I think I have struggled all my life to live an authentic life. Mostly my attempt to be authentic has shown up as “doing it my way.” What I now realize is that I was actually paying attention to what I felt deep inside. I was giving secondary value to what others were telling me. I agreed with what my teachers or my culture told me, but only if it felt right.
I now consider that awareness, mindfulness is not a key to understanding everything. Mindfulness is a key to feeling everything. Feeling is a reliable way of connecting with everything. Feeling is my reliable path to authenticity.
Being attached to a way of thinking is a disturbance to authenticity. Learning to pay attention to my experience allows me to become more authtentic. Paying attention to my experience is something I feel with my whole body. Being authentic requires being immersed in feeling.
Men have a hard time being authentic, immersed as they are in the expectations of our culture. Raised on a diet of patriarchy, their ability to be authentic humans is stiffled. Their experience is clouded by patriarchy. Being authentic requires clear experience of feeling, and many men are hampered by notions of patriarchy, by social notions of what it means to be male.
Being a Buddhist can interfere with authenticity. Attempting to follow my or someone’s notion of the Buddhist path will cause me to ignore what I already know by paying aettention to my own inner guidance. My inner humanity is a more reliable guide. I trust my feelings more than I trust the notions of someone else, even the Buddha. To be authentic, I immerse myself in concentration on my inner feelings, my inner guidance.
Following any model can only get me so far, and then I have to be guided by my own authentic guidance. I experienced this as I followed the path of Catholicism. The guidance of the Catholic path only got me so far, and along the way I kept nudging my awareness to what was going on inside of me. The Catholic way, and the Buddhist way, may give me guidelines that are like safety railings along the path. But my own internal guidance shows my authentic way.
I have learned that I could become a good Catholic or a good Buddhist without ever becoming a good, authentic Barry.
I resist the urging of some people around me who speak of being compassionate in the Buddhist way to perpetrators of harm, such as the leaders in our government. My whole inside rebels to that notion. My whole body is aware that these people are a danger and are harming many. They are a danger to me. Ignoring that danger and harm is spiritual bypassing, a lack of being immersed in the suffering being caused. My body, with all it feels, tells me to pay attention to those harmed and extend compassion to them and their suffering.
Not being in touch with my own suffering and that of others is a lack of being in touch with my inner human guidance. I cannot be authentic, I cannot be authentic Barry without being in habitual touch with what I feel. Shielding myself from my feelings, ignoring what I feel, is not helpfu. I want to pay attention to my guidance to authenticity and wholeness which comes from inside.