Authenticity vs Just Being an A**hole
Hello there.
Living by and speaking your own truth,
is not just an important spiritual practice,
it's an important life practice.
However, it can give you the license to say whatever you want,
regardless of the impact on other people.
All in the name of Moral Honesty.
Brutal Honesty is not a tool to be taken lightly.
Authenticity in the Form of Brutal Honesty about someone else,
is often just an act of passive aggression,
defense mechanism,
a cover for emotional abuse and often an excuse or justification
for bailed personal attack.
We may in fact be fooling ourselves
when we say that what we love is honesty,
when in fact we love brutality more.
Why do we love brutality?
Because it saves us from being vulnerable and feeling powerless.
It's a common reaction to feeling hurt in some way.
We need to be aware of
whether we are acting in our own best interests or theirs,
so that we can make a conscious decision
about whether or not sharing our opinion is in fact in alignment
with the highest good in the scenario we find ourselves in.
And if it is, how to deliver that opinion
that is in our own best interest and not necessarily theirs.
This takes a hell of a lot of honesty with ourselves.
It's very tempting for us to be brutally honest
in the name of authenticity, with someone
and to tell ourselves that it's for their own good,
when in fact, it is simply purely selfish on our part.
This pattern of brutal honesty
is common if we grew up in households
that were highly moral, or hypercritical.
If we grew up in this kind of household,
then our parents or caregivers
believed that criticism was a motivator for change.
If we grew up in this kind of household,
then we believed that something was wrong with us
and that in order to get acceptance
or whatever it is that we wanted,
we needed to change ourselves constantly
to reach some kind of arbitrary line of perfection.
Our wires have become crossed
to the degree that we now have an unconscious belief
that what feels bad is good for us,
and what feels good is bad for us.
Which is what happens when people hurt our feelings,
or do things that cause us pain,
and then tell us that it's for our own good.
We learned that this is the correct way to love,
when it isn't
When we love people in this way,
it is not love, it is abuse.
It also reinforces the programming
that something's wrong with us
or bad about us
and needs to be fixed.
There's no magic formula when it comes to
providing other people with our opinion.
A lot of it, in fact,
boils down to us being emotionally attuned enough
to the people in our environment,
to know whether we should or shouldn't share something
or how we should share that thing.
When it comes to authenticity,
we have to consider
the receptivity of the other partner
or the other person in the scenario.
Did they solicit our opinion?
Do they want it?
Is it going to benefit them, or do them harm?
Perhaps, we simply want to be authentic because we feel inhibited
and therefore feel the need to express ourselves.
When this is the case, we need to ask ourselves:
"Is there another way I could express myself
or as being authentic for the sake of feeling a sense of release or inner freedom
worth hurting someone else?"
The answer may be yes for you.
There's no right or wrong answer to that
But we have to be honest
about the fact that we are choosing in that moment
between us and them.
and this polarization is most likely going to create conflict.
So what I want you to do
is to question whether brutal honesty
is absolutely necessary.
You can ask yourself the following questions:
"What is my genuine intention for telling them this?"
"Is it for their good or my own good?"
"If it is necessary to speak my mind,
is it possible to do so without causing injury to the other person?"
When it comes to sharing something that's painful,
or that may not feel good to receive,
it's all about delivery.
When we tell someone something
from a place of genuinely caring about them and loving them,
it feels completely different
than when we tell someone something from any other motivation.
Anybody could tell the difference.
Criticism is a form of expression that honesty takes
and we do not understand what it means to be genuinely authentic.
For this reason,
I want you to watch my youtube video titled:
CRITICISM (How To Give and Take Feedback)
As people, we judge.
Judgment is how the ego navigates it's a way through this world.
It equates this judgment
with its ability to survive.
In the minute that we're judging someone,
we get to be right,
we get to be justified,
we get to be superior,
we get to be good...
But what's the risk in that?
The risk is, by being those things
we instantly make the other person
unjustified,
wrong,
inferior
and bad.
When we form negative opinions
or draw negative conclusions about someone
and then consider these judgments as truths about them,
we become hard energetically.
We lose our capacity to see different perspectives.
We're close-minded and closed hearted.
We invite a boatload of conflict into our lives as well,
which serves no one.
It is critical that we practice
becoming softer in our minds and hearts.
And to do this,
we can have opinions,
we simply have to hold them loosely enough,
that we can let go of them if they are no longer useful.
We need to seek to understand and be understood,
rather than to disagree or assert our opinion.
We need to question every single truth that we hold,
so that we can walk through the world with a kind of flexibility
that allows higher truths to reveal themselves to us.
