Saturday, July 12, 2014

The Journey to the Freedom of Authenticity

Authentic people are willing to let go of who they feel they should be in order to become who they are.
If we are willing to take the above truth by the cudgels, to journey with God in the midst of brave honesty, we will taste the freedom of authenticity.
We will no longer need to satisfy some external criteria or please people to establish our worth. If we are willing to take certain steps we will inevitably experience the blessing of the freedom of authenticity.
How might we describe this freedom?
The freedom of authenticity is the blessing of acceptance; of experiencing God’s unconditional acceptance so intrinsically that we accept ourselves, also, without condition. Achieving this takes a lot of work, but the irony is it should be very simple. It only takes a lot of work because our ego resists the implicit flow of the Spirit as it is ushered in and through our beings. The ego resists for the simple reason that, notwithstanding our self-defensive pride, it is not natural for the ego to have faith in itself – to trust, no less. The ego is a fabrication and it cannot stand by itself. But, authenticity of the Spirit is the surpassing of the ego.
Authenticity is neither threatened by the ego nor does it fight the ego.
Authenticity is a friend of reality, because no reality can threaten it. Therefore, authenticity is free. See how authenticity fears nothing. It is humbly confident.
The cost for achieving this halcyon state is one of surrendering our modes of self-protection; to become vulnerable and, indeed, wedded to the truth.
This, in sum, is the process of discipleship under the Lord Jesus. There is no other way to authenticity. It must become the most important thing or it will never happen.
So, for the price of surrendering one form of ‘freedom’ – to specify our exacting whims of selfishness – we receive the bounteous freedom to live.
Nothing can touch this freedom. It is a pinnacle spiritual state; a high peak of salubrious means; the very best of life. When we have very little fear, yet we have a bountiful supply of joy, as if it was welling up from the spring of life within us, we have what nobody but God could give and we have something that we can’t possibly lose. But we do need to adapt to being safely vulnerable so we are truthful first of all with ourselves.
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Authentic people are willing to let go of who they feel they should be in order to become who they are.
© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

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