Authenticity and The Power of Thinking🔗

Enriching and the Power of Living

Responsibility and the Power of Feeling

What is authenticity

Authenticity is fine tuning your thinking and actions and living them to your peak capability in these four dimensions of you - the image you hold about yourself, the image you want to portray to others, the image you have about others, and the image others have about you.

You can control your mind in the same way you can control your body movements. Your thinking makes or breaks you. Thinking is not accidental. It happens with your voluntary involvement. Your thinking process is encouraged, entertained and enriched by you. Unfortunately, you believe that thinking is accidental and you cannot control the mind.

The four dimensions of authenticity

You don't have just one identity as you imagine. You have four dimensions, four identities. All these four dimensions put together is your personality. You carry them inside you at all times and you are responsible for all these identities.

The first identity is mamakara or inner image. It is the inner image and experience you carry about yourself, for example, I am healthy, I am ugly, I am intelligent, I cannot tolerate hard work, I love people, etc. You carry many such inner ideas about yourself. Unfortunately, the idea you carry about you is always less than what you project yourself to be.

The second identity is ahamkara or outer image. This is how you project yourself to others. You try to project yourself as powerful, talented, honest, helpful, or whatever. Unfortunately, what you project is always far more than what you believe yourself to be.

The third identity you carry is the image or expectations that others have about you. This is called anyakara or others image about you. How others perceive you may be different from how you project yourself to them, because people create their opinion about you from the subtle signals you give them, rather than what you openly project. Human beings are intelligent enough to catch even what you don't say, or especially what you don't say.

The fourth identity is very subtle, because you will feel it is not directly related to you. It is called swa-anyakara or Life Image. Life image is what you experience and perceive about Life. You may feel Life is lonely, Life is complicated, Life is sacred, Life is scary, or Life is always showering me with everything I need. This is also your identity because it defines the exact experience you will be receiving from the people and situations in your life.

Authenticity means living at your peak in each of these dimensions.

Root Thought Patterns - source of your conflicts

A thought pattern is a pre-defined way of responding to any situation based on a powerful past experience like failure, rejection, being punished, being subjected to abuse or witnessing the death of a loved one. During these moments of crisis, you create an idea about yourself and life – like, I am weak, or I am a failure, or nobody loves me, or life is dangerous, so I have to be very careful. Almost all root thought patterns are negative, even the ones which may lead to success in your life, because they are born out of your feeling of powerlessness.

Some common root thought patterns are –

• I am a failure
• Nobody loves me
• I am alone
• I am ugly
• Life is out there to cheat me
• I am weak and unhealthy
• I am powerless so I have to please everybody
• Life is hard, so I have to be extra smart
• Life is too big for me to understand.

All these thought patterns are based on inadequate cognitions, because life is different every moment, and you need to respond to it spontaneously. Right now, you are nothing but a bunch of programmed actions and patterns that never let you contact life and respond to it as it happens. Rather, you respond based on your past thought patterns.

You may have many thought patterns, but a root thought pattern is one of the few defining thought patterns that continuously run your life without your knowledge.

Even the conflicts among your identities are nothing but the result of your root thought patterns. If you have a certain idea about yourself inside, but you project a different personality outside, that is inauthenticity.

Anything is Possible

All your impossibilities are the projections of your past into the future. You keep saying, 'Nothing new is possible! It is all going to be the repetition of the old.' What does this mean? You just denied yourself the possibility of life! For every decision you make for your future from the past pattern, you deny that component of life for yourself once for all. If you think creating wealth is difficult based on some of your past failures, you have denied the possibility of wealth for you. If you think health is not possible for you in the future due to your past diseases, you have denied the greatest possibility of health in your life.

How does authenticity unlock the Power of Thinking

If you look deep inside, you will see that all your problems arise from conflicts among your four identities. When any of your dimensions is out of alignment with the others, it causes disease, suffering and incompletion in your life.

All these identities you carry are actually thought patterns that you carry about you. Even, others image about you is an idea that you have created in them. So, you are the creator of all your identities!

When one identity is fighting with another, how can your thinking be focussed? All your energy is going to be used in reconciling with your fighting identities. When all your identities or images are in tune, all your thinking will be aligned in one direction. Your thinking becomes clear and sharp like a laser beam. You will awaken the power of thinking. There will be no more space for unconscious living, thinking and living, because you will always be aware of the causes and effects that are playing in your life.

Whatever you can imagine is real

Your thinking goes hand-in-hand with the way you want to build yourself. These four dimensions of your thinking need to be completely purified and aligned. Look inside and identify the images that you carry about yourself. You can then re-write what you feel will be the peak possibility, the best qualities you can possess, in each of these four images. Let your thinking be aligned to your peak inner image, peak outer image, peak others image and peak Life image.

Usually your inner image will be lower than the image you project to others. It means that the higher identity is already there in your visualization space, in your thinking space. You already have the capacity to make that into reality.

An exercise to align your inner and outer image

Take a piece of paper and make 3 columns – inner image, outer image and chosen image. Make a list of your top ten inner and outer images in the appropriate column.

