The Challenge of an Authentic Life

The Urge to Belong

We all have a particular way that we feel we do not fit into life and yet we all long to belong, to fit in, to be loved and to have a place in the world. And counter to this urge to belong we also have the urge to individuate and to become who we really are in our soul essence. If who we are inside is not mirrored in the world outside of us we can often choose to shut down and deny the truth of what we are here for.

 

Hopefully as we go through life we find the courage to increasingly express our true selves and to take the risks to look at what is unnaccepted inside of us. The aim of a vibrant human life is to release the stored, unaccepted feelings from our bodies and hopefully get lighter, wiser, more honest, and less accumulated with fear and repression as we grow older.

 

The Maturity of the Soul 

The ideal of a human life would be that in each passing we year get closer to the expression of our authentic soul. Our personal darkness, that is the areas of our psyche that we have cut off and relegated to our unconscious, ideally would be lessened by the courage and strength of our awareness, and our willingness to look at ourselves honestly. Optimally, as we age we will become truly wise and be able to give to life instead of take from it. However it is highly possible that as we grow older we can become more emotionally accumulated with darkness, accumulated and unprocessed experiences, and weighted down in our bodies with dis-ease and discomfort.

 

In our culture we can easily fall into a  mere surviving, coping level of living that never adresses the fierce enigmas of the soul. This can lead to increasing disease and depression as we live out our days. Working as I do with the elderly with dementia and helping them become expressive and creative at the end of life, I think about this accumulation of an unprocessed inner life a great deal.

 

The elderly have a strong urge to express themselves before they die and I have felt honored to witness deep sharings of the most vulnerable kind with the people that I work with. I also witness a great deal of depression and bewilderment at the end of life for most people which translates into dementia for many. Most elderly people in our culture do not "become themselves" and claim the deep wisdom that comes from living the hard won journey to the soul. They do not become "elders" in the true sense of the word and hence we veiw the "olders" in our culture as burdens and we relegate them to care homes.

 

A Culture of Sameness

We live in a culture that values sameness. Our economy is built on us not ever having the encouragement to become ourselves and express our uniqueness. Henry Thoureau said, "I do not want to live a life of resignation." In the first essay, "Economy," Thoreau comments that most men are slaves to their work and enslaved to those for whom they work. He concludes: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation...."

 

 Ponder this quote by Terence McKenna:

"Looking down on Los Angeles from an airliner, I never fail to notice that it is like looking at a printed circuit: all those curved driveways...as long as the tv stays on, these modules are all interchangeable parts within a very large machine. This is the nighmarish reality: the creation of the public herd."

We have a biological urge to be accepted. On a cellular level it feels like our very survival is at stake if we are not accepted by the common consensus consciousnness. It is our human journey to feel separate in our egos from God/Creator and other human beings and then to strive to belong. Yet to belong without expressing our own uniqueness is not true belonging. It is inauthenticity. It is a missing out of a unique destiny that can only live through us.

 

The Creation of False Belonging

Or false ways of belonging begins in childhood. Our separate self is formed when the infant realizes that they are separate from the the mother. The intense pain and shock of the separation is called the "narcissistic wound" and it's core pain drives many of the ways that we pretend in life. We will make up stories as soon as we are able to have cognitive understanding as to why we feel separate from life. We might tell ourselves, "I am separate because there is something wrong with me." Or "I am separate because I am worthless." These are the core negative beliefs that drive much of what we strive for in life.

 

Basically we all yearn to merge and become one with life as we did when we were children. We long to be loved and accepted even if it means we have to betray ourselves and change in ways that are not natural for us. We unconsciously "match" others to gain love. In intimate relationship we often say in our minds, "I will mirror you and become your reflection, so you will mirror and merge with me." When we "feel safe" with people it is often because we trust that they will mirror us in a way that feels comfortable. We can unconsciously demand that we be mirrrred positively from everyone around us.

 

Mirroring attempts to re-create the safety that the child within wants from it's mother. We have a biological urge to look for this safety everywhere. This is how we can live in a world of "niceness" with no real, differentiated, authentic connection. It is easy to get along with people for a while or during short periods of mirroring with another but over time it can leave us feeling empty and false and even more separate because we are taking no risks to express difference. To express our own truth we need to authentically connect to other people from a mature differentiated place, that expresses our own uniqueness.

