We all make choices, but in the end our choices make us.
We can think of Self Authenticity as the personal awareness of the individual to be faithful to his or her core personality, character and even spirit, soul and as experienced at various levels of consciousness.
Self Authenticity is often described as a revelatory state, where one perceives in a fundamental new way oneself and others as well as the world. Self Authenticity is that personal awareness that can be experienced only within our inner core.
This inner awareness of one's own experience may emerge as degrees of consciousness and against external environmental influences as in social and cultural roles as well as from the physical world of phenomena. As human beings, we experience many drives and desires that feel to be as “inner strives", but are, in fact, culturally bound. To maintain a more comfortable existence and relationships with the social world, we adopt a particular mode of living succumbing to external pressures. We then forego our genuine ethics and authentic expressions and aspirations and all those quality that are uniquely our and need expression. Instead, we rather believe in what we are supposed to be and do.
Often this means justifying characteristics in our behaviours that do not express our own aspirations. Or we ignore crucial facts about our own lives to avoid uncomfortable truths, and we let be defined by our jobs, functions or roles.
The Authentic Self is that part of you that can't be determined by your occupation, social status or role. It is the entire composite of all your experiences, capabilities and wisdom. It is the sum of the elements that are uniquely yours and demand genuine expression, rather than what you believe you are expected to be and do.
In psychology "authenticity" means to seek to live one's life according to the needs of one's inner emotions, rather than the exigency of society or one's early familial conditioning.
Self Authenticity has a strong relation with inner freedom and is connected with the creativity of expression. The authentic drive to action must emerge from the individual, and can't be motivated externally.
In existential philosophy, this freedom of expression is seen as essential to authenticity. The French philosopher J.P. Sartre recognised that personal freedom may be too unsettling for some individual and consequently leading to the acceptance of boundaries as containment for existential anxiety at the price of inauthentic living.
Because of social pressures to live within the boundaries of norms, and in part because it may be suited to the individual's character; Self Authenticity is essentially a complex state to fully achieve. However, it is nevertheless open to development and expansion in anyone’s life.
In counselling meetings, we can explore together new ways to reconnect with your inner core, and find your true voice.
