The Truth About Authenticity

The missing piece of spirituality I had been searching for was within me all along

It’s human nature to seek externally for the answers we are looking for. But the answers to spirituality will never be found outside of us. Every answer we’re looking for can be found within. And sometimes the most spiritual thing we will ever do is learn to accept and love ourselves unconditionally.

Photo taken by me somewhere in the Okanagan Valley

I’ve been feeling energy shifting lately, both personally and collectively, and it’s brought a lot of questions. As I’ve been riding the waves of this shift, I’m realizing that everything is connected to one recurring theme that has been following me throughout this journey.

Authenticity.

This journey has brought authenticity to the forefront and I’m beginning to understand its importance in a much deeper way.

It isn’t only about getting honest with ourselves so we can heal. Authenticity is the essence of who we are beneath every version of ourselves we have created in order to survive.

And with every layer we unravel, we get closer to remembering and feeling that truth.

PTSD Recovery Led Me to Discover My Spiritual Side

For most of my life, I rejected spirituality because I didn’t understand the difference between spirituality and religion. I was raised Catholic, but even as a child, it was never something I could get on board with, and I felt a strong aversion to it.

Walking into a church filled me with fear and dread.

I now know that was my inner wisdom rejecting something that didn’t align with who I was. Religion is fear based and teaches that love comes with conditions. The threat of going to hell if you step out of line is definitely not the energy of love.

I stopped attending church the minute I was finally allowed to make my own choices. And it’s strange to me now when I think about the ways our free will is stifled during childhood as we’re taught what to think rather than how to think for ourselves.

Once I was free from religious indoctrination I wanted nothing to do with anything that reminded me of it, including spirituality. Because at that point in my life, they both felt like the same thing.

Now I know better.

Seeking

I began my spiritual journey the way most people do. I had an awakening, and began seeking information because I wanted to understand what I was experiencing.

Most of the information I found came from New Age spirituality. I learned a lot, and it was exactly what I needed at that point in my journey. It helped me understand myself and the world around me in a different way.

But even though a lot of it resonated with me, it always felt like something was missing.

So I continued seeking.

I kept uncovering new information. Some of it resonated with me, and some did not. The thing about seeking information is that it can become a never ending process of going down one rabbit hole after another. There is always something else to learn, another perspective to consider, and another idea to explore.

There’s nothing wrong with seeking information. It’s a part of being human. It’s how we learn, grow, and evolve.

But during all of the seeking, I still couldn’t find that missing piece.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

— Rumi

Mystical Experience

A few summers ago, I had a life changing mystical experience, and I shared it a couple of weeks ago. It’s an experience I revisit whenever I need a reminder of what the energy of love feels like, and how connected everything is.

And that experience had been on my mind quite a bit before I shared the story, and I finally understand why.

It brings everything back to authenticity and why it has become such an important part of my journey.

Questioning the Performances

The last little while I’ve been feeling different about and questioning a few things, including spirituality. I started seeing things through a different lens, and some of the things I was once drawn to no longer resonate.

I had also been noticing some of the people I followed on social media who I once thought were genuine seemed to be putting on a performance when it came to spirituality and healing.

I started noticing the picture perfect images. The moments captured to show others how connected, healed, or spiritual they were. Photos of people sitting in a field with dandelions in their hair, talking about feeling completely at one with nature.

There was a time when I thought those moments were beautiful.

Now, I see them differently.

Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with being in nature, sharing beautiful moments, or expressing gratitude and connection. I do it all the time.

But when I experienced the kind of moments those people were talking about, I was in awe and the last thing I was thinking about was taking a photo to share with the online world to let people know how spiritual or connected I was.

Because moments of feeling that kind of interconnectedness with everything are not about being seen.They are about being. And that difference started becoming more and more obvious to me.

Creating An Image

I also started noticing that sometimes people can immerse themselves in spiritual practices as another way of bypassing the emotions they’ve buried and call it healing. Spirituality can become another mask to hide behind, another identity to attach to, or another way of telling ourselves and others that we have healed without actually allowing ourselves to feel what’s underneath.

And I started seeing how easy it is for any of us to create an image of who we want to be. We can even convince ourselves we are being authentic while still seeking validation, approval, or recognition from others.

We can perform spirituality and healing, but we cannot fake authenticity.

Authenticity does not seek attention. It does not need to prove itself, and it doesn’t need an audience to confirm it exists.

“Authenticity, to me, is something that you feel, and if it doesn’t feel authentic, you pick up on it right away.”

— Rachel Morrison

Authenticity Cannot Be Performed

Seeing these masks and performances were bothering me and I couldn’t figure out why, until recently. The energy shift I’ve been feeling helped me to understand that it wasn’t the performances themselves that were bothering me. It’s about the energy, the inauthentic feeling behind it all.

And that awakened me to another truth.

