Being real

There is no reality except the one contained within us.  This is why so many people lead such an unreal life.  They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.

Herman Hesse

Being real implies that we can be ourselves, that we know what is going on inside of us.  We know when we meet someone we like, when we meet someone we don’t like, and we have some sense of why.  We know which activities bring us pleasure, and what work undertakings feel fulfilling because they reflect the values and ambitions that are important to us.  We know what foods we like to eat, what clothes we are comfortable in and what kind of lifestyle might best suit us.  We know how we prefer to spend our weekends, what kind of socialising is our kind of socialising.  Most important of all, from hour to hour during the course of any given day, if asked how we were, we would be able to reply.

This kind of being real enables us to meet life’s complications with some semblance of security that we will survive them and with some deeper understanding that we will probably come out better for having done so.

On the other hand, there is the phony act some people have learned of miming sincerity.  Madison Avenus has used ‘real’ to sell everything from aspirin to yoghurt.  We have all been with people who have a good ‘real’ act.  They make eye contact, and then they ‘share’ more intimate details than are appropriate to the situation.  This false sincerity has a rehearsed quality; it lacks spontenaity, true connection and knowledge of the self.  Being real implies that the silver threads of consciousness are connected inwardly, from emotion to thought, to cognition, to fantasy.  Impulses, yearnings and dreams have a central meeting place, and there we can call on them to relaease information about the self.

Truly being real asks us to be willing to be in touch with our self even when what comes up is not exactly what our vanity might wish for.  It asks us to understand that we are in a continual state of becoming.  To be real we must content ourselves with the thought that we will never be completely within our own view.  Rather, we will catch glimpses of what is going on for us at a particular moment.  In order to be real, we must give our self room to express itself naturally and fluidly according to what it is, not according to the dictates of what we percieve to be most palatable to our idealised image of ourselves.

The energy of soul does not disappear when we are not aware of it.  It does not disappear when we are pretending to be real.  It just waits for us to discover it, to be willing to allow it to breathe through us and enable it to be present.

If it were possible to talk to the unborn, one could never explain to them how it feels to be alive, for life is washed in the speechless real.

Jacques Barzun

Excerpt taken from :   The Quiet Voice of the Soul  Written by Tian Dayton