"We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient
characteristic of Life is its coerciveness: it is always urgent,
here and now without any possible postponement. Life is
fired at us point blank."
"The desire to philosophize from the standpoint of standpointlessness,
as a purportedly genuine and superior objectivity, is either childish,
or, as is usually the case, disingenuous."
I am indebted to
Drew Kopp
who inspired this conversation.
It could be said that the
intention
of any school of philosophy is to explain, understand, and to provide
access
to who we really are. It could also be said that (at least one of) the
intentions
of all
disciplines
and even
religions
is to provide
access
to who we really are. No matter what the philosophy, no matter what the
discipline,
no matter what the
religion,
the Holy Grail of
all human inquiries
may just be the
access
to (and then the living of ie the experiencing of) our
authentic Self ie who we really are, our true nature. And we all seem
to know already, intuitively perhaps, that if we had that
access
/ that experience, life would go a whole lot easier for us.
It could equally be said that philosophy,
disciplines,
and
religion,
having already
walked
the path to authentic Self, both often as well as in-depth, both
successfully as well as enthusiastically, and having reached / touched
that Holy Grail, have documented it ie have left ample evidence of both
the path to
access
it, as well as the experience of it, in the form of
beliefs,
rituals, and (in many cases) books, both holy and otherwise, both
sacred
and profane.
Even with
the great love
and respect I have for philosophy,
disciplines,
and
religion,
and anyone else's experience for that matter, I have three
concerns with taking any of them at face value. The first is many of
them are dated ie they're not current. I mean that precisely, quite
literally.
Beliefs,
rituals, and books, regardless of how valuable they may be, are
always handed down from some point in the past, from
yesterday or even earlier - and the NOW (which is the
milieu of that Holy Grail) is not of the past. The second concern I
have is the experience of authentic Self they represent,
is prone to becoming collapsed with / blended into a
concept of authentic Self. And that's a concern which, it
appears, I can only resolve by ...
discovering authentic
Self for myself ...
... which brings me to the third concern I have: none of the above are
results of my own
personalinquiry
- rather, they represent what some other people
discovered about authentic
Self for themselves.
So when I ask myself the question "When am I being my most authentic
Self?" (phrasing it another way, "Who am I being when I'm being who I
really am?") and I just look at what
shows up
rather than trying to explain, understand, or match it up with an
already known
philosophy,
discipline,
or
religion,
I get something really tangible, something much more immediate,
something that
life fires at me point blank
(as
Jose Ortega y Gasset
may have said).
The first thing I notice is I'm being my most authentic Self when I'm
being
present.
If you saw me
walking
in the room, you may observe
"Laurence
is
present.".
But I don't mean
"present"
like that. I could be lying
asleep
and still be
"present"
in the room. By being
present
I mean
intentionally
bringing myself to bear on
the world,
on the environment, on the people I'm with. By being
present,
I mean
"being with"
like a
deliberate act.
It's when I'm being
present
that my authentic Self
shows up.
And that would seem to be the end of this
inquiry
- except ... it's not. I notice there's something more, a second
component that's also there when I'm being my most authentic Self. In
addition to being
present,
there's my
action
ie what I'm doing when I'm being
present
when I'm being my most authentic Self: it's when I'm being
presentand I'm
speaking.
I may be
present
and doing anything at all. Yet it seems to me when I'm being
presentand
speaking,
I'm being my most authentic Self.
Now I need one more distinction to wrap this up: it's when I'm being
present
and
speakinggeneratively and not narratively that I'm
being my most authentic Self. Wait! What's the difference between
speaking
"generatively" and
speaking
"narratively"? That, my
Friends,
is a subject for another conversation on another occasion.
