people are allowing themselves to have, or even that certain places and countries are allowing people to have, like people who are attracted to the same sex for example and who are still being persecuted for that in certain countries and places around the world.

But in many cases, it’s not about even about people outside of us not giving us the freedom to be who we are, that restriction is coming from inside of us, we are the ones not allowing ourselves to authentically show up as we are, we are the ones repressing ourselves and not allowing ourselves to authentically express ourselves and speak our truth, and live our truth, and there are so many reasons for this that we’re going to cover in this series.

There’s a quote by a poet that I adore called E.E Cummings where he says:

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.”

When I first read that, I felt so seen and understood, which is not something I’ve experienced many times in my life. In fact quite the opposite, I’ve experienced being severely misunderstood by the people that were the closest to me, and that’s one of the reasons that I love to read, because in reading we realize that we’re not alone, that there are people like us who we get us, who see us, who understand us and our struggles, our hopes and fears and dreams. And to be seen and understood is one of the greatest gifts that we can give one another, ourselves included.

If we want to authentically express who we are in the world, and embody the meaning of self-expression, we first need to know who we are.

Know thyself as Socrates said.

We need to garner as much self-knowledge and self-awareness as we can. These are two very important pillars of Authenticity.

And the reason why, is because in a world that is constantly trying to tell us who we are, who we should be, what we should like, what we shouldn’t like, how we should speak, how and what we should create, it becomes very easy to lose oneself, to lose sight of what actually matters and to build an entire life on the false self.

We live in a world that wants us to fit neatly and nicely into certain boxes and roles. We have been profoundly brainwashed and conditioned to look, think and act and even create in certain ways that unless we undertake the sometimes arduous inner work of examining and casting away one by one, all of these ideas, dogmas, rules and values that don’t belong to us and that are not in alignment with the truth of who we are, then we will live our entire lives blindly following these scripts, these rules about how one should do life, and as long as we do, we will continuously evade our purpose, our Missions in life, and our true fulfillment and joy.

I don’t tend to use the word brainwashed often, because it’s a strong word, but when I use it, I mean it.

A lot of our values, a lot of what we think we like or dislike, they’re not even authentically our own.

Our values, our likes and dislikes have for the most part, been shaped by what society, our culture, our parents and the media told us we should value, like and dislike. This programming, these paradigms, go really deep, so much so that we are completely unaware of them, that is unless we embark on this journey of self-knowledge and self-discovery.

As we embark on this journey of authenticity, one where we are committed to expressing the truth of who we are, we really come to understand more deeply that quote by E.E Cummings that I quoted, because we realize that it can feel like a fight at times, it can feel like a fight to stay true to who we are, and not just a fight with the external world, but a fight with ourselves, with who we authentically are, and who we think we should be. It’s a fight with those parts of us have that have internalized external values that have been force fed to us, versus our own authentic values.

Sometimes our ego, which is nothing more than who we think we are, our ego is an identity constructed from our traumas, desires, beliefs, needs and memories, but sometimes our egos can fight our true mission or missions in this lifetime, because we’re holding onto this idea of who we think we should be, the life we think we should be living.

I’ve witnessed this so many times in myself, the inner conflict of what my real authentic self wants, what my Soul is here to do, versus what my ego wants, versus who I think I should be.

And sometimes when we have a really hard time letting go of something, whether it’s a career or a path we’ve chosen, or even a dream or desires we think we want, it’s because our ego believes it can get certain of its needs met in that particular path, but it’s often an illusion. Everything we long for lies in the truth of who we are, anything else is smoke and mirrors, and it’s so easy to get fooled by the smoke and mirrors. To hold onto what is not for us, but the sooner we can embrace who we really are, what our Soul really wants to do, the sooner we will feel the fulfillment of a life well lived, because we are living the truth of who we are.

A lot of times what we think we want is not actually what we really want, and that’s why self-awareness is crucial to staying in alignment with the truth of who we are, because we’re constantly getting bombarded with messages about what we should want, the kind of life we should be living, and if we’re not clear on what our authentic values are, we will be led astray.

Take the idea of success for example, a lot of our ideas of success are not even our own, they’ve been shaped and created by the media, by movies and by a capitalistic society that is more interested in appearances, profits, yields and gains than our wellbeing, and this is one of the many pitfalls that we can fall into on our journey. Achieving someone’s idea of success, rather than our own.

There’s a quote by Paul Graham where he says:

“Prestige is the opinion of the rest of the world. Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you’d like to like.”

This is such a truthful quote, and I’ve noticed that if you’ve been severely traumatized in your life, as a child, you’re much more vulnerable this pull of prestige, because it is a venue to meet all of your needs that were not met as a child.

An important question to ask ourselves to determine the authenticity of what we’re doing in life, is to ask ourselves,

“If we received no awards, no attention, no recognition whatsoever, no validation from having accomplished or done what we are doing, would we still be doing it ?”

And to ask the question in reverse, if what truly matters to you, what you actually love to do, if that thing held the same level of prestige as something else that this world considers prestigious, would you be doing that thing right now ?

That’s the real question, and the answer to that question will let you know if you’re in alignment with your Soul’s blueprint, your calling here.

Because your calling is something that will inherently bring you joy and pleasure just from the act of doing it, not because you’re trying to achieve a certain outcome, but merely for the pleasure and fulfillment of the task itself. And of course there will be moments when you experience frustration and challenges, even when you’re doing something you love, nothing is ever “perfect” but the difference is you’re willing to go through those challenges because you love what you do that much.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the trauma based way of living is to do something because of the result, because you want recognition, validation, acceptance, attention, love, things you never got in childhood that you needed, and still need, those are valid important needs, but your ego is looking for those things in all the wrong places, and all the while your real purpose and real fulfillment passes you by, because you’re busy working not on what you actually love, not on what actually matters to you, but what you’d like to like, what matters to someone else, what this world considers to be prestigious, because then you’ll finally get the recognition and love you didn’t get in childhood.

