Quotes About Authenticity

In Lake's experience, even eccentric and unconventional people carefully curated their persona. Very few truly didn't give a goddamn what others thought.

When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.

To write as if your life depended on it; to write across the chalkboard, putting up there in public the words you have dredged; sieved up in dreams, from behind screen memories, out of silence-- words you have dreaded and needed in order to know you exist.

The Truth is the only thing you'll ever run into that has no agenda.

We realize--often quite suddenly--that our sense of self, which has been formed and constructed out of our ideas, beliefs and images, is not really who we are. It doesn't define us, it has no center.

As Jesus says in the Gospel of Thomas, "If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." [Gospel of Thomas 70]

If you strip it of all the complex terminology and all the complex jargon, enlightenment is simply returning to our natural state of being. A natural state, of course, means a state which is not contrived, a state that requires no effort or discipline to maintain, a state of being which is not enhanced by any sort of manipulation of mind or body—in other words, a state that is completely natural, completely spontaneous.

If we do not live and manifest in our lives what we realize in our deepest moments of revelation, then we are living a split life.

It is not the pursuit of greater and greater states of happiness and bliss that leads to enlightenment, but the yearning for Reality and the rabid dissatisfaction with living anything less than a fully authentic life.

Live by truth or suffer. It's that simple.

Freedom is the realization that everything and everybody gets to be exactly as they are. Unless we've come to that point, unless we've seen that this is how reality sees things, then we're actually withholding freedom from the world. We're seeing it as a possession, and we're only concerned with ourselves. How good I can feel? How free I can feel? True freedom is a gift to everything and everybody.

Looking at personal issues is like pulling just the top of the weeds out of your lawn: they pop right back up. You may have some relief from the trouble of the day, but the root is still there, totally untouched. But having experiences, even if they clear up problems or offer beautiful insights, is very different than finding the root of who you are. If you don't get to the root, you just get another weed.

If we are being sincere and honest with ourselves, there is an intuitive sense of what we are avoiding. If we can find the capacity to be honest, we'll start to feel in ourselves when we're being called to make effort.

Part of being awake is being willing to be crucified. If we think that to be awake means the whole world will agree with us, then we are in a total delusion.

With a true and authentic awakening, who and what we are becomes clear. There's no longer a question about it; it is a done deal. In this way, one of the hallmarks of a true awakening is the end of seeking. You no longer feel the momentum, the push and the pull. The seeker has been revealed as the virtual reality it always was, and as such it disappears. The seeker has in some sense accomplished its task.

This adult world has an insane quality to it. Everybody's going around pretending like they really know things, pretending like they know what's real and what's not, pretending they know what's right, pretending they know who's wrong, but actually nobody really knows. But this is something we're afraid of. We don't really want to admit that nobody really knows.

The words of truth are simple.

His resolve is not to seem, but to be, the best.

I will have nought to do with a man who can blow hot and cold with the same breath.

A person's true nature will reveal itself despite disguise.

Be content with what nature made you, or run the risk of earning contempt by trying to be what you're not.

Those who assume a character which does not belong to them, only make themselves ridiculous.

Borrowed plumes.

Don't let your special character and values, the secret that you know and no one else does, the truth - don't let that get swallowed up by the great chewing complacency.