Hey guys, if you are an avid reader of my blog then you are well aware of the Authentic Self. If you are a newbie then I will briefly describe the Authentic Self as the expression of your soul. The Authentic self if the essence of who we are. When we live in alignment with this inner voice our lives are full, joyful and satisfying. The issue is that most people don’t know how to stay connected to this inner knowing let alone how to live in a way that honors it.
My central struggle in life began directly after I had just “found” myself. Keep in mind that I didn’t even know what an authentic self was, but whatever this was it was magical and I could tell that most people around me were not there. This sounds totally backwards and that’s exactly what I thought. How on earth could I have just connected with this divine part of myself only to lose it or not know how to keep it? At first I thought it was a sick joke God was playing on me. Then I thought maybe I am just really dumb. All the ego negativity came pouring in. Self blame, self doubt, doubt about how life works, and doubt about God etc. I was only a teenager so I figured I would have been given some assistance in this matter. But you see that is what happens to all of us we just don’t know it. We don’t know how to know when we are being true to ourselves or when we aren’t. We think we need to protect ourselves from the world around us. We develop all of these defense mechanisms, false selves, masks, ego’s, you name it we do it.
Personally I sat in the devastation of having found this beautiful connection I could not even describe in words to then have it “taken” from me . . . or so I thought. And I would continue thinking that this is what happened for about 18 years. I had never found ANYONE to describe to me what had happened nor how to understand this loss until many many years later. I don’t have to go into detail, but I will let you know that it was the most profound pain I have ever felt and continued to feel for too many years to count. THIS event is exactly why I do what I do today. I love nothing more than teaching others about the anatomy of the True Self! How it works, why we perceive it as leaving and why we never EVER need to protect it from anyone besides our own Selves.
In the past 4 years I have come back to this beautiful connection I thought I lost long ago. I came back to it because I finally chose my TRUTH over my IDEALIZED TRUTH. What I mean is that the Authentic Self does not know what is cool or uncool. It does not care about what is popular, trendy, conventional, weird, right, wrong etc. The Authentic Self or SOUL does not work in measures, society standards, classroom rules, the in crowd, or anything else that only creates limitation. The authentic self is abundant and if listened to and followed, YOU will have the most abundant life you could ever imagine.
For years I would literally “abandon” my authentic truth because I thought others abandoned me. I was taking this connection away from MYSELF because I valued “fitting in” or “opinions”, “approval” OVER my own sense of SELF. Now in my defense I truly did not know what I was doing of course. When we know better, we do better. I didn’t realize that GOD was not trying to tell me something through these people. I had such a huge misperception like so many of us do that the things in my environment were a reflection of my worth. WHAT? Today this sounds totally insane, but that’s how most of us think.
Most of us are not raised in a world that is unconditionally loving. We don’t have a deep understanding that we are a SOUL that is here to have a human experience. We do not realize that we are absolutely PERFECT and that is not dependent on ANYTHING outside of the simple truth that just IS. When we live in a conditional world like we do, the messages we have received since we were young is that we need to please. We need to fit in to survive and we need to be accepted by others. We are all trained to live our lives for society rather than Soul.
I think that all sounds sweet, but the truth is that every time you value someone else’s standard, opinion or desire over the wisdom of your own inner compass, you are disconnecting from the deepest loving you will ever know. We need to start teaching our children and ourselves how to hear our SOUL. Our soul communicates to us through our emotions. When we are experiencing negative emotions it is because we are thinking, or doing something that is out of alignment with our TRUE SELVES.
The past few years my life has changed drastically. All the areas of my life that I had designed so that I would be seen as cool, popular, talented, beautiful, fit-in, be approved of or simply meet some perfectionist ideal, I let go of. As I began letting go more and more I began getting happier, healthier and more peaceful. I began recognizing my feelings as my guide. I started to honor everything my feelings would tell me and I would talk to my feelings out loud. Our feelings want nothing more than to be VALIDATED! The best way we can validate ourselves is by speaking up and out, so talk out loud 😉
The hardest part for me was not caring about what others would feel or think. Since I am so super sensitive, I could feel others feelings. What I had to learn was to allow others to feel what they feel and know the difference between honoring them in their process and honoring my own truth. When this one was mastered I began to coach others because I was then able to hear my own guidance so loud that it would not let me keep it to myself. My intuitive gifts wanted to be shared and so I did just that and it has been incredibly mutually enlightening.
After we stop allowing the opinions of others to sway us we then need to master the skill of honoring ourselves over fitting in or being cool or IDENTIFYING with anything other than what we like or how we feel regardless of anything outside of us. When your inner voice becomes your guru, you see everyone else in their own soul’s perfection as well.
The gifts your authentic self will give you expand and become more obvious each time you continue to choose it over anything and everything else. Your natural abilities will strengthen, your spiritual gifts expand and your calling becomes clear. When in doubt just tune into how you feel and no matter what KNOW that you were born PERFECT for your PURPOSE. This is the art of living from the INSIDE out!
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http://www.youtube.com/candacevandell/
Namaste, Candace
