That solution is the problem
But there's another way back home
What does authenticity mean to you?
And what about connection?
Dr Gabor Mate, whose work has changed me deeply and continues to bring me closer to my truth every time I dig into it, underlines that we, human beings, have two core needs: the need for authenticity, the need for connection (which we can also call the need to belong).
I've been reflecting a lot of this this past year... and I've come to the conclusion that our need for authenticity is even stronger, as an adult, than our need for connection.
But as a child, as he explains, our need for connection will trump our need for authenticity at every corner.
Of course it does…
Connection to our family system does not only feel like survival at that time of our life, it means survival. And the younger, the truer. A baby can't survive on its own. It takes years before we can sustain any kind of autonomy... if not a decade! if not more. And this is why no matter how cliche and annoying it sounds, we all need to trace our way back to our childhood if we want to find our way back to our true self today and understand the ways through which we've been unconsciously interacting with the world for all those years.
This is why the first two months of our lives have been shown to matter more than any other period of our time on Earth. If we're not connected at such a young age, we stand absolutely no chance to ever get older. And anyone who's spent time with little babies can attest that, contrary to common beliefs, newborns are not blank canvas we can paint in whichever way we choose to! We come into this world with a full set of cues on our personalities and unique features, even if they don't translate into skills, talents, so called flaws or preferences yet. So from day 1, we actually start adapting to our environment, understanding on the soul level -before we have a brain developed enough to put things into concepts (or let alone words)- that we will need connection with others more than we will need to be ourselves, at least for now.
And there's a price to pay for that.
And NOT a small one.
Because authenticity is where all our strength, our magic, our power, our ability to love -in the true sense of the world- lies. Without authenticity, we're only playing a role. It seems obvious, and yet most of us do not realize how often we're reacting to our surroundings, driven by habituated behavioral patterns, instead of responding to what is, from the essence of who we are.
We identify with our job, our marital status, our age, our body or a hobby of ours. We become a doctor, a parent, a millennial or [insert decade here]-something. We become a pretty or unattractive, in shape or unfit, tall or tiny person. We're a writer, a runner or a stamp collector (why not); and we let all those labels define us. It makes us feel like we belong somewhere... with some people, in some ways.
And it tricks us into feeling safe... If we have a herd, we have rules to follow, codes to abide by, a line between right or wrong we can rely on without having to take any part in drawing it. It's amazing! Until it isn't.
We human beings love the one-size-fits-alls. They never work, but somehow we still believe they're worth a try. Surely the problem only comes from the way we shaped the container! Not from the fact that we're not meant to be contained. So we like to believe that there's going to be a culture, a way of speaking, a way of thinking and a way of relating that is going to solve every problem we've created.
And yet we all can witness that some like it hot, some like it cold, some of us are introverts and others the opposite, that we either prefer sunset or sunrise, and that we can't train ourselves to prefer vanilla to chocolate ice cream - or broccoli to cauliflower (yes some people do love each of them and some people even love both enough to compare them; I'm one of those people).
We are all the same in essence but we're all very different in forms. Yet we're conditioned to fight this idea of oneness with everything we have, while trying to live along a fake idea of sameness we're never going to find.
I love how innocent we all are... It’s both humbling and endearing. We tend to be so sure of what we know while doubting ourselves constantly, when we should trust ourselves wholeheartedly and constantly doubt everything we know.
I have learned indeed that, contrary to what I've been taught, we are all incredibly good, kindhearted, compassionate, magical beings, hiding underneath our fears and defense mechanisms which tend to drive the show and our not so praisable behaviors.
No one who's connected to their truth and integrity would ever hurt a soul or another being... No one. Whichever harm we cause is always driven by an unexamined thought, wreaking havoc in the background of our subconscious and creating floods of painful emotions which then drive us to defend ourselves by attacking everyone -and everything- else.
Through now years of coaching and months of somatic work, I've witnessed every single time in myself and in others, how those so-called toxic thoughts actually all spur from a will to compensate for this terror of unworthiness we all secretly hold in the darkest corners of our mind. And every time some empathetic light comes their way, those alchemized thoughts are transmuted into the foundation of healthy, loving, behaviors towards everyone else, ourselves, and all that is.
It's interesting because the common assumption is that we're deeply flawed, selfish, coldblooded spiritless humans, hidden underneath the saving grace of civilization and its correcting mechanisms. But those so-called "solutions" crafted by well-meaning intellectuals are the roots of our own demise. Because as Einstein reminded us -and as I was exploring in my previous post, we cannot solve a problem with the level of consciousness which created it.
