Living Unbound

One of the traits that is common to being your authentic self is honesty. Just as you did when you were a child, you say what you want to and have no interest in holding back the truth to spare someones feelings or to make yourself look better.

There is of course a consequence of being truthful. Most people do not want to hear the truth, and would much prefer to be lied to if it makes them feel better about themselves. So it is not unusual that being authentic can lose you friends.

A self realized person will recognise when someone asks a question simply to bolster their ego, and by being honest, they are forced to see themselves from a different perspective. Many will just think of you as unkind, but some will self reflect.

It isn’t however, just in speech that honesty is maintained. Let me expand on this…

There are many “so called” spiritual people that act as if nothing bothers them. They can not be angry because they are above that emotion somehow. They may come off as superior to people who do not know better, but in fact this is just another ego trap. There is no freedom in holding back your feelings or ignoring some unpleasant circumstance that is happening in the moment. You are still trapped by your need to look “holy” or spiritual above all else.

These spiritual leaders may have many followers and place themselves above them, leading them further and further away from their true selves.

The truth in non-duality teaching is that there is no hierarchy. We are all the same awareness being expressed in human form. A self realized person sees themselves in everyone, and if you are open to it, you can see yourself in them as well.

You may have heard the terms “not personal”. This simply means that the true self is not the personal self you may think yourself to be. It is prior to your development and conditioning, much like a small child is, but since it is expressed in human form, it feels emotions rather than denying them. It allows them, just as it allows everything. Anger, grief, joy all appear in us as humans, but unlike those who think of themselves as separate beings, the backdrop of the authentic self lives in the foreground. Anger appears, and honesty and truth responds. Grief appears, but in the knowing that the true self lives beyond physical death, it may not last.

Things that happen in life are no longer taken personally. The don’t reflect who you are. They have no bearing on how you view yourself or anyone else. This is why the authentic self doesn’t experience suffering. If the person you think you are doesn’t actually exist except in your mind, then who is suffering? Besides suffering physically, all of our other suffering (fear, anxiety, depression) is due to thinking and reflecting these things back onto the separate self. Why is this happening? Why did this happen to me? These are not relevent questions to the self realized.

I remember a story one of my spiritual teachers told. She was a child, and her grandmother had passed away. After the funeral she went outside and was joyously running through the sprinklers. Her parents scolded her, and this was the beginning of her conditioning. You act a certain way in certain circumstances.

So it is not unusual to see childlike qualities in a self realized person. They return to some of the creative things they did and loved as a child.

Picasso once said that it has taken his entire life to learn how to paint as a child.

Be childlike. Be honest and enjoy the blessing that this life is!

Paul