Reclaim Your Authentic Voice

RECLAIM YOUR AUTHENTIC VOICE: DRINKING FROM THE WELL OF
YOUR ENTIRE BEING
Lynda Klau, Ph.D.

We all yearn to be real, to feel connected to ourselves and to others. Often,
however, we lose this connection. We’re not living from our deepest passion, but
we cannot find a way to bring it into our lives. We yearn to be more successful at
work, but we lack the courage to take the necessary steps. Or perhaps a
personal crisis, such as divorce or illness, has shaken our foundations. To
survive, we let fear push down our true feelings, so that the creativity and wisdom
we long to bring forth remains buried and unborn. In this way, we remain
unconscious of and avoid our entire spectrum of emotions and beliefs, from fear
to anger to loneliness to love, and we never transcend them to discover the
authentic self within that is filled with wisdom beyond convention.
Paradoxically, to live from our authenticity means two things: on the one hand, to
connect with our innermost “core” truth— that unchanging place in us that
receives our deepest inspiration, intuition, and insight— and on the other hand, to
honor the feelings and beliefs of our personal self, ingrained in us by our parents
and society. In other words, to live authentically means preserving an openness
and natural harmony between our hearts, our bodies, and our minds. Once we
have aligned with our truth at this “core” level, we can embrace our personal self
from a perspective of understanding, compassion, and freedom—in other words,
from our “wholeness.” To be authentic, therefore, involves honoring all of who we
are: our thoughts and feelings and bodily sensations.

How Do We Lose Our Connection to Our Authentic Self?
Envision three concentric circles.

Let’s call the largest, outermost circle the “persona,” the public mask we show to
the world. This is the part of us that seeks approval for our achievements in our
daily and professional lives. Trapped in our “persona,” we define our value based
on our surface level of “success”: the kind car we drive, the size of our house or
television screen, or the amount of power we have in our job.

The second circle can be called the “shadow,” the private self that we are afraid
to show to others and often even to ourselves. This is the part of us that we
suppress for fear that it would be met with disapproval if acknowledged and
expressed. The “shadow” is the voice in us that judges and fears our anger, our
sadness, and even our love. It feels shamed or guilty by what it construes to be
our weaknesses and failures. In the depths of the “shadow,” we suffer from a
fundamental belief that we are “bad,” or at least “not good enough.”

The more we fixate upon or overly identify with these first two circles, the more
we lose connection with the third, innermost circle, our “core.” This is the intuitive
“gut” self that knows our own intrinsic goodness and self-love, and also
recognizes it in others. Our “core” remains unaffected by either our perceived
achievements or our shortcomings. Rather, it is the place in us that follows our
deepest passions in the face of enormous social and psychological pressures.

Think of the dissatisfied student who leaves business school in order to become
a photographer, or the computer expert who quits her corporate job to start her
own business. History provides many examples of individuals who have had the
courage to speak out beyond conventional rules and to follow the song of their
souls.

To the extent that we stop listening to our center, however, our center stops
communicating with us clearly and succinctly. We either become stuck on the
surface of the “persona” or we sink into the depths of the “shadow,” and we
believe that either one or the other represents the real Truth about us: “I’m great
because I have a Mercedes!” or “I’m a failure because I don’t have a Mercedes.”
These types of beliefs profoundly affect our minds, our hearts, and our bodies.
When we define ourselves by such extreme voices, we become nothing more
than a “good” learned-self and a “bad” learned-self, but never a true, authentic
self.

How Can We Reclaim our Authentic Voice?

Our Western culture teaches that the personal self is the center of our universe,
the place where all of our competing, conditioned voices live. In this model, the
rational mind of the personal self reigns supreme. The first step toward
reclaiming our authenticity, however, is to embrace a more expansive model of
who we think we are and of how we view the world. In truth, the whole of who we
are is more than sum total of our personal self, our “persona” and our “shadow.”
It is necessary to deconstruct the old hierarchy that places our ego above our
core self, our heart and our body. Once we realize that all parts of us deserve to
be listened to, we can begin to refocus our intentions and our attention upon
reclaiming our authentic voice.

