Authentic Self

[Shadow Wolf]

I try to be myself. But it's hard when you were taught growing up not to be yourself and who you are as a person is wrong.

Im still figuring out the answers to your questions

I do tend to roll my eyes at these so-called "free spirits" who say they are being their authentic selves, but there are basically just like everyone else, and they don't have to overcome society to be themselves. They just act and look like TV amd magazines tells them to.

 

[VoidCat]

I do tend to roll my eyes at these so-called "free spirits" who say they are being their authentic selves, but there are basically just like everyone else, and they don't have to overcome society to be themselves. They just act and look like TV amd magazines tells them to.

Being yourself can be dangerous even if you are harming no one. I speak from experience there.

Society sucks when it comes to anything different

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

How does one go about crafting and living as their authentic Self? How did you get in touch with it?

How does one strengthen their sense of 'Self'? What it is that defines you, and makes you, you?

"Being your true authentic self means what you say in life aligns with what your actions. Your authentic self goes beyond what you do for a living, what possessions you own, or who you are to someone (mom, brother, girlfriend)...

Keep in mind, your authentic self is completely different from what our society encourages these days, which is leading with your best self."

What it means to be your authentic self | Center for Growth Therapy).

(This article closes with some tips for finding your 'self')

You are heading into the territory of the Existentialists. While I don't recommend reading Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" (especially in the French!), I might suggest a rather more fun read, "At the Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails" by Sarah Bakewell. Great fun, and a pretty good look at what Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus and others actually thought about authenticity in living one's life.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Being yourself can be dangerous even if you are harming no one. I speak from experience there.

Society sucks when it comes to anything different

I think that not being yourself is worse. It always hurts you.

 

[VoidCat]

I think that not being yourself is worse. It always hurts you.

I have cptsd. From being forced to act like who I am not and being abused due to my autism. It hurts always when you pretend. But sometimes doing so may save your life and either way in such situations you'll be traumatized if you act like yourself and traumatized if you don't.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

I have cptsd. From being forced to act like who I am not and being abused due to my autism. It hurts always when you pretend. But sometimes doing so may save your life and either way in such situations you'll be traumatized if you act like yourself and traumatized if you don't.

Please forgive me if I hurt you, I certainly did not mean to. I have no real way to understand what it is like to be on the spectrum, nor to be abused for being on it.

 

[VoidCat]

Please forgive me if I hurt you, I certainly did not mean to. I have no real way to understand what it is like to be on the spectrum, nor to be abused for being on it.

You haven't hurt me. You are correct it does hurt pretending. Having done it my whole life even tho im safe now I'm damned if I act like myself damned if I don't. Masking my autism causes flashbacks and not masking it does too. I'm trying my hardest to act like myself these days tho cuz it's healthier for me.

Maybe one day I'll feel free to fully be myself

 

[Stevicus]

How does one go about crafting and living as their authentic Self? How did you get in touch with it?

How does one strengthen their sense of 'Self'? What it is that defines you, and makes you, you?

"Being your true authentic self means what you say in life aligns with what your actions. Your authentic self goes beyond what you do for a living, what possessions you own, or who you are to someone (mom, brother, girlfriend)...

Keep in mind, your authentic self is completely different from what our society encourages these days, which is leading with your best self."

What it means to be your authentic self | Center for Growth Therapy).

(This article closes with some tips for finding your 'self')

I remember thinking about questions like this when I was a kid and a lot of people were out trying to find themselves. Of course, I never had any trouble finding myself. I always knew where I was. Oftentimes nobody else knew, but I knew.

At some point, I think I gave up trying to find any great meaning or significance to life. There are no answers anyway; at least, not anything that can be truly verified or confirmed. We're just guessing and speculating and muddling our way through - not that there's anything wrong with that.

As far as I can tell, my "self" is here, in this existence, as one of nearly 8 billion inhabitants on Spaceship Earth. I don't know how or why we wound up here - or if there's any reason at all. Since I'm apparently stuck here for a while longer, all I can do is just do what I can do.

I might still comment on things - on society, politics, culture, and life in the world and these United States. If I felt I had any real purpose in life, I guess it would be to tell everyone that they all suck. Well, not really, but I think that we need to look forward and try to resolve many of the problems that face the world. Not for my "self," but for others. If we're all going to be stuck on this mudball rushing through space, then all we can do is try to make it better.

 

[The Hammer]

I try to be myself. But it's hard when you were taught growing up not to be yourself and who you are as a person is wrong.

Im still figuring out the answers to your questions

Up until I was 20, I didn't have a "self". I was whatever people wanted or needed of me.

 

[The Hammer]

You are heading into the territory of the Existentialists. While I don't recommend reading Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" (especially in the French!), I might suggest a rather more fun read, "At the Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails" by Sarah Bakewell. Great fun, and a pretty good look at what Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus and others actually thought about authenticity in living one's life.

I've always been a bit of an existentialist at heart.

