“This man is so authentic!”

 “That girl is fake, a phony!”

 “I will not listen to them – I must be true to myself!”

What does it mean to be authentic, or true to myself? Who should I be true to? Who do I betray when I am inauthentic, or fake? Who is my true “I”?

When I am true to myself, I am not true to everything I have – to my nose, or to my headache, or to my boredom. I am true to… to what? Who am I truly?  

Perhaps my true self is natural, spntaneous energies within me, as the Swiss-French thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau said?

Or perhaps my true self is the rational part of myself, as the Roman philosopher Marcus Aurelius believed?

Or maybe there is no fixed self in me – I create myself again and again every moment, as the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre explained?

Or maybe something else?

Now that you are familiar with the issue of authenticity, you can reflect about it in the company of your friends, whether online or face-to-face. There are different ways of running such a group. It can be a reading group which discusses a short text, or a discussion group about a specific case-study, perhaps from the literature or the cinema. But an especially powerful way of doing it is in the “Contemplative Companionship.”

In a Contemplative Companionship, the participants don’t argue with each other. They don’t speak from their opinions, but from their heart, from their deep self – in togetherness with the others. Like a group of musicians creating music together, they create a philosophical symphony together. 

Here is a video-recording of the contemplative companionship of several Agora team-members.

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If you decide to start your own contemplative companionship, we invite you send us the results!

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

The true self as the rational self

Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD) was a Philosopher and a Roman emperor from the Stoic school of philosophy. As a Stoic, he emphasized the importance of maintaining inner peace, accepting fate calmly, freedom from the power of emotions, and being in harmony with the cosmos. To do this, the Stoics believed, one has to be true to one’s rational faculty (as opposed to emotional forces) – also called one’s “guiding principle, “inner guide,” or daemon, or as we would say today, true self.

The following passages are from Marcus Aurelius’ book Meditations, which was in fact a personal notebook where he wrote his personal reflections. The book tells us that the true self (“the guiding principle” or “the daemon”) is the rational faculty within the person. It is the element within us which thinks rationally and calmly, undisturbed by emotions, desires, and the influence of others. When we follow this inner guide, we are true to ourselves.

What, then, can guide a man? One and only one thing – philosophy. But this consists in keeping the daemon within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing nothing without purpose, without falsity or hypocrisy, without relying on anybody else to do or not to do anything. And also, accepting all that happens, and all that is assigned to you, as coming from wherever you yourself came. And, finally, waiting for death with a cheerful mind, accepting it as no more than a dissolution of the elements of which every living being is made. (from Book 2)

Retire into yourself. The rational principle which rules is by nature content with itself when it does what is just, and in doing so it achieves tranquility. (from Book 7)

Different things delight different people. But it is my delight to keep the guiding faculty sound without turning away either from any man or from any things that happen to men, but looking at and receiving everything with welcome eyes, and using everything according to its value. (from Book 8)

You have suffered infinite troubles by being dissatisfied with your guiding faculty, when it does the things which it is made by nature to do. Enough of this. (from Book 9)

Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will

The true self as the holistic “symphony” within us

Henri Bergson (1859-1941) was an influential French philosopher, and a Nobel Prize winner in literature. In his philosophical writings, written in a poetic style, he emphasized the importance of intuition.

Bergson tells us that in everyday life we usually live on the surface of our being. We are normally aware only of our rigid, fixed ideas and emotions, which can be easily described and analyzed. But our inner life is much richer than it seems. Underneath this familiar surface, our inner life is a constant flow of infinite qualities and meanings, like a flowing symphony. This is our real being – a creative, free flow that includes our entire being.

In the following passage, Bergson describes those special moments in which the true self – the “symphony” with us – comes up to the surface.

(Adopted from the translation by F.L. Pogson, London: Allen & Unwin, 1959, p. 169-170)

 
When our trustworthy friends advise us to take some important step, the attitudes which they express stay on the surface of our ego, and there they become solidified. Little by little they will form a thick crust which will cover up our own attitudes. We will believe that we are acting freely, but later on, when we look back, we will realize how much we were mistaken.

And then, just before we perform the act, something may revolt against it. It is the deep self rushing up to the surface. It is the outer crust bursting, suddenly surrendering to an irresistible push. In the depths of the self, below these very reasonable thoughts about very reasonable pieces of advice, something else was going on… 

We wish to know the reason why we have decided, and we find that we have decided without any reason, and perhaps against every reason. But sometimes this is the best reason. Because our action does not express some superficial idea, almost external to ourselves, separate and easy to explain. It agrees with the whole of our intimate feelings, thoughts and aspirations, it agrees with our particular conception of life which is the equivalent of all our past experience—in other words, with our personal idea of happiness and of honor.