Remind Yourself All the Time of What You Really Are.
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What is authenticity? Can you feel it when you adjust yourself to accommodate your surroundings? Is it ever desirable to contain your energy?
Holidays are especially tricky when family members have seemingly conflicting beliefs. To spend time together, we make compromises. Family is the ultimate lesson of unconditional love! Ask me how much I love my family after I’ve washed the dishes for 13 people. I’ll point to the clean kitchen and say, “Isn’t it obvious?”
When we’re surrounded by prayers that feel like nails on a chalk board, is it more honest to allow the celebration to continue without debate, or is it more honest to speak and give voice to an alternative belief? I can’t answer that for you. But, I can offer empathy, because it’s not easy.
My day job is digital marketing for a software broker. I’m researching authentication for a tech blog post. When discussing this topic with a trusted resource, he proposed this eureka-inducing question: What constitutes authenticity? Let’s apply that to cyber security. How does Amazon know you’re using a credit card you haven’t stolen, or that a criminal isn’t using your login credentials?
How do you know that the email that seems like an official IRS query isn’t a fake, embedded with sneaky ways to harvest your private financial information? Well, there are protocols, that I don’t understand… yet. But, as technology evolves, and cyber security threats evolve, these protocols need to respond with their own evolution. Does this imply that what is acceptable as authentic also evolves?
Do our online selves evolve in authenticity?
Have you seen advice describing ways to bring more joy into our lives that suggests spending more time with the people who welcome our authentic expression, and less time with people who diminish our light? It’s actually something that I’ve been consciously working on.
For example, my partner not only welcomes my authentic expression, he also responds protectively over my creativity, intentionally providing space to bring our light together. My cousin raises my vibration just by being near her goodness, like sunrise warming a mountain valley.
But, what do we do about those family gatherings? We dearly want to spend time with the people we love, but at what cost? And, the expectations circling in our heads, of possible worst-case scenarios, feel absolutely opposite to the experiences we want more of.
My self-discovery journey extends over decades. I have a growing self-help tool box. Here’s my action plan:
1. Contemplate this question: What feeling do I want more of?
Personally, I want more authentic creative expression, like iridescent light, unrestrained, and expanding in all directions, natural and relaxed. There’s nothing to manipulate or force. I just am.
2. Let go of all requirements, manipulations, plans, and timelines to get to what you want more of, and submit your request to the ether, or the cosmos, or the goddess, or your self, or nothing (no-thing), or fill in the blank.
The trick here is to drop the story, and request the feeling. I like to keep an image that reminds me of the feeling, but that’s not necessary. It is necessary to get rid of all your imposed stipulations. The story of my getting the thing that will make everything better is actually distracting my energy.
3. Pick a mantra.
Currently, my preferred mantra is Yugen. It’s Japanese, and loosely translates to ‘recognizing the miracle of every moment’. Soham, meaning ‘I am’, is another favorite, as is ‘allow it to be easy’, learned from channeling sessions with Connie Russert.
4. Meditate on the feeling desired, with optional image, repeating chosen mantra.
This meditation has two uses. First, it’s a chance to clarify the intention. And second, it provides time to practice returning a wandering mind to the desired goal.
5. Remind yourself, repeatedly, and all the time, of what you really are.
We already are the feeling we’re going for. We felt it while we meditated. I feel it with my partner and my cousin. Getting more of it is noticing that it’s already here. The mantra, and optional image, are tools to remind us, when we’ve forgotten our authenticity.
Today, I’ve been imagining all the distractions, and compromises as molting bark, falling off my iridescent light. What if we could molt off cyber malware?
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Christy Kirsch lives in California, and doesn’t mind if you judge her. When she’s cranky, time in the garden with her strawberries, chocolate mint and poblano chilies usually sets her straight, so does a swim in the Pacific Ocean.
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