 

Our Authenticity is our Spontaneity

Yet life insists we become authentic to our essence. This is the primary challenge of life. Indidividuation from our partners, our loved ones, our family and our social groups demand that we risk expressing our uniqueness even if it makes other people uncomfortable - even if it makes us uncomfortable, and it will!  My particular struggle with fitting into the common consensus culture has to do with my sexuality. For you, it might be your weight or body shape, your secrets from your past, feelings or depressions that you hide, your addictions, or your race, or your culture that does not fit into the norm.

 

For most of my life, I have struggled intensely with the urge to fit in and be liked by others. My partner Ondrea puts it so eloquently. "You have urge to be no one so you can be everyone." In my teens and 20's I did my best to fit into the social world I grew up in and I longed for acceptance and inclusion. I prided myself in being able to go into any group and get along. As a youth I smiled until my jaw hurt. I remember practicing my smile in the mirror and being hyper sensitive to what people thought of me.

 

I grew white, blond, feminine and pretty. I fit a societal ideal for what a woman should be in the North American culture. I had all of the social graces, the soft voice, the ability to make anyone feel comfortable in my presence. I grew up in a typical North American traditional family where family roles, duties and sexual identity was never a question. Growing up in my family, societal norms where accepted completely and anything that was outside the "normal" - any kind of counter-cultural expression was made fun of.

 

The Struggle to Fit In

The only example of counter-culture that I can remember growing up in a small farm town was in grade 8. I had a female baseball coach who wore men's shoes and there was much snickering behind the scenes. Rumor had it that she shared her life with another woman. The word lesbian was never mentioned. I remember feeling a kind of an uncomfortable blow to my belly at my coach's stark difference in appearance from the norm. She was a masculine energy in a female body. This woman did not fit in and that this somehow felt wrong and scary to me. I indelibly feared for her safety.

 

Yet having her as my baseball coach taught me something about inner strength and courage. She was a kind and genuine person. She won our hearts quickly. She touched into our flagging sense of power as young girls with a tender sense of purpose. In a world that did not believe in girl's sports, she procured us professional looking uniforms and took us from town to town to play baseball. We were not a good team at all but she taught us how to be graceful under pressure and how to truly reach out as good sports when we lost. Even though we lost every game she accurately identified each of our individual stengths on the team and presented us with a special trophy for our unique contribution at the end of the season, surely bought with her own money. After getting to know her I felt a kind of wonderment at the level of individuality and deep caring that she was able to sustain in our small narrow minded town.

 

Familial Expectations

I grew up expecting that I would marry, have children and perhaps have a recreational job for extra shopping money. I played with my dolls as a little girl and I imagined talking to my daughter and giving her wise advice. I remember myself at 5 years old nonchalantly picking my future husband out of the Sears Cataloge and when I met him 12 years later he looked exactly like the model on the page but without the navy blue leisure suit. Unconsciously I was preparing myself to be what my family wanted me to be. While at the same time, in a parallel universe I was intrigued with becoming a creator and an an artist. I remember at five years old selling my drawings, door to door for 10 cents each.

 

I met my husband at age 17. I was a teen model and pageant queen at the time. I was unanimously voted "Miss Congeniality." in the pageants and unofficially everywhere I went. I could fit into any group and be accepted anywhere I went. My husband and I both  "looked" good even though much difficulty was happening below the scenes as we struggled to individuate within our own family pressures and expectations. We loved each other in a way that honored our family comfort level, histories and patterning. We fit the cultural and familial model. We tried to be a model couple. We had a lavish white wedding. I went to art and design college for 5 years and thanks to the genuine charisma and support of my husband I had my beautifully constructed paintings hanging in the top gallery in the city.

 

Back then I lived my life by appearances - from "the outside" and I based my worth on what other people thought of me. My mother had been verbally shamed by her father all thoughout her childhood and teenage years. I felt like I wanted to be perfect for her. I tried to be the perfect daughter to help relieve her of her shame and her pain. So even as I was suffering in my own darkness, I was careful to keep myself cheerful, bright, and apparently doing well in my appearance and my presentation to the world.

 

What I did not bargain for was when I became pregnant with my daughter, my desire for a natural birth would begin a birthing of inner bodily wisdom and spontaneity in myself that was more powerful than my mental, perfectionistic self-control. I could no longer avoid my feelings when I was pregant. My body would no longer allow it. I began to cry in the middle of the street and in the grocery store and during movies . The rigidity and control that I lived my life from began to crumble. I could not longer paint perfectly designed, beautiful looking paintings. It was not even possible anymore. I pulled my work out of the top art gallery in the city. My sketchbooks became filled with faces with hollow eyes their mouths unsmiling and clouded over from lack of expression. The urge to express myself became intense.