You cannot stop yourself from judging.
Don't even try.
But what you can do,
is you can recognize these judgments
and not believe in them so fully.
Just because a judgment is being created by the mind,
doesn't mean it's necessarily a direct reflection of truth.
In fact, these judgments we make
are so often not about truth,
but more about a projection from our own subconscious mind,
that it would be wise for us
to not put stock in our own judgments so strongly.
This is especially true
when projection takes the form of:
"I know what is best for you".
Which it so often does when we're judging other people.
Ultimately, though we can have opinions,
we do not know what's best for someone else.
We only know what's best for ourselves.
To understand how this projection mechanism works,
watch my video on YouTube titled:
Projection (Understanding The Psychology of Predicting)
The heart of being authentic is vulnerability.
Now, the thing about vulnerability is,
we're damn scared of it,
because we're completely convinced
that when we're authentic, in a vulnerable way,
we're going to be rejected,
our truth is going to be denied,
we're going to be cast out, etc etc...
all of these things that we equate with losing our own lives.
But there is rarely ever
anything vulnerable about judgment.
There is rarely anything vulnerable
about brutal honesty.
To be authentic is to express and own up to one's own experience.
We express them
as if they are not absolute truth for anything or anyone,
except for ourselves and our own experience.
For example, let's say someone ran into your car;
You could think it's authentic to express:
"You know what, you're just too self-centered
to pay attention to anyone except yourself and where you want to go."
But this is actually just defense.
Which is the opposite of authenticity.
Being authentic may look something more like this:
"That was really scary.
That made me feel like I was invisible and didn't matter."
One of the best ways to figure out how to express yourself authentically,
is to ask yourself:
What is the opposite of being defensive
in this particular scenario?
This next point that I'm about to tell you
is the most important.
Whatever it is that you are trying to defend,
is in fact what you need to be vulnerable and authentic about.
I want you to think for a minute
about the kind of world you want to create here.
Because the world is only ever a reflection of ourselves.
Do you want a brutal world?
If so, be brutally honest.
Do you want a tender world?
If so, be tenderly honest.
In my opinion this world is harsh enough.
It's harsh to the degree
that it is not conducive to health and well-being on this planet.
So in my opinion,
we need to become more sensitive,
more and more and more sensitive.
We need to develop an ability to care for each other's hearts,
to the degree that we can take care of the fact
that we influence each other so greatly,
and not only that,
we need to understand that this ability to influence other people
or impact them or affect them...
It's a precious gift.
We have to care take that gift.
It is a gift
to be able to affect someone else
with our words.
Emotions are the core of every single relationship,
but the reality of our lives here today on this earth,
is that we are in an emotional Dark Age.
One that we, quite frankly,
have to wake up from.
We have to learn how to take care of each other's emotions.
For this reason, I want you to watch my video on YouTube titled:
Emotional Wake Up Call
A great game to play with yourself,
relative to telling other people information
of things which might be of a sensitive nature,
that might cause them injury,
is to pretend that you are completely in their shoes.
I mean totally completely in their shoes.
With all the same conditions.
Not necessarily even imposing your opinion
on their particular perspective
(which is what most of us do when we pretend to be in someone else's shoes).
we pretend to be ourselves in their shoes,
instead of them, in their shoes.
When we pretend in that way,
then you can look at the scenario.
"Is me sharing this truth with them,
going to cause them to feel better or worse?
Is it for their own good or not?"
You might then decide,
either not to share what you were going to share,
or you might decide to structure it in a different way,
so that it lands differently with them.
For the sake of your own self discovery
and expansion through the road of self-discovery,
I want you to ask yourself the following question:
Why do I believe that honesty must include brutality?
And that to be less than brutal in my honesty,
is to somehow be less honest or authentic?
What I am about to say
is the most important thing that I've said in this entire video.
Get ready! Stay tuned!
This is your slam-dunk truth moment:
You might find that it is really your vulnerability
hurt or anger that you want to be directly honest about,
but don't feel like you can.
So you are being inauthentic
in the form of passive aggression,
by covertly expressing those emotions
under the cloak of an honest opinion
about someone else.
Then, you are calling it
Moral Honesty.
Sometimes difficult things must be said.
Things that don't feel good to hear, but they can be said with discretion,
empathy, tact and kindness.
Without there being any limit to your freedom of expression
and without limiting your authenticity.
And remember,
if a voice that you are hearing
is not delivering a message in a loving way,
regardless of whether that voice is inside you,
or external to you,
then that voice is not speaking for your specific benefit.
Have a good week.
Subtitles by: Tanya Duarte www.tanyaduarte.com