 

[Twilight Hue]

I absolutely understand that, and agree.

But 'who' are you to others? We are all inextricably linked in ways people rarely understand.

But we all have a divine spark of creative originality that we can bring out as a reflection of this inner world.

I think that creative originality lays with every sentient being by way we have bodies and minds, but can never be in complete control, of which we were formed and will once again break apart was not the doing of any aggregate being, but by what is essentially our expansive self of which others are formed via this expansion.

Not many may even notice, or associate this expansive self as actually being our authentic self because we are so preoccupied with our individuality, sharing many similar views and even dissimilar ones that carry the determination of who we are what we are to whom, when all we have to do is essentially focus on the interconnectivity and interrelationships to answer that question.

 

[Fool]

Do you know how to address any topic without relating it to Christianity/Jesus? Or is that a default?

Is that your authentic Self?

Because idk if I've ever seen "your" words here.

Only what you post about Jesus/Xianity.

The protagonist isn't relative. The idea is. In babies a personality, a mask, hasn't been formed yet. So then, the mask can be changed by simply assuming a different personality. All the world is a stage and we choose our parts that we will play, or not. To be or not to be.

The authentic self doesn't have a form, nor will maintain one forever.

Show me your original face before you were born." Zen - koan

 

[The Hammer]

The protagonist isn't relative. The idea is. In babies a personality, a mask, hasn't been formed yet. So then, the mask can be changed by simply assuming a different personality. All the world is a stage and we choose our parts that we will play, or not. To be or not to be.

The authentic self doesn't have a form, nor will maintain one forever.

Show me your original face before you were born." Zen - koan

.and what mask do you wear?

 

[Stonetree]

I regard my entire existence as an aggregate that forms and then falls apart, but is never really gone.
I'd appreciate more information concerning the bold printed words, if you don't mind.

 

[Twilight Hue]

@Stonetree

I'm talking about fundamental matter which isn't ever destroyed but rearranges and reforms.

 

[Stonetree]

@Stonetree

I'm talking about fundamental matter which isn't ever destroyed but rearranges and reforms.

Got it....and I have to agree with your train of thought....

 

[VoidCat]

Up until I was 20, I didn't have a "self". I was whatever people wanted or needed of me.

I've basically been what I've needed to survive. So. I get that.

 

[Fool]

.and what mask do you wear?

anytime we play a role, wear a hat, such as, father, mother, sister, brother, boy, girl, man, woman, we are wearing a mask, a covering. the covering is temporary. revelation(to uncover) explains the process of uncovering and when love opened the 7th seal, there was silence in heaven. why is self astonished? linchi gave a great shout when he realized this and slapped huang-po's face

the mind, consciousness doesn't have an exact form and the sooner someone realizes that, the freerier they can become vs trying to project an image of what they "believe" self should look like.

i wear a lot of false masks but a mind is formless, infinite. most of the time i play the fool, a fool on a fool's journey. joesph campbell called it the hero's journey.


c. 1200, persoun, "an individual, a human being," from Old French persone "human being, anyone, person" (12c., Modern French personne) and directly from Latin persona "human being, person, personage; a part in a drama, assumed character," originally "a mask, a false face," such as those of wood or clay, covering the whole head, worn by the actors in later Roman theater. OED offers the general 19c. explanation of persona as "related to" Latin personare "to sound through" (i.e. the mask as something spoken through and perhaps amplifying the voice), "but the long o makes a difficulty ...." Klein and Barnhart say it is possibly borrowed from Etruscan phersu "mask." De Vaan has no entry for it.


be a passerby, or don't become attached. no thing is permanent.

 

[The Hammer]

anytime we play a role, wear a hat, such as, father, mother, sister, brother, boy, girl, man, woman, we are wearing a mask, a covering. the covering is temporary. revelation(to uncover) explains the process of uncovering and when love opened the 7th seal, there was silence in heaven. why is self astonished? linchi gave a great shout when he realized this and slapped huang-po's face

the mind, consciousness doesn't have an exact form and the sooner someone realizes that, the freerier they can become vs trying to project an image of what they "believe" self should look like.

i wear a lot of false masks but a mind is formless, infinite. most of the time i play the fool, a fool on a fool's journey.


c. 1200, persoun, "an individual, a human being," from Old French persone "human being, anyone, person" (12c., Modern French personne) and directly from Latin persona "human being, person, personage; a part in a drama, assumed character," originally "a mask, a false face," such as those of wood or clay, covering the whole head, worn by the actors in later Roman theater. OED offers the general 19c. explanation of persona as "related to" Latin personare "to sound through" (i.e. the mask as something spoken through and perhaps amplifying the voice), "but the long o makes a difficulty ...." Klein and Barnhart say it is possibly borrowed from Etruscan phersu "mask." De Vaan has no entry for it.

 

[Fool]

View attachment 63585

narcissists are afraid of appearing to be fools, or foolish. hypocrites wear a mask so as to appear as something they are not. they wear the label but not the action.