No Authentic Self

No authentic self: 

what I find is that there is no authentic self, not for me at least, but that presence alone is true, and in every sense my reality. Of course the term presence is open to interpretation and here I'll define it as openness, a spaciousness that allows for the appearance of a self, beliefs, and yet holds nothing in a fixed position, making no demands that life must be a certain way. Presence isn't separate from events, nor from what appears, it's just the seamless nature of life's flow, not clinging to ideas of who I am and how things should unfold. 

what's authentic is free of my demands.

"to thine own self be true" spoke Polonius in Shakespeare's Hamlet and this sage advice has rung through the ages as a call for authenticity. For Hamlet this was indeed a release of script and protocol and giving himself to the pure grief of losing his father, mourning in a way that was meaningful for him alone. My Shakespeare is rusty and I have no idea if this what Polonius meant in his advice to Hamlet. But in the exact moment he gave himself to grief, Hamlet wasn't being true to any thought of self, it was a sadness to pure to be held as a fixture in the mind. Here, Hamlet was being true to the selflessness of the moment, his grief alone was authentic. 

to make claim of an authentic self would seem to dismiss my true flexibility, assigning a self for every possible happening and life event, one that must stay faithful to each particular expression. My reality is one of countless selves as well as being selfless by nature. There is no authentic self here, only the allowing of a self to appear, presence, and it's to this that I stay true. 

my own grief, right now, has many expressions - there is joy found in the memory of my father, existing at once with the keenness of his loss. My heart is often light, life filled with gratitude of all my father has given me, and in a sudden moment's turn I grieve that he lives no more, and that I am without recourse now to offer him anything in return. It's all too vast for a particular self to be authentic to any one expression, life demands a selfless devotion to all that unfolds, an allowingness to be true to this...this...this...whatever now appears. 

with no authentic self, 

only life appears.

~

Peace, Eric