Finding Your Authentic Self

Discovering your authentic self for the first time is like meeting a perfect stranger you’ve known all of your life. If one can get past their ego’s definition of who they are, it can be a truly enlightening experience.

But to get there, you have to push beyond those influences that up until now have defined who you think you are. Past life experiences, relationships, loves, losses, and a wide assortment of pivotal life-altering events that have all conspired to shape a personal vision of yourself in your head.

There have been a number of books that have influenced me in one way or another over the years. I’m sure the influence was heavily fortified by the lifestyle, angst, mood and my own psychic temperament at the time.

Most of us spend a lifetime painting our skin like a canvas of who we think we are. It’s a personal journey of ego, attitude, needs, desires, fears and wants. But in our quest for satisfaction in life we sometimes inadvertently let outside influences shape and define our true self.

Often times, there’s been collateral damage suffered and you didn’t even know it. It came from those youthful messages imparted on you by parents, teachers and friends. Everyone who thought they knew who you were, what you were and what you should become in life.

Writing for me has always been a journey to find my authentic voice and express it in my stories. Yet, I can’t unlock the shackles of past influences that color my many words. I’m not alone in this vernacular journey of detours, distractions and negative voices lurking in the back of my head. Recently, I’ve read two books that expanded the spectrum of that chasm in writing.

Larry McMurty (The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment, Lonesome Dove, Brokeback Mountain, etc.) and Micky Spillane (Kiss Me Deadly, I, the Jury, Vengeance is Mine) had two very different writing styles and yet each was true to their internal voice. They both had two distinctly different writing styles that, despite their stark differences, managed to connect very effectively with their respective audiences. Both authors found their voice and satisfaction in their own approach to story-telling. In short, they were honest to themselves and never wrote to a supposed audience or group of readers.

Finding our inner voice is different for each one of us. We all have it. We just need to find it. If one looks at creativity not just in terms of the arts, music, crafts, and all of its many manifestations but far beyond that, it is another world welcoming us to explore.

Creativity can be found in our ordinary, often times mundane acts of living. Albert Einstein said it best when speaking about creativity. “Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid.”

It means creating a lifestyle that embraces all that is important to you, your soul, and your inner cravings for your purpose in being alive. It means living by those principles that define who you are as a person, a spouse, a lover, a parent, a guardian, and a member of the human race. Living creatively can and should be your motivation for personal evolution, growth, learning and therefore, thriving in a complicated world.

For me, part of that organic process of writing is a new demand for more self-examination and thoughtful-processing of the past lives I’ve lived, my present environment and level of personal satisfaction.

It demands a closer examination of past relationships and my reaction to life events. It forces me out of old reflections, memories and explanations and gradually wipes away the dust and dirt of past assumptions to revealed a truer self. My research and writing have taken me on a journey I am only now beginning to better understand and appreciate. It’s all about answering the question of who I was back then and how it made me who I am today.

Helping me along the way is a daily detour I take to check-in inside my head. This practice is a monastic exercise but one with benefits. It’s finally coming face to face with the true me. Mind you I can’t say I know me that well even though it’s been over eight-one years of living in this skin.

As with any responsible enterprise it is our duty to find what it is that interests us the most. We must listen to our inner voice and answer its calling. To do this we must learn how to support our creativity. That means to take the time to daydream, doodle, imagine, and ponder those many ‘what if’s’ that seem to hang around the edges of our consciousness. Life-changing habits come from thoughts and energies beyond that which we normally access during our daily lives.

Then we must take those thoughts, ideas, concepts, and ‘what if’s’ and put them into concrete form or action. The tragedy here is not to try and fail but to do nothing at all. Each of us has an intuitive nature. We must harness the energy of and the power of that intuitive self in order to become limitless in our inner exploration.

You must first accept where you are in life and never regret the journey you took to get there. You should slow down and smell the flowers. That means eliminating toxic people and situations that do nothing but harm your self-worth. Practice the art of mindful living and appreciating your good fortune when intuition comes into your life.

It means breaking away from centuries-old assumptions, questioning old habits that hold us back and honestly looking deep within ourselves for the truth there. Creativity is a whole body and mind experience. It is a way of life not just an idea or an ambitious goal. It is preparing ourselves mentally and physically for the journey deep within ourselves that reveal truths about us we never knew. It is a mind-set that in turn is a road map that in turn is a guide to eternal truths…our truths about who we are and what we can become if we so desire.

Welcome to your inner journey. It’s going to be a wonderful, at times confusing, and ultimately satisfying trip. It’s better to jump on that train now than to wait at the station for another-life to arrive. It’s a journey I intend to follow for the rest of my life. A trek backwards that might help propel me forward with clarity and vision of who I really am.

·      Credit must be given to the following authors who wrote articles in ‘The Edge’ Magazine, June, 2016 on this subject matter. Theresa Nutt, Alley Brook, Jeanne Henderson, Lisa Sellman and Nick Seneca Jankel.