Who’s validation are you trying to get ? That’s another question to ask ourselves, it usually always goes back to childhood, to our parents, but that’s an important question to ask oneself, who’s validation am I trying to receive by doing what I'm doing, if what I'm doing is not in alignment with the truth of who I am ?

One of the things that my journey here on Earth has taught me and is still teaching me, is to surrender to who I am, to surrender to who I am and what I am called to do in each moment, even if it goes against my idea of who I think I should be, or what I should be doing, and that’s what people call an ego death. Life is constantly asking of ourselves to strip away and shed even more layers of the false self, to die to our old self, so that we can embody more of our true self, and it’s painful as hell, it’s painful because we cling, and because we think we know what’s best for us, what should be happening in our lives, rather than surrendering to the process.

All that we are asked to do by our Soul is to listen to it and get into alignment with it. To be honest with ourselves about what truly brings us joy, fulfillment and pleasure, and brave enough to let go of anything that doesn’t align with the truth of who we are.

In every moment our Soul is guiding us, letting us know what to do next, even if the guidance is to do nothing for know, we’re always receiving guidance about what to do, always. And that’s all we need to know. We don’t need to know the whole plan, we don’t need to know the entire blueprint of everything our Soul came here to experience and do, we just need to know the next step, that’s it.

And as we take that next step, then the next step gets revealed and so on and so forth.

Surrender to who you are, not who you would like to be or who you were expected to be.

Without this surrender to who we are, and what we are authentically called to do in each moment of our life, there can be no true fulfillment in life, and I know this because I learned this the hard way.

And just to briefly circle back to this idea of success, our definition of success in the world today, at least in the West, has become very warped and toxic and is a one way street to suffering, because it’s very outwardly focused. It’s all about perception, it’s focused on how we appear to others more so than how we feel about ourselves and our lives. But this isn’t success. Success isn’t about how good we look in other people’s eyes.

The real success of any life is living a life that is true to who you are and what you authentically desire, anything else is a lie, a flat out lie. And you can dress this lie up with glamor and money all you want, it’ll still feel empty, because it’s a lie. A lie will never be able to truly satisfy us.

We’ve all seen examples of people in the public eye who are deemed to be the epitome of what this capitalistic society considers success, and yet some of these people are the most miserable and unfulfilled human beings on this planet. Doesn’t that say it all ?

Success as I define it, is about how well we know ourselves, how much we are in integrity with who we authentically are, and how faithfully we can obey our Soul’s guidance to do what we are called to do in each moment.

We are taught that joy and fulfillment can only be found in the future once we have achieved an idea of success, but that’s an illusion. We’re taught that we have to make ourselves completely miserable to achieve something, to achieve fulfillment, in the future. But joy, fulfillment, meaning, these can be found in the present moment, it’s not something we have to chase in the future like we’ve been taught to. When you do work that you genuinely love to do, for no other reason than it fulfills you and it’s what you’re called to do, that is fulfillment. And again, it doesn’t mean you won’t experience frustration or challenges at times even with work you love, but the difference here is that the work you’re doing is not a means to an end, it is an end in and of itself, and that’s what makes it truly fulfilling.

So even, if on the surface people can look successful in terms what society says success should look like, the reality is that most people, live lives of quiet desperation as Henry David Thoreau put it, because they have shunned their authentic self, they’re completely disconnected from their authentic values and desires in life, from what is most meaningful to them, what truly fulfills them in life. And because many people lack this foundation of self-knowledge and self-awareness, they spend their whole lives pursuing those things and occupations that can never bring them the lasting fulfillment they seek.

There’s a reason Socrates said “The unexamined life is not worth living.” This is why. Without examining ourselves, our motivations, without knowing who we are, we will never be able to find fulfillment in life. So not only is self-knowledge a pillar of authenticity, but it is a pillar of any meaningful life.

And this is one of the reasons I am so passionate about authenticity, because I see it as being a remedy for so many of our ills in our world today, one of them being the crisis of meaning.

Let me explain what I mean by this. A lot of people in this world today, especially Artists, have been steered away from their passions and vehemently told not to pursue their passion in life, simply because of this belief that we couldn’t earn a living from it. But when you steer someone away from what lights their Soul on fire, you are steering them away from their authentic self, and that is a dangerous game you are playing.

I understand that most of these people, most of these parents, teachers or whoever it is that try to steer us away from we we are called to do, are usually coming from a place of love, however misguided that love may be, but most of them are, they’re thinking about things like sustenance, and how we’re going to get by and take care of ourselves if we pursue our true calling.

And I understand that, I understand the need for sustenance, the need for stability, the need for shelter, but what about the need for authenticity ?

I rarely hear about this human need, and yet it is a fundamental human need that we have, and as with all needs, when we don’t meet this need, we experience tremendous suffering and dissatisfaction with our life choices. If we meet one need at the expense of another, we won’t experience peace of fulfillment, we need to find a way to get all of these needs met.

Because if we forsake our truth, our authenticity, we also forsake our need for meaning and purpose. And people kill themselves everyday for lack of meaning, think about it, even rich people who seem to have it all, who have all their basic needs for food, water, and shelter met. Does that not speak volumes about how important the need for meaning is ?

And that’s because we need more than bread and water to survive. If we want to thrive we need purpose, we need meaning, and we need truth, and these can only be found when we re-connect to the truth of who we are.

Uploaded on October 6, 2024