Then, compare what you have noted down. If the belief in both inner and outer image is the same, ignore that point and move on to the next. If there is a conflict, start tuning your inner image and outer image by always choosing the higher idea. If you perceive yourself as weak, friendly in your inner image but strong and friendly in outer image, choose and write strong and friendly under the chosen column. Don't reduce what you project to others but increase what you perceive yourself to be.

Repeat for each of the 10 points and then compare both identities. Whatever qualities are best in both, choose those. If there are some great qualities in your inner image, you need to raise your outer image to match that. If there are some great qualities in your outer image, you need to raise your inner image to match what you project. Use this exercise continuously to tune yourself to your peak possibility.

Bring authenticity to your thinking

Authenticity in thinking has two steps. First, find out what you REALLY want in your life by sincerely contemplating on what you want your four dimensions to be. Make a list of your best inner image, outer image, others image, and life image and place it by your bedside, office desk or any place where you can see it as soon as you wake up and all day. Then, find out what are the obstacles that stop you or distract you from achieving what you want to be, who you want to be, how you want to be.

One of the biggest obstacles for most people is self-doubt, which is a negative thought pattern that happens because of the memory of past failures. Drop your fantasies about failure. Write down all the self-doubts and consciously and decisively, complete with the self-doubts. The other two obstacles are self-hatred and self-denial. All three are known as SDHD for short. Complete with them.

Whatever the thought trend is in alignment with your peak possibility, encourage it, enrich it and entertain it. Whatever the thought trend is that is not in alignment, complete with it. Consciously, decisively, complete with that pattern. Go on completing every day with those patterns which are stopping you from achieving your peak possibility.

Power of Thinking

When you start living in authenticity, you know the right way of thinking and will use the right way of thinking to achieve what you want in Life. In Hindu spiritual practice, this is called manana, authentic thinking. When you have a powerful clarity in your thoughts that makes whatever you think into a success, you have unlocked the Power of Thinking. Let your thinking be established in authenticity, continuously expanding you towards your peak possibility.

What is responsibility

Responsibility means living and responding to life from the truth that you are the source of, and therefore, responsible for all happenings in and around you. The Power of Feeling is nothing but your ability to realize yourself as the source of all the happenings in your life. This understanding gives you tremendous control over your own life and gives you the power to be a positive influence in the life of others.

A person who does not feel responsible for even his own actions lives like an animal – he lives a very low level of consciousness. A person who feels responsible only for his own actions, is a human being – he lives in middle–level consciousness. A person who takes responsibility for others' actions is divine – he lives in leadership consciousness.

Reason vs Responsibility

So, how can I be responsible for everything happening around me? How can I be held responsible for what is happening outside me? If an accident happens in my life, how can I be responsible? Everybody asks this question.

There is an important difference between being the cause of something and being responsible for it! Sometimes, you may not be the reason for a certain happening, but if it is affecting your life, you ARE responsible for that happening. For example, you may not be the cause of political corruption in your country, but as a citizen of the country, you ARE responsible for it. You may not be the reason, as per your logic, but that doesn't mean that you are not responsible in truth.

You need to know that unless you take responsibility, you are neither going to improve the situation, nor are you going to expand your inner space. "I am responsible for myself, other people, the world, Life".

Your bigness frightens you

You always believe that you are suffocated by your smallness. It is the opposite. You are suffocated by your bigness. Whenever bigness is demanded of you, whenever you feel you are being forced to expand, you shrink even further into your comfort zone. Your tiredness, weakness, powerlessness is nothing but the resistance you have to seeing your own bigness.

That is why, when someone tells you that you are weak, poor and a sinner, it is so easy to accept it. But, when someone tells you that you are divine, powerful, and complete, your whole identity starts trembling with fear!

Life always demands expansion, because expansion is the natural law of life. That is why you carry such a deep fear of life, especially life in the form of other people – because people are the living expressions of Life. The more you engage with Life, the greater the expansion that will be demanded of you.

Whenever you are feeling weak, tired, or powerlessness, the first thing you should do is, immediately taken on ten responsibilities and commit to fulfil them within a certain time. Shake your inner space so powerfully with that commitment that there will be no way for weakness and tiredness to grow inside you.

What does it mean to feel you are responsible

The moment you hear that you are responsible for everything happening around you, you think, "If I feel responsible for all the garbage in the streets, I will be stuck cleaning it up the whole day! I will not be able to do anything else". That is a wrong understanding of responsibility. It does not mean that you will need to clean them yourself, nor does it mean you will not clean them yourself. Anything can happen. What is of important here is you not being afraid to dive into the feeling of responsibility just because of your imaginary complications. Don't stop yourself from feeling it at all. Complete with those imaginary complications. Take a little time to let this feeling sink inside you and sync with your actions. Then, responsibility will become energy.