I’ve always said that authenticity is the highest vibrational frequency and I finally have the insight to understand it more fully.

Authenticity is our true essence and unconditional love of self.

Authenticity and self-love are one in the same. That unconditional love and acceptance is what gives us the courage and space to be authentic, and being our authentic selves is the expression of that self-love.

And unconditional love cannot be performed, because it’s not something we see, it’s something we feel.

Looking Within

Being authentic is more than “being yourself,” being “brutally honest,” or not caring what others think about us.

Authenticity is about being true to who we are.

It’s about not compromising our values, or abandoning ourselves to be accepted.

It’s about not needing or seeking external validation.

Because when we are living from the authentic frequency of who we are, we won’t feel like we need to do any of those things.

Stepping into authenticity requires self-awareness and self-acceptance because we cannot truly know, or be ourselves until we are willing to look within and accept what we find there.

And without that, authenticity will always feel difficult because we are still trying to create ourselves from the outside in rather than discovering who we have always been from the inside out.

Love Is Who We Are

Love is not only an emotion we feel, and it’s more than the affection we feel toward the people in our lives who we love.

It’s a powerful energy that exists within each and every one of us.

It is our soul.

Understanding this intellectually and actually feeling it are two different things though. And an intellectual understanding without feeling it can lead to another place where we perform.

When we begin to feel that unconditional self-acceptance and self-love, it changes the way we view ourselves and the entire world.

We begin to notice those who accept themselves unconditionally. And these are the people who don’t feel the need to perform. They are changing the world simply by living from the frequency of their soul.

“Authenticity is the highest version of love.”

- Darius J. Wright

The Missing Piece

Even though I knew deep down the answers I was seeking would ultimately be found within me, I had still been searching externally.

We look outside ourselves for the thing we believe will finally complete us, finally make sense of everything, heal us, and give us the answers we have been searching for.

There is nothing wrong with seeking. It’s human nature to do so. But I realized that I needed to step back from New Age spirituality and when I did, a couple of interesting things happened.

I realized that New Age spirituality is not much different than any other system that tries to control humanity. It sells people on practices, “rules,” and rituals, like any other religion or system.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to spread love and light, or practices that support our healing. They can be wonderful and beautiful. But what I was noticing were the performances from people who believe they are more awakened and enlightened than others based on the ideas and practices from another man made construct. And that is just the ego attaching itself to a new identity.

The memory of my experience under the stars where I was filled with love and feeling connected to everything started to resurface once I backed away from New Age spirituality.

And around that same time, a video about love and authenticity appeared when I opened YouTube.

When I watched it, it felt like I found that missing piece.

The way things were explained felt like a piece of home that led me to understand things differently.

“Only the truth of who you are, if realized, will set you free.”

— Eckhart Tolle

The Mirror

When I reflect back on that night under the stars, I now see it as much more than the most profound feeling of love I had ever known.

It was a mirror being held up in front of me to show me my soul. I was being shown the truth of who I am, that I am love. We all are.

That mirror was showing me the love I felt that night was not something separate from me. That love is me. It was never something outside of myself, and I was lucky enough to experience it for a brief moment.

It really is that simple.

We humans have a way of complicating things. We like to analyze and understand everything intellectually. We convince ourselves that there must be another answer somewhere, something else we need to find, something else we need to learn, even when the answer is right in front of us.

Even when it is shown to us through an experience as profound as the one I had that night under the stars.

And ironically, I did not recognize that experience as the answer I had been seeking until I finally stopped seeking.

Authenticity Changes Everything

Once we begin to understand that being authentic means accepting and loving ourselves unconditionally, everything begins to change.

We start to view ourselves differently.

The things we once engaged in may no longer resonate.

The ways we allowed others to treat us may no longer feel acceptable.

Because when we truly see ourselves as love, we cannot continue to relate to ourselves in ways that deny that truth. And seeing ourselves as love also changes the way we see others.

We become aware of the judgements we make. We become more understanding of the fact that everyone is on their own journey, living with different experiences, different levels of awareness, and different understandings.

We accept that we cannot force others to see, or understand things from our perspectives and life experiences.

All we can do is be.

Be the frequency of love that we are.

And that alone has the power to change the world.

No performance required.

And when we are finally free to live in that loving frequency that is our soul, others start to feel it too. It sends out a ripple that reminds us there is so much more beneath the masks, the fear, and the stories we have carried for so long.

Because when one of us rises into the frequency of our authentic selves, we all rise.

What are your thoughts on authenticity? Have you ever questioned what New Age spirituality teaches? I would love to hear your thoughts and insights. If you feel nudged to, please share in the comments or chat👇

As always, I’m so grateful to have you here, walking alongside me on this journey of self-discovery. If this post resonated, clicking the heart below, or sharing it helps others in our Collective find it too. And if you feel called to support my work further, a coffee is always appreciated 🙏💖👇