My Third Place is Hide and Seek

Communal gathering spots have never held much interest for me. I don’t find inspiration in crowded coffee shops or large arenas. Some would argue that these social gathering spots are the anchor of community life and as such facilitate and foster interpersonal interaction and group consensus. That may be true for the majority of folks but not all of us.

Aside from home (often referred to as one’s first place and the workplace (often referred to as the second place), many folks have a third place or third space for their social gatherings. It’s where they go to socialize among like-minded souls of a similar bent. But my experience has been that group mindset can be wrong as often as it is right. Like-minded souls can still foster perpetuate group-think no matter the logic. 

I’ve always been suspicious of going with the flow if for no other reason than the fact that alternate views can often be so much more stimulating. Or perhaps I just chose to make up my own mind.

 

My prejudice toward the ‘old men at the coffee shop’ is legendary. I’ve come to see those old codgers as relics well past their prime who seem to be unhappy with anything and everything around them. They talk ‘at’ one another but never ‘to’ one another. They listen only to the extent that they are waiting for a chance to butt in. There are seldom any new ideas exchanged. It’s just the same old same old rehashed and regurgitated back out again. This may not be a fair criticism but I have yet to find any example to prove me wrong. 

Probably my greatest criticism against group-think is the absence of fresh thoughts and ideas. I need a third place to find my inspiration. What I keep looking for are those pockets of time and place that lend themselves to creativity. 

Many folks think that creativity comes from chaining oneself to their desk and just focusing on the computer screen until inspiration hits. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s moments like that when you need to escape your present reality and create a new one. You need to do anything and everything to distract yourself from the task ahead. By unchaining your mind from the restraint of forced thought, you unleash your subconscious powers. Einstein is quoted as saying that “Creativity is the residue of time wasted.”

Jonah Lehrer, who was recently fired from the New Yorker for making up quotes from Bob Dylan, has nevertheless written an interesting book entitled: “Imagine: How Creativity Works.”

In his book, Lehrer describes how Dylan, being burnt out in his role as political folk music icon, put away his guitar and retreated to upstate New York to paint and write. Yet within a short period of time, he found that he couldn’t stop writing lyrics, churning out 25 pages of lyrics in a short period of time.

Dylan’s moment of insight came out of the blue when he least expected it. Yet I would argue that, in fact, he had set himself up for something new to happen simply by stepping away from the old familiar and exposing himself to something new. 

For myself, it might be on a long distance run, a multi-city bike tour, Hiking the canyons around Palm Springs, a quiet coffee shop or my own morning coffee ritual on the patio. It might even be at the library reading magazines or looking at a picture book.

My ‘third place’ is that neutral ground where I can get away from my roles at home, with the kids, the grandkids, friends and associates and just get to be myself. It is a state of mind located almost anywhere but the old familiar. It can be the high desert, the ocean or the mountains surrounding Palm Springs. Anyplace I can hunker down with my reading or writing material.

It’s that cauldron of unexplainable unexpected elements that come together and become a recipe for creative thought. More often than not, it’s totally unplanned. It might be a song I’ve heard for umpteen times but all of a sudden an image appears in my minds-eye and a story is suddenly born.

Fortunately, inspiration can be found anywhere and everywhere my mind finds it. It’s not the shell but the contents that fascinates me the most. It’s anyplace I can explore, investigate, probe or visit that becomes ripe for creative interpretation. It can often be in the most vapid, esoteric works of art. The non-digital, unplugged works of art fascinate me the most. Over time I’ve come to realize that my ‘third place’ can be found in books and film and music. More often than not, literature of almost any kind takes precedence of other forms of stimulation.

But the best place for my imagination to run wild with my grandchildren. Unencumbered by monetary and social restraints, we’re free to pretend to our hearts content. I’m perfectly adapted to such silliness as I proudly attested to in RidingShotgun with Peter Pan. The old adage of ‘acting your age’ doesn’t apply here.

I’ve engaged with my grandchildren here and in Colorado in silly, nonsensical play of every kind. We’ve flown to the moon and chased pirates across the living room floor. We’ve hidden under a blanket and told scary stories. We’ve gone snipe-hunting on a golf course at night and heard bears and lions and elephants all around us. We’ve chased sharks around the pool and dove for treasure lying on the bottom there. We’ve engaged in a hundred thousand silly unremarkable exercises of horse-play and pretend skits that expanded and grew and nurtured and matured their imagination when they weren’t looking. 

Creativity came under a blanket of stars and on the top of the San Jacinto’s. It came in a handful of squished play dough and scratched across a piece of paper. It came anytime and every time silliness and ‘why not’ was left free to run with wild abandon. 

We went day-dreaming in the middle of the day and found inspiration there. Tall tales kept bursting forth from the little people there. It set my mind to wondering…

And even an old codger can learn from the most uninhibited of us all.