We are all connected. When you still your mind and pass through the gaps between your thoughts, you are able to experience your true self within your centre. This true self—the pure being that you are beneath your makeshift ego self—connects you with all of life. It enables you to experience shared identity with others and the greater whole. It is the doorway to your spirituality and motivates you to contribute to something greater than your personal self.
The ability of your true self to connect you to everything is your greatest resource and the means to help solve personal, community, and world crises. The challenge we face is that we are conditioned to live our lives not from the true self but from the reactive ego self. Your ego self is your personality, shaped in reaction to the contents of your mind and your social and cultural conditioning. As a result, if you strongly identify with this narrow sense of conditioned identity, you may lack the insight and practice to embody your true self and greater identity.
Facing the Ongoing Challenge: Maturing and Transforming the Ego
Mindfulness can awaken you to your true self and help you become more present and embodied in it. With mindfulness-based self-development, you can then mature and transform your ego, enabling you to face the personal, social, and ecological challenges of life and to contribute to a positive change in collective consciousness that takes us out of conflict and destructiveness into supportive relations of wellbeing based on wholeness and reverence for all life.
The ability to transform the ego and stay centred in the true self is the greatest ongoing challenge we have ever faced. Today, this challenge of self-development needs to be met and overcome more than ever. The population is rising dramatically, creating even greater social, ecological, economic, and political pressures. Technology has advanced to the level where technocratic world domination and world destruction are now both practically possible. In fact, we are already heavily influenced by mass media through the television and Internet, which is shaping our reality and leading us to live dysfunctionally.
Rebuilding Communities on Authentic Values
The next step in our evolution is for us to look at how our physical communities can be rebuilt on values that honour and support our true nature of being one with all things—our interbeing. However, such communities require us to transform the ego to break through its limiting and distorted patterns and the limited identity that undermines community and authentic living. Mindfulness will help achieve this transformation and breakthrough when practised continuously, ensuring that all of our actions are shaped with integrity.
Our Greatest Personal Challenge
Our greatest personal challenge is not that of facing the forces of materialism and centralisation in the world—for these apparent ogres are but symptoms of our own collective shadow, the unprocessed parts of ourselves that we avoid facing. Rather, our greatest personal challenge is to be fully mindful so that our energies are directed toward supporting authentic communities and authentic relationships with all of life. Mindfulness restores the power of choice at the point where we either continue to follow the old patterns based on the ego’s reactivity, or create a new path by living the truth of who we really are and honouring our authentic values in our actions. When we are consciously aligned with the true self, mindfulness enables us to make the correct authentic choice and to follow through on it.
Practising mindfulness now and then and embracing authentic values is one thing, but doing so while still continuing to choose inauthentic ways of living in your daily life creates an obvious inner conflict and disparity. Addressing this urgently is essential for you to be fully authentic and congruent, and to tackle issues of social and ecological sustainability in the world.
The Importance of Community Support
Lacking support is a big reason why you may fall back into inauthentic patterns of living. Without support, you will likely feel powerless on your own. This is not surprising, given that, deep down, we are not separate beings but essentially connected. Implementing the authentic values that you hold can be challenging without the help of others. This is why authentic community based on a sense of interbeing is urgently required for you to fully embody your authenticity. We need community as a support system for living authentically and honouring our true selves and the one life we are part of. An authentic community is not just a group of people sharing authentic values and identity but also a network of support in every sense of the word. If you need a particular resource to achieve an outcome, the community will provide it in a way that embodies authentic values and honours the Earth. Gradually, you will no longer need to spend your money on resources that are produced unsustainably by a system that supports inauthentic living and violates the truth of who we really are.
Breaking Dysfunctional Patterns: A Future of Authentic Living
The pattern of everybody minding their own business and leaving their friends and connections to struggle with no support other than that given by systems of inauthentic living will vanish in the future of authentic living. It is a dysfunctional pattern. Together, we need to build a more compassionate, supportive network.
The pattern of dissociating from life into addictions to things like television, the Internet, and your smart phone needs to be recognised for what it is—an addiction that sabotages your ability to grow into authenticity and heal. Similarly, engaging in unfulfilling work that merely contributes to what you are trying to transform does not help your evolution and simply drains your energy and time. A fully conscious community can generate its own experience, work, and wealth, rooted in authenticity.
Committing to Authentic Community
Now is the time to create authentic communities, to create enlightened and mindful systems of support. How do we achieve this? We start with the people we know who share our values. These people are the nucleus of the community. Make a commitment to work tirelessly together with others in mutual support to bring more and more of our lives into authenticity. When collective action is required for authentic living, people can work together to achieve this. The true motivation is not obligation but reverence for our shared being.
Making the choice to co-create authentic community is a commitment to authenticity and integrity. It is mindful living. This choice involves facing your ego’s shadow where fears and insecurities lurk, and challenging the limitations of your thoughts and beliefs. Let us do this with the support of each other in our communities. Let us be present for ourselves and each other. Let us be willing to face that which holds us back from true healing and authentic living. By transforming our resistances, we can begin healing our social structures. We need to count on ourselves and join with others like us whom we can also count on. The time is now! Make mindfulness a constant practice, be there for others and yourself, and discover in the process how others are an extension of yourself.
Authentic Community in Action
Begin by coming together to understand each other’s authentic needs and the gifts that can be shared to support each other in meeting those needs. Work together to uncover each other’s resistances and transform them through mindfulness and healing. Create regular community meetings in which people begin by stilling their minds and tuning in to their true selves. With mindfulness, you can stay in authentic alignment, and should the ego’s patterns of reactivity arise, you can use mindfulness to transform and release them so they don’t sabotage your authenticity.
Focusing on Growth: A Life Process
What you focus on grows. Just like working an unused muscle, this is a life process that demands consistent focus and practice before it becomes habitual and flourishes. To ensure this sustained focus and practice, be willing to grow and evolve personally and collectively as a community to meet changing needs. Implement a feedback system to address these changing needs. Without it, the community or group risks falling apart, and distractions may hinder personal growth.
For those willing to take these steps and meet the challenges along the way, I honour you. The growth and benefits will be fantastic. You are paving our future. Good luck!
Next Step: To learn more about integrating mindfulness and authenticity into your life, book a Guidance Call with me.