 

After my daughter was born, five members of my close family also died in a short period of time. There is nothing like death to make you wonder if you are living your own life fully. My intimate confrontation with death only intensified my private spontantous expression. It gave me pause consider what it meant to live a vibrant human life vs. a life of resignation. After my daughter was born I felt a burst of spontaneous creativity. I painted spontaneous paintings all night in my basement when she slept and when she awoke took her to the local coffee house for radiant breakfasts, amazed at what was opening up in me. As my creativity and my sexuality opened up, I danced to music, I wrote poetry at the kitchen table as my baby watched me studiously from her high chair. When I found out my husband was having an affair it seemed naturally ecstatic to bag up all of his clothes and toss them in a grand dramatic gesture out onto the front lawn.

 

The Challenge of Authenticity

When we let go of control and begin to allow life to creatively lead us we may find out that our life becomes different than we planned. When the reality hit me that my marriage was over, I considered that I was acting irrationally and that I had better pull it together. Practically speaking I was a traditional and dependent woman and I had a baby to support. I was a "professional" artist that dabbled and did not make enough to support myself. My husband and I decided to set a date to talk about getting the marriage back together.

 

But the Larger Life had other plans for me. We all have a initiatory moments in life that we can choose to follow or ignore and when I talk to the elderly I see we all have choicepoints or forks in the road that involve courageous meaningful decisions. Most people ignore the deeper callings of their soul to maintain the status quo.

 

The night before I was to meet with my husband to renegotiate our marriage I was given an archetypal dream to consider. In the dream I was on a large boat on a tumultuous sea. A tall imposing man approached me, and in a loud and booming voice he told me, "You are a lesbian!" I was stunned and awed and I believed him wholeheartedly. After he said those words to the bottom of my soul - the sky opened up and light poured down on me. A staircase arose from the boat and I climbed it up to heaven.

 

I awoke from the dream profoundly stilled, but when my ordinary mind came back in I started to panic. Surely I could not live this truth in my family, or in my conservative social circles. Later that day I went to the bookstore to "research" what it might mean to live a gay "lifestyle. Two women walked in holding hand and I burst into tears. Later when my husband and I discussed our marriage I told him about the dream. He was silent and then said, "Funny, I just saw Ondrea at 7-11 this morning."

 

Ondrea was my magical long-time childhood friend. She was a open to being with men and women intimately.  She had long dark hair, and was a true intutitive, a poet, a musician, and a wise sage. Our mothers were sorority sisters together when we were growing up and we played together as children. Our families took holidays together and we stayed up all night as teenagers talking passionately about life and creative possibilities during family sleep-overs.

 

It turned out when my husband saw her at 7-11 that day she had been breaking up with her long-term female partner. We got together soon after amidst much family fear and doubt and confusion. I changed my entire life based on the inner signs that preceded and followed that dream and I have come to learn that this is how one learns to lead a mythic, creative life.

The authentically life is not without struggle and intense challenge. I left my known to follow my unknown, to embrace a relationship that had little cultural support or context for me.

 

Risking an Authentic Life

Looking back on this time 14 years ago I marvel at the turn I made in my life and what being willing to risk being authentic has brought me. Most of all it has brought me love and the depth of authentic connection that I had craved all of my life. It also brought me "a fall from social grace" and a true and deeply lived understanding that each one of us hides away a part of self in order to be loved and accepted within the "normal" social confines, family rules and traditions that bind us.

 

The gift I have found in following my dreams and visions has been a deep compassion that I would have never found if I had continued trying to fit in. My heart became huge for those who live in the shadows, who wonder where they fit into life, and wonder what their goals and purposes are. I found a deeply caring and visionary life by choosing to follow one clue after the other on my authentic path. We can only discover our true gifts when we admit to what we are hiding. 

 

Micheal Meade, mythologist, storyteller and profound writer speaks so beautifully to how it is our life's work to become truly ourselves. We are all meant to discover our personal truth and contribution to life instead of merely being fearful takers. Working with the elderly as I do, I ponder these essential questions with them.

 

"While you had the chance to live, did you become your true self? Having received the gift of life, did you learn the nature of your gifts and the purpose of them? Have you lived a life that was given to you or substituted some general ideal? If each has but one life to live, then there will be but one thing in question when the time for living comes to an end"

"Did you become yourself?"

-Michael Meade