Living in authenticity

Clinical anxiety and depression are barely-discussed modern day pandemics. One manifests as excessive apprehension and restlessness; the other as emptiness and lethargy. Science attributes these illnesses to genetic and environmental factors (like childhood trauma and abuse). However, if one delves deeper, you’ll find two primary spiritual reasons for the above illnesses: Denying one’s shadows and living in inauthenticity.

A human being can’t be a storehouse of positive emotions alone. Just like human engineering comprises love, joy, peace and goodwill; it also feels pain, hurt, resentment and anger. Where there’s light, there’s shadow.

This is an inevitable truth, which is denied by New Age spiritual gurus. When toxic positivity is aggressively espoused, humans are likely to feel guilty about even a hint of negative emotion and end up suppressing the same. This is counterproductive and unhealthy! Repressed emotions can be the root cause of psychological as well as somatic illnesses. Authenticity is partly about owning one’s emotions, irrespective of whether they are positive or negative, and allowing yourself to feel them. It’s about allowing all manner of emotions to swim up to the surface of your consciousness and observing them detachedly. Allowing every emotion to fully run its course causes it to completely integrate with the consciousness, leading to a healthy, well-adjusted personality. It’s only when one shines light on one’s shadows can one’s consciousness heal and expand. Bound by constraints of birth, familial expectations, societal dos and don’ts and so on, one advertently or inadvertently lives in inauthenticity. We often work at jobs we don’t have an inclination towards and fall into relationship-traps out of a sense of obligation.

In short, it’s not uncommon for humans to live for societal approval and encomium. Living in inauthenticity slowly saps the soul energy and may lead to illnesses. Recognising who you truly are, expressing yourself in creative ways and spending time with people who genuinely make you happy can advance one’s soul purpose. Prolonged fear-laden silence on issues one strongly believes in also amounts to compromising on one’s authenticity. Standing up for what one truly believes in and speaking up against atrocities could also help regain authenticity and further one’s spiritual quest.