Something inside tells you whether or not you are being true to yourself - you can sense it. You can sense the difference between sincerity and falseness. Not being true to yourself means that you are faking it for some reason of convenience, and faking it, in time, eats away at your very being.

There is a difference in believing something, and believing in something. When you believe something without a doubt, you have investigated it thoroughly and are certain of it. When you believe in something, you are subtly and purposely distancing yourself from its truth, and the further you distance yourself from truth, any truth, the less you are true to yourself.

You might believe in another person, or believe in a cause, and completely surrender to it without considering whether or not you believe that person or cause. There is a difference. This difference is what separates truth from falseness.

Being true to yourself involves tremendous courage. If you lack that courage, you fake it. You fake it when you fool yourself into believing in something simply because it makes you feel good, or makes you feel secure, or real, and this is part of the ignorant bliss you surround yourself with when you are not true to yourself.

Being true to yourself requires guts, guts to actually look closely at everything, because now you are no longer satisfied by fooling yourself. You've done that and it has boomeranged on you. It's now time to get on with life in a more mature and intelligent way, to be true to yourself for a change rather than being true to some authority that tells you what to think. Part of being true to yourself is finding the courage to stand up.

Not everybody can do this; initially it's akin to having a rug pulled out from under your feet. But when you begin to see how you have been manipulated, then that first step toward being true to yourself becomes intuitive; it's the only thing left for you to do as you begin to awaken from your deep sleep.

Once the awakening begins, once you begin being true to yourself, then the freedom you feel can only be described as utterly amazing; an awakened existence as if you have been reborn into a brave, new world. The false security that once was your life and drugged you into oblivion is now replaced by a piercing awareness and intelligence that carries you to ultimate freedom. Nothing can compare to this - everything else is child's play, children's fairytales.

And being true to yourself begins by being with yourself . . . in meditation.

Copyright © E. Raymond Rock 2007. All rights reserved.

Articles Source - Free Articles
About the Author

E. Raymond Rock of Fort Myers, Florida is cofounder and principal teacher at the Southwest Florida Insight Center (SouthwestFloridaInsightCenter.com). His twenty-eight years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents, including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk. His book, A Year to Enlightenment (Career Press/New Page Books) is now