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During an episode of last year’s Nip/Tuck, a grandmother, played by Vanessa Redgrave, challenges her grandson with the following question: “Do you want a safe life, or an authentic one?” Too many times, we choose to follow the safe path, sometimes becoming the roles we think we “should” take on, sometimes accepting the “not quite it” job with benefits and a steady paycheck, sometimes working to meet others’ needs and expectations while ignoring our own goals and dreams. In the process of holding on to what seems safe, or comfortable, we lose sight of our “higher” selves and become separated from the things that give our lives greater meaning. What would it be like to live an authentic life instead?
Living an authentic life means many things. It includes being real, or genuine. It involves being in touch with your whole, more balanced self and then bringing this balance into your everyday living. Being authentic requires stepping out of the safety zone and taking risks that sometimes involve leaping into the unknown. To paraphrase a very dynamic speaker I once heard: You’ve got to get out of the “velvet rut” which, over time, has become so comfortable. Although it can feel so smooth and “known” to us, it is still a rut that keeps us trapped in situations and behaviors that now may not work as effectively as they used to.
In my private counseling work, I have developed The PRISM Model as a holistic way to identify where blocks, or ruts, have developed in our outer, more concrete Body/Mind world and how these keep us from connecting with our inner, higher world of Soul/Spirit. By determining where we are stuck, we can learn new ways to get out of the ruts and move forward to become our more authentic selves. A blending of Western and Eastern spiritual, psychological, and philosophical approaches, The PRISM Model provides a framework in which each of us can live more whole, healthy lives, regardless of our different personal belief systems. Another part of the model, called Zero Degrees of Separation, involves learning to live our current daily lives from the perspective of our higher spiritual selves rather than from the often disjointed, misguided perspective of our ego selves. By learning to live more authentically, the dissonance that often manifests as depression, anxiety, addiction, and a host of other dysfunctional conditions becomes less and less, and we are able to decrease our “degrees of separation” from Spirit.
Learning to live authentically also involves something else – the willingness and ability to awaken from the dreams that hold our focus in the outer material world of objects. Take a look around the world today – fear and terror, inequities and injustices, power imbalances and the general devaluing of life. These ruts, which create so much of the darkness in our world, often seem so real, and it can be very scary to awaken from them if they are all we know. When our eyes are used to the darkness, the light initially is painful, and we have a tendency to want to close our eyes again. However, as we individually choose to awaken to our authentic selves and shine our own lights out into the darkness, our world can gradually awaken and become more authentic, too.
As if all that were not enough, there is yet another aspect to being authentic, and this is what I have come to call “living from the heart.” Living from the heart involves learning to become quiet enough to hear one’s higher calling, that “still small voice” which intuitively and correctly guides us when we listen to it. My stepfather, who died this year after a long battle with a terminal disease, seemed to go through a process of shedding the roles and expectations of his own worldly experience. As he faced his own mortality, he became one of the most authentic and “real” people I have ever known. He reminded me and many others that “life is too short not to be doing with it what we’re really supposed to be doing with it.” To walk your own path in life that follows your heart and aligns with Spirit’s plan for you, regardless of what anyone else says you "should" do, is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself and your world. Sometimes, just putting one foot forward, even if you cannot yet see the ground ahead, moves you toward discovering your authentic life.
So, do you want a safe life, or an authentic one?
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