Lost selves

I often feel angry with western culture (my culture) because I feel like my authentic self is slowly dying a little bit every day. It's inexorable. It feels like there is nothing I can do to stop it. I feel cut off from the deepest parts of myself and a feeling of real connection with the deepest parts of other people.

I can feel authenticity slipping away and I wonder what it would be like to live in a culture that actually embraced and nutured the authentic self. It's the thing I long for most in life, I think. I catch glimpses of what it would be like and it is so delicious that I can't help but want to figure out how to have more of it, and to help create a culture that supports it. It would be a much more vital and sustaining life.

I want to live in a community of people with a commitment to growing into our own selves and seeking ways to connect and share it with others. I am not talking about some sort of group therapy. I am simply talking about living a life that springs spontaneously from my core. A life that represents the play of my spirit with the spirit of others. A place without judgment, a place that cultivates love and acceptance, because these are the things that allow our spirit to grow and mature.

One of the best ways I know to experience authenticity with others is to participate in a Bohmian dialogue (or generative dialogue): a space that is free to be co-created by the participants. Musicians who improvise with others or athletes who are playing a loved sport together may also have the experience of shared authenticity. Some peple who do LSD together also report similar experiences. ("Flow" is what some people call an experience of shared authenticity, others call it collective intelligence.) The boundaries within oneself and between people drop allowing a free flow of ideas and feelings. In a very real way, the whole becomes more than the sum of the parts.

I long for that unity: the freedom that comes from transcending one's self, one's ego. Why is it so rare? It is really not that hard: it just takes the shared intention to do it, and the patience to practice. What is most hard is deciding to try it in a culture that glorifies the individual over the group, planning or exploration and and the known over the unknown.

Last night I participated in a dialogue session. At first I wondered why I was there. After a while, I remembered. As we sought to be real and authentic with each other, I only got hungrier for it. Our dialogue lasted only 2 hours. I wanted it to last for a weekend. Or really, a lifetime. What would it be like to live that way? All my experience with experiments in shared authenticity tell me that it would be much more satisfying that the current "real world."