Quotes About Authenticity

Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I'm bullshitting myself, morally speaking?

You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.

Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I'm bullshitting myself, morally speaking?

What the really great artists do is they're entirely themselves. They're entirely themselves, they've got their own vision, they have their own way of fracturing reality, and if it's authentic and true, you will feel it in your nerve endings.

Out of the closet, I had found my natural place on the androgyny quadrant of the gender matrix. I wore my hair long and hung a pair of chandelier earrings on my ears. My sexual orientation, which had always been self-evident, in the words of Quentin Crisp, was also self-claimed.

Don't aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally.

Before we can surrender ourselves we must become ourselves, for no one can give up what he or she does not first possess.

None of us is perfectly aligned with the truth of our being. All of us live with falsity, but the magnitude of the gap between inner reality and outer appearance will always be an indication of the magnitude of the clouding of presence.

Paradoxically, no one can change until they first accept themselves as they are. Self-deceptions and an absence of real vulnerability block any meaningful transformation. It is only when I accept who I am that I dare to show you that self in all its vulnerability and nakedness. Only then do I have the opportunity to receive your love in a manner that makes a genuine difference.

With the self that is created in God's likeness rejected, our false self is the self we develop in our own likeness. This is the person we would like to be—a person of our own creation, the person we would create if we were God. But such a person cannot exist, because he or she is an illusion

Sensing its fundamental unreality, the false self wraps itself in experience—experiences of power, pleasure and honor. Intuiting that it is but a shadow, it seeks to convince itself of its reality by equating itself with what it does and achieves.

If God loves and accepts you as a sinner, how can you do less? You can never be other than who you are until you are willing to embrace the reality of who you are. Only then can you truly become who you are most deeply called to be.

Basil Pennington suggests that the core of the false self is the belief that my value depends on what I have, what I can do and what others think of me.

Before we can surrender ourselves we must become ourselves, for no one can give up what he or she does not first possess.6 Jesus puts it this way: "If you're content with simply being yourself, you will become more than yourself" (Luke 18:14 The Message). Before we can become our self we must accept our self, just as we are. Self-acceptance always precedes genuine self-surrender and self-transformation.

The self that God persistently loves is not my prettied-up pretend self but my actual self—the real me. But, master of delusion that I am, I have trouble penetrating my web of self-deceptions and knowing this real me. I continually confuse it with some ideal self that I wish I were.

The problem with the false self is that it works. It helps us forget that we are naked. Before long, we are no longer aware of the underlying vulnerability and become comfortable once again.

Thomas Merton warns, "There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality, for life is maintained and nourished in us by our vital relation with reality."1 The truly spiritual life is not an escape from reality but a total commitment to it.

While other people's excessive attachments and personal falsity often seem glaringly apparent, it is never easy to know the lies of our own life.

The more we identify with our psychologically and socially constructed self, the more deeply we hide from God, ourselves and others.

This disconnection of being and doing represents a misalignment of our souls that clouds our presence to ourselves and others.

Spare me perfection. Give me instead the wholeness that comes from embracing the full reality of who I am, just as I am. Paradoxically, it is this whole self that is most perfect. As it turns out, wholeness, not perfection, is the route to the actualization of our deepest humanity.

there are many false ways of achieving uniqueness. These all result from attempts to create a self rather than receive the gift of my self-in-Christ.

We should never be tempted to think that growth in Christlikeness reduces our uniqueness. While some Christian visions of the spiritual life imply that as we become more like Christ we look more and more like each other, such a cultic expectation of loss of individuality has nothing in common with genuine Christian spirituality. Paradoxically, as we become more and more like Christ we become more uniquely our own true self.

Focusing on God while failing to know ourselves deeply may produce an external form of piety, but it will always leave a gap between appearance and reality. This is dangerous to the soul of anyone—and in spiritual leaders it can also be disastrous for those they lead.