Our ability to impartially observe any part of us has been called our “witnessing
presence.” This refers to a place within us that stands apart from our conditioned
beliefs and self-judgments. It allows us to differentiate between, harmonize, and
ultimately transcend them. To develop our “witnessing presence” just as we
would any other muscle is the key to emerging from our obstructions into an
authentic way of living. From this perspective, we enter a space in consciousness
that is separate from our identifications with the personal self’s thoughts and
feelings, but which also respects them. This allows us to experience these beliefs
fully without becoming lost in them. From here, the authentic adult in us surfaces,
the person who can successfully integrate all of his or her conditioned voices and
selves, as well as open to fresh inspirations.

Imagine that you have been in business for fifteen years and you’ve just been
downsized. Your savings are minimal and your expenses have not changed: the
monthly bills keep piling up in the mailbox, and no new business is coming in. A
common response to such a situation would be to automatically respond with
negative thoughts, beliefs and feelings rooted in fear: “I will never be able to
recover financially. What am I going to live on? I will never be able to support
myself and my family.” Harsh self-judgments and blame typically accompany
these beliefs: “This is my fault! I must have done something wrong!”

It is crucial to realize that these beliefs, whether coming from the “persona” or
“the shadow,” are just that: beliefs. Rather than representing the entire truth
about us, our beliefs account for only one way of responding to a difficult
situation. In reality, our deepest wisdom does not speak to us judgmentally.
When situations challenge us, it is the authentic adult in us, supported by the
“witnessing presence,” that keeps reminding ourselves that our negative thoughts
and feelings are not based in actual reality, but in our default, conditioned beliefs.

An Exercise: Developing Your “Witnessing Presence,” the Key to Unlocking your Authentic Voice

The following exercise is designed to launch you on your journey toward
reclaiming your authentic voice by helping you to develop a strong “witnessing
presence”:

1. Think of a situation that is currently a source of stress and conflict in your life.
For example, this situation could involve a frustrated desire to move forward
professionally or personally. It could also involve difficulties in your family or in
your romantic life.

2. Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. In your left column,
make a list of concrete facts describing this situation. In your right column, list
your feelings and beliefs about this situation.

3. Often, we are so entrenched in our feelings that we mistake them for facts.
Carefully examine each item on each list and ask yourself, to the best of your
ability, whether the “facts” are actually objectively true, or if they are your
subjective emotions or beliefs. Facts, for example, don’t tell us “The sky is
falling!”— only feelings do!

4. Based on your findings, reconfigure the two lists so that you have a more
accurate reflection of what information is purely factual and what is based in your
own personal and subjective reactions.

5. Without judging, look at the column on the right, where you have listed your
feelings. Do they seem disproportionate to the facts? If so, try to listen to them
with the knowledge that these are your subjective beliefs and feelings, not
objective facts that define the situation or who you are.

6. Give yourself the space to inhabit and express these feelings on the page. You
are now beginning to witness your feelings without becoming entirely identified
with them.

7. Return to the “facts” of the situation with this new perspective.
Having developed our “witnessing presence,” and having realized that our
subjective responses to a situation are not a direct reflection of reality, we are in
fact developing our authentic voice, a tool of extraordinary power. The feelings
and beliefs rooted in our “persona” and our “shadow” suddenly become less
daunting. Their power over us is diminished profoundly because we see them in
their proper light. This offers the adult in us the ability to address challenging
situations from a more knowing, creative, and proactive place.

Final Thoughts

The power of possessing our authentic voice applies to virtually every aspect of
our lives, from relationships, to our self-image, to our careers. The power of
increased authenticity creates a larger perspective of hope and possibility,
profoundly transforming our sense of who we are.

Aligned with this greater perspective, we have a second-chance to overcome the
limitations of our upbringings. There emerges a space for our authentic self to
flourish, manifesting our deepest inspiration, creativity and wisdom. Having
reclaimed our real power, our freedom, and our choice, we can truly drink from
the well of our entire being.

By rooting ourselves in our authenticity, we not only shift our personal sense of
self, but we radically transform our ability to communicate with others. We can
respectfully honor diverging opinions, whether they agree with us or not. In this
way, we even become a vehicle for enacting larger changes in the world. Just
imagine the possibilities of a group of individuals joining to express their
authentic voices together.

© Copyright 2007 Lynda Klau Ph.D. all rights reserved.