Living Unbound

Thank you for venturing to read this regardless of the rather bland title. I would however assume that if you found this blog you are probably already aware and interested in Non-Duality. I hope to cover several aspects of Non-Duality without ever giving any definition of it beyond “not two”. This simply means oneness. Everything being one thing. You can call it God, Universe, Source or Nothingness. It is still not two. Here again I’m going to assume you know all this and get on with the Authentic Self part.

In simple terms, your authentic self is your natural expression. This is not the self identification, not your body or your mind and not who most of us think we are. We are, conciousness or awareness if you prefer, and your authentic self is the individual expression of that awareness. When we were born, we were nothing but authentic. We had no ideas about self awareness. No thought about our physical selves. No restrictions in our behavior or responses. We didn’t even know our given names.

We lived this way for several years while we were told by our parents, teachers and friends who we are. The problem with this is that the people we trusted to tell us who we are, didn’t actually even know who they were. They were conditioned in the same way we were and unless they discovered Non-Duality and their true selves in their lifetime, they passed all that they knew onto us.

When you add on being indoctrinated into a certain religion, values, philosophy, beliefs and opinions, we become carbon copies of these traits and ideals. We have basically been taught to listen to everyone else but ourselves. Most of us can remember things we were told that didn’t feel right, but we glossed over them because we were also taught to obey.

The longer we go through life believing everything we were told, without taking time to discern for our selves what rings true for us and what doesn’t, the more we judge others based on what we believe. We learn to distrust and worst of all we learn fear. ( I will talk about this in more depth in the chapter “The Thinking Mind”)

So where is our authentic self? The good news is that it has not left you. It is always with you because it is an expression of your true self. That true self is one with everything and expresses as unconditional love. Your authenticity responds with honesty, non-judgement and truth. There may be situations when anger shows up in your physical body, but your true self sees beyond it and responds with understanding and compassion. Your responses become natural once you begin to remove judgement, beliefs and the idea that you are a seperate self. When you recognise that the substance of each of us is awareness, it becomes more difficult to see anyone being any different than you. Despite how they behave or respond. You remember intuitively that most people respond according to their programming. If it is out of alignment with their true self, it is not their fault.

Since love is the foundation of everything, the biggest key to living authentically is finding that love within you. When we see that we are made of love and open ourselves up to that, love can not help but flow through us and is spilled out in abundance through your authentic self.

It may not always be easy to let go of your beliefs and judgements and accept every situation as it comes and I hope to address this in future chapters.

Lastly, if you allow it, the universe will draw you toward your authentic self. Videos, blogs and situations in life seem to present themselves to you just when you need to see them. If you have read to this point, I hope it is a guide for you as well.

I welcome and encourage any comments or questions and will respond to all of them.

In the love that we are,

Paul