Why Your Experience Matters

Hi. It’s Eva from Wild Authentic Explore. Today I want to address a couple of basic concepts on the path of active authenticity. The first is that we often, and incorrectly, talk about authenticity as an either/or proposition, that we’re either authentic, or we’re not. That, like some lightbulb in the hall, our authenticity is either on, or it’s off.

Instead, I want to suggest that authenticity operates along a gradient, and that at times we act with more authenticity, at other times, with less of it. And while acting authentically is a choice, that choice rests on a fair bit of self knowledge. Because you can’t choose to do something you don’t know how to do, or maybe you can, but I wouldn’t vouch for the results.

When it comes to authenticity, we CAN learn to act more authentically because we CAN discover more of who we are, with time, and by cultivating the actions that show us who we are.

Knowing more of who we are only increases our chances of acting more authentically, which of course increases our chances of experiencing the many benefits that come from acting more authentically, things like more: ease, confidence, clarity, aliveness, impact, etc.

But to expand our knowledge of who we are, we have to engage in a process of discovery. In fact, thinking about authenticity as a process of discovery is captured by the word chasing, and as it relates to the book, Chasing the Wild Authentic.

In this framing of things, we go after our authenticity to discover more of who we are. And on this path, the path of Active Authenticity, we use our experience as a compass in this pursuit. We rely on our experience to guide our way toward what is true for us. This is in fact a central tenet on the path of Active Authenticity, and the other thing I want to address today. Navigating through life using your experience as a guide.

The idea that we can use our experience as a reliable compass, is significant for several reasons, but I’ll call out three.

First, because we each have a throughline to our experience, we each possess what we need for an authentic life. You already have the key to discover what you seek: you don’t have to search for this key elsewhere or outside of yourself.

Second, because your experience is unique to you, it suggests that you, and only you, are the expert on your individual path forward. While making use of the relevant knowledge, wisdom, and information that’s out there—and can come from teachers, parents, and various other sources: religious, political, economic, etc.—while it can help expand your understanding and your choices, this data is not a part of you. It’s external to you. A landscape to navigate against if you will, but not the one navigating. You are the one navigating—and navigating all these things at all times. Take a minute to take this in. Honoring our authenticity restores us to our sovereignty.

And lastly, relying on our experience as a compass asks us to assess and make needed repairs to the mechanism that is our compass. It invites us to return to the beginning, where we stand in the world naked, as we are and as we experience. Feel yourself there, and really, right now, in this moment. Can you feel the you-of-you right now, sensing, thinking, feeling?

And while your experience right now is your experience right now, let’s go deeper. Is your experience an accurate reflection of what may be going on right now? In other words, does your experience at times become distorted? Do unresolved issues from the past make it hard to see the present clearly? And as things stand, do you totally trust your experience to accurately reflect what’s going on in the moment?

Or maybe in the race to respond to outside demands you’ve neglected attending to your experience of things. Maybe you and your experience are no longer intimates. Maybe you’re no longer sure WHAT you think, feel, sense, unless your experience has tipped into the danger zone and is now flashing warning lights. Or maybe your experience has been so narrowed it centers only on what you feel. And does the roller coaster of what you feel further undermine your confidence in your experience of things?

Subscribed

If we are to restore our experience-of-things to its rightful place –to be the reliable compass it’s designed to be—we must first evaluate our experience to understand if it’s gotten “mucked up” and the degree to which it’s “mucked up.” And then of course commit to the type of remedial work that’s required.

This means once again considering ALL OF WHO WE ARE in each moment, not just perhaps what we feel most intensely. We must again begin to factor in our full, or what I call, three channel experience—yes, our emotions, what we feel, but also our thoughts and physical sensations.

And we must also take our experience-in-the-moment to the next level by filtering our present experience through our past experiences and our hoped-for future ones, to make sure we’re not living out old and limiting stories, but in fact, are moving ourselves toward authentic dreams with the actions we take.

When we restore confidence in our present experience, our experience can become the trusted ally it’s meant to be.

Using our experience as a compass asks us to take our experience seriously. But how do we do this? How do we cultivate a more accurate, more intimate knowing of our experience? We do it by first committing to taking our experience seriously, and then we start actually taking our experience seriously.

Do you have a rich understanding of your bodily sensations and what they communicate to you in each moment? How about your thoughts? Can you differentiate between the ones that are a repetitious replay of old stories, and the ones that would carry you closer to your dreams? And can you perceive the full range of your emotions—not just the loudest ones—and can you distinguish between them and follow the one that is aligned with what you hold most dear?

On the path of Active Authenticity we prioritize our experience in-the-moment, and devote ourselves to understanding what it is. We evaluate the information it yields, and when the information we receive seems off, we work to understand why, and start repairing things at the point at which we find ourselves. We let where we are suggest what to do first, and then what we do next.

To begin, we must go back to truly understanding the basics of our in-the-moment experience, our three-channel, real-time experience. The specifics of how to do this can be found in the first chapter of Chasing the Wild Authentic. I recommend you re-read Chapter One if you’re not confident in your experience of things, or think you’re not capturing all you could be—the full range of your emotions, sensations, and thoughts—with your experience, and filtering out what you should in pursuit of your dreams.

We commit, and then we start. This is what we do on the path of Active Authenticity. And that really is how it all begins.