Are You Really Being Authentic?

You know how most of us have acted in a way that wasn’t our best? Maybe you lost your temper, or were unkind toward someone, ghosted someone, or was overly blunt out of frustration. How often have you said to yourself, “Well, I’m just being me. That’s who I am.” As though were being authentic.

My question is, “Is it really who you are?”

It has been said that in the first half of life, you conquer the world; in the second half, you conquer yourself. Carl Jung said it this way, “The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.”

So which part of you are you referring to when you believe you’re being authentic? The persona your Ego helped you forge to help you conquer the world or the core of who you are that is revealed as you let go of your ego?

Therein lies the conundrum.

For reference, our word “authentic” comes from Greek and Latin words that mean "original, genuine, principal," and "one acting on one's own authority."

This idea of authenticity also reminded me of something Joseph Campbell shared from the book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Fredrich Nietzsche. In this book, the main character shares his wisdom, and one of his observations involves a Camel turning into a Lion, that slays a Dragon, and turns into a Child. It’s about the masks we wear throughout the three stages or transformation we progress through in life.

The first stage of our lives in infancy and childhood is that of the Camel, who’s attitude is, “Put a load on me.” This is the stage where you form the primary mask, or persona. During these early years, you are very depending on those around you for your survival. You are also very impressionable as you absorb information and attitudes from the world around you that teach you what is necessary to survive and co-exist with others in society.

Like the Camel, you learn humility and obedience and adjust your authentic rhythms and instincts to remain connected to your parents and to society for security, protection, and survival. During these formative years, you create a narrative about yourself that isn’t necessarily authentic in order to fit in and justify your perceptions of how you fit in with your family and the wider community. This then is the stage Jung refers to as forming a healthy ego to help you navigate and conquer the world.

As the Camel, carrying the load of societal norms, you get up and venture out into the desert – the desert of the realization of its own individual nature. This happens around adolescence and can last into adulthood as the Camel transforms into a Lion. You turn inward to find your own inner life, and as the Lion, you exert your will and seek to unburden yourself from everything that others have put on you to find your own meaning. Think of the teenager who distances herself from her parents and questions everything.

Thus, the main work of the Lion stage is to attack and kill a Dragon named Thou Shalt. On each of the Dragon's scales is written “Thou Shalt,” with each scale representing each of the rules, prohibitions, and norms, you learned from your family and society. Some of these rules were inherited down through the generations and some are more current.

Next, when you as the Lion slay the Dragon, Thou Shalt, this signifies transitioning from the simple obedience of the Camel to having authority over your own life like the Lion, which brings you to the third stage of transformation, the Child.

As the Child, you move creatively and spontaneously out of the energy of your own center. You don’t care what others think of you and you create your own rules based on your own instincts. In other words, in this stage, you can create a life that is original to you. As Nietzsche wrote, “The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a wheel rolling out of itself, a first movement, a sacred yes-saying.”

Why is this analogy – Camel, Lion, Child -- important for authenticity? Here’s the mistake you and everyone else tends to make: you think you’re being “authentic” when you express yourself through your persona, that mask that formed in the Camel stage. The mask you formed when you absorbed or received from others certain beliefs and behaviors to cope and get along in your family and society.

Either consciously or unconsciously, you may have chosen a particular career to make your parents happy or to be seen as successful by society’s standards instead of going into a career that is in line with your heart’s desires. You may have befriended or sought out people to give you status or credibility, dressed in a particular way to conform, or accumulated certain possessions for status -- all based on what you believed other people would think or the values you learned from your culture or the wider society. In short, you like most every else have done the “Camel” thing and confused your persona with who you are authentically.

In contrast, the authentic you is the person who is well on the way to or has entered the 3rd stage – the Child – where you act spontaneously from of the center of your own being without emphasizing what other people will think of you. Once you’ve gone through the Lion stage to consciously sort through what to keep and what to get rid of from your Camel stage and entered the Child phase, you’re no longer completely dependent upon and obedient to what others told you to believe and do.

Instead, when you reach the Child stage, you are being and doing what you instinctive or intuitively know is right for you, regardless of the opinions of others. That’s when your being your original, authentic self.

You’ll know you haven’t quite made it to the Child phase by way of the conflict or stress in your life, caused by uncertainty, conflict, lack of control, lack of information, or unsatisfied emotional needs. Your response goes back to infancy and childhood during that Camel stage where you developed adaptive beliefs and coping behaviors to maintain your attachment to your parents/caregivers. Unless you’ve already unpacked those childhood beliefs and ways of coping, they are still active in you, and you will experience distress or disease – emotionally, psychologically, or even physically.

You might believe the conflict and stress is because of other people and the events happening around you. But it’s not. It’s really the tension created because you are still trying to conform to who you think you’re supposed to be and not living from the center of your authentic self.

A clue that you’re not being authentic is in the emotions you express and experience due to this stress -- like frustration, overwhelm, irritability, agitation, moodiness. While these emotions are real for you and are your reaction to the conflict or stress in your life, you think you are expressing yourself authentically. I guess in a sense you are being “authentically” a Camel or Lion, but that is not the you who is authentic.

So, are you in the Camel stage, Lion, or are you being the “original, genuine” you acting from your own authority like the Child?

The main work of life is to rediscover the Child after going through the stages of Camel and Lion to reconnect with who you were before you traded your authenticity for the attachment and belonging necessary to survive. This is indeed the work of a lifetime and the major work each of us has before us if we choose to pursue it.