Responsibility makes you powerful

We always feel responsibility is a burden. No, that is wrong! It is a power. Responsibility directly leads you into leadership consciousness. As long as you feel responsible only for your family, you are head of just your family. When you feel responsible for the community, you become leader of the community. As your feeling of responsibility expands, your leadership quality also expands. The decision to feel responsible for the whole Cosmos is enlightenment.

Feeling responsible for the Whole, and declaring to live by your feeling is a declaration of being responsible, known in Hindu spiritual practice as nidhidhyasana. The declaration of being responsible unlocks the Power of Feeling in you.

The science of feeling

You can feel anything as joy or as pain – it is your freedom of choice. Even the greatest achievements can bring pain to you and even the worst of experiences can be a joyful experience. You have the ability to decide how you want to feel.

Whenever you feel empowered, you are joyful. Whenever you feel powerless, you experience suffering. All your sufferings – pain, anger, guilt, fear, jealousy, and frustration, is nothing but powerlessness expressing in different ways. When you feel responsible for everything that happens in your life, you will feel that everything is joyful because nothing can make you powerless. Empower yourself with responsibility and your will unlock the Power of Feeling.

By unlocking the Power of Feeling, you will -

• Always act from a space of power and completion.
• Start focusing on the solution and not the problem.
• Expand your inner space and open up new possibilities.
• Gain a high degree of control over your life and raise yourself to the next level of success.
• Evolve into a new being.

An Exercise to unlock your Power of Feeling

• 1. Write down all the areas of your life where you shrink from expressing yourself fully, for example, at work, in relationships. For each of these areas of your life, write down the thoughts you have, the words you utter, and the actions you take.
• 2. Identify where you are not taking responsibility for that aspect of your life, where you are waiting for the external situation to change instead.
• 3. Choose any one area and declare responsibility for creating that new situation. Identify what has to change for that to happen.
• 4. For one week, follow up with yourself and record your progress.

Living is a power

Every day you are walking, talking, thinking, and feeling and so on. All these put together is living. Living itself is a power. You can harness the power of living in you when you adopt the lifestyle of enriching.

What is enriching

Enriching is you taking responsibility with integrity and authenticity, committing to continuously enriching, which is expanding yourself and life in and around you.

When you are committed to enriching yourself and others around you, Life showers you with the best of everything. You not only experience Life within you, but also with others. The power of Living is awakened in you when you enrich yourself and others,

Everything is part of you

All your struggles in life begins the moment you start thinking that others are separate from you. There is no one called "other" in life. The "other" is only the forgotten and disowned parts of you. Your struggles with others are nothing but your struggle with the forgotten side of you. When you enrich others, you are naturally enriching the neglected side of your own being. The more you enrich others, the more you enrich yourself. Above all, you wake up to the truth that everyone and everything is part of you.

Enriching gives rise to all the powers

With integrity, you experience the space of positivity; with authenticity, you experience the space of possibility; and with responsibility, you experience the space of leadership. With enriching, you experience the space of enlightenment itself. Enlightened living is nothing but harnessing all your inner powers and using them to enrich yourself and others. So the power of Living includes all the other powers in itself.

If you have integrated listening (shravana), authentic thinking (manana), and made a declaration of responsibility (nididhyasana), you are living an enriching lifestyle. Enriching alone can burn any lack of integrity, inauthenticity or irresponsibility in you. It is taking responsibility for everyone and everything, including others inauthenticity and lack of integrity, because they are a part of you.

Why should I enrich others

You do not live in a desolate cave or forest. You live with people. For any transformation that you want in your life, you have to work and transform others' lives as well. Otherwise, you may raise yourself to a very high level of joy and bliss, but the moment you come back to your house, your spouse can bring you down in less than ten minutes. Only when you enrich others, can your life go through any transformation.

Taking responsibility for others does not mean that you will accept everyone's non-integrity or inauthenticity, and take the blame for it. It means that you will commit to inspire and empower everyone to experience the four inner powers of life.

Empowering others

Having makes you naturally responsible for sharing. A person with power is responsible for making powerless people become powerful. If you are wealthy, you become responsible for making the poor wealthy. It is not distributing your wealth to these poor people but taking responsibility for educating them and making them wealthy. You become responsible for sharing anything you own and making it grow.

Some truths about enriching

Enriching is your very nature. Whatever you do is enriching others. Even your very breath is enriching the plants on planet Earth.

Enriching others enriches you as everyone is part of you.

The moment you convince your heart that life is for others, all the suffering in your heart leaves you.

Enriching others to live at their peak possibility is the ultimate way you can enrich them.

Don't give up on you and people

Do not give up on yourself and people. If you turn our back on people, you are not living dharma because when you give up on others, you have also given up on yourself. When you are frustrated with others' failure, it is nothing but your frustration towards your own failures. If you turn your back on people, you are not living dharma because you have also given up on yourself.

Exercise to unlock your Power of Living

Write down the first time you felt that you were exploited by life and had only you to take care of yourself.

Complete powerfully with that root thought pattern which is making you feel separate from others.

For the next 48 hours, see everything and everybody you meet as extensions of yourself and serve them joyfully out of a space of completion