We can't use a rule to undo the damage being done to us by another rule. We can't just contract the opposite muscle to correct the fact that the opposite muscle is contracted. I mean we can! But it won't help.
Let's unpack this one:
When we're scared, we contract. It can happen on the psychic level or on the somatic one. Same principle. It's easier to understand it on the body level though... So let's say you get attacked by someone who grabs your left shoulder. Fear can then freeze you in a position where your left shoulder stays too high "forever". Indeed, as long as our system has not been notified that we're safe, the defense mechanism which has been triggered will stay in place. And since most of us have never been trained to process our strong emotions and tend to bottle them up in the basement of our mind called Denial, our bodies never get the release signal they so greatly deserve.
Years later, pain has built up in our shoulder and someone might make the observation that it's our fault because we're holding our left shoulder too high. It's called a vicious posture in western medicine, further reflecting our misunderstanding of the phenomenon... It's not a mistake we're making, it's a very clever act of defense our body once needed. Our role is not to blame the body for protecting us! Our role is to let our body know that we're safe now, it can relax. Its job is done.
Pulling down on our shoulder will help us look "right", yes, but it won't help our shoulder relax; it will double the strain. It will not heal you, it will only get you hurt quicker. Your shoulder is now being pulled up AND down at the same time. Under the pressure, some day it will tear or break... That's pure logic, and yet it's not logic we're trained to acknowledge.
What we really need, what we always and truly ever need, is to guide ourselves back to the root of the fear, to safety. The upward contraction will fade instantly and our shoulder will be back into a relaxed state in its socket. We'll be out of "there" and finally "here". Once again, it's so logical! But that's not the way we're trained to look at the body… and even less so at the mind.
Nevertheless, so with the body, so with the psyche. Everything that is fixed in our behavior is a reflection of a moment in time where fear prompted us to react in a certain way, a way we're now stuck in and believe to be our personality. So we judge ourselves for having been born so defective, without realizing that this so-called fault of us once served a purpose (be it our inability to express anger in a dangerous household, which now makes us feel like a doormat or, on the other end of this spectrum, our need to constantly protect those who were weaker than us, which now drives us to a anger management seminar). When we understand the purpose, we can release the pattern.
Notice my choice of the word "release"... Fighting the pattern will not help. Erasing the pattern is impossible. The only thing we can do is shower the pattern with love... and LET the pattern heal. What fear created, fear cannot ease. If fear made me up my shoulder, fear of having it up will not solve my problem; it will create a second one. Only by gently loving my shoulder back to its socket can I start a new way of life.
We all know how the saying: the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. But that's not true. The road to Hell is paved by unexamined beliefs mistaken as intentions. Being intentional is the cure to the Hell we self-create around us. Being intentional allows us to question what's really going on, what really feels true to us, what authentically works, no matter what we were told would work or not.
Authenticity is our way back home.
And once we're home, we're safe.
Once we're safe, we can relax, we can open...
and only then can we finally truly connect.
To summarize my message today: On our way to connection, we tend to lose our authenticity... but our authenticity is actually the ONLY way to connection.
It can be a hard truth to grapple with, but it's a truly life changing one.
My way to you is never found by looking at you with my questions; it can only be found by looking within myself for the answers. Once I know who I am, I can stop protecting and projecting... and I can start to open and understand.
Authenticity is not to be feared, authenticity is where our strength lies.
CARECHECK: Please bring to mind one of the person you love most, someone you deeply trust and who deeply trusts you.
What is one small thing that you never let that person about you until now?
Pick something very specific and somewhat silly. Do not tackle this exercise head on with a debilitating fear... Think of one tiny story or detail a part of you does not feel comfortable to share with them, because you're consciously or not dreading their reaction.
Why? What is the fear? How would it feel to let them know about this? To let yourself be truly known by someone you truly love?
“But leo, would they still love me if they knew?”
The answer is always YES. And the answer is also 99.9% of the time that they would love you EVEN more...
Try it out.
"...Those so-called toxic thoughts actually all spur from a will to compensate for this terror of unworthiness we all secretly hold in the darkest corners of our mind" - WOW. I need to start compiling all of these articles into a document so I can highlight the dozens of incredible insights and quotes in every single one. Thank you for sharing your light.