Uncomfortable Truth: Authenticity is Your Greatest Untapped Power

Your Body is Your Compass and Why Wholeness Requires Leaving Illusion Behind

To change and show up more as our Authentic Selves is to often be uncertain, uncomfortable, and misunderstood. Personally, to listen to my “No” I had to grieve a whole lot. And by doing that I also grew. Both of these states were happening at the same time. That is okay as that is how wholeness works.

The hard part about authenticity is that it often is uncomfortable…at first. Later on and looking back, it is entirely worth it. Yet, it is a journey to arrive embodied in our Authentic True Selves. We carry multitudes in our authenticity. The light and the shadow. The shadow when integrated, brings more untapped wisdom to the table of our Whole Self.

Authenticity requires radical honesty with ourselves. And our body and mind may be saying “No” in the only ways that they can speak; through difficult thoughts and symptoms. This is what is often misunderstood by many healthcare practitioners that aren’t trauma-informed or spiritually inclusive. And again, if we only listen to the status quo; we will get what we have always gotten - the same.

Authenticity Asks Us to Be Courageous

My entire career has been about integrating identities to become more and more whole and authentic. All parts loved tenderly into the mosaic of the Authentic Self. All the roles I played, were simply lessons on becoming true to mySelf.

I wasn’t a “business executive” - I was learning about business.

I wasn’t a University professor, I was learning how to teach.

I wasn’t a researcher - I was learning about how to translate data into a story.

I wasn’t a “rehabilitation counselor” - I was learning how to be with people suffering.

I wasn’t a “small business owner - I was learning to serve my community.

I am not a “Somatic Experiencing Probationer” - I was learning about the wisdom of the body.

I am not an “Energy Worker” - I was learning to translate energy to words.

I am not a “Shamanic Apprentice” - I am learning to bridge the seen and unseen.

I am not a “Trauma Expert” - I am learning to cause less harm when being with people.

This is what I was learning in the roles I was playing and with integration, I no longer identify with the roles as if the role is all I am. I play these roles and I am all of them, none of them, and so much more. My work as The Integrative Practitioner is symbolic of the integration of all roles and identities. Because my only true identification is the embodied spiritual being beyond all roles and identities…This is the Authentic Self.

The western world is highly traumatized and conditioned and only allows a superficial self to be seen, rewarded and accepted. Simply we must be someone, we must be our roles, or we must be our professions in order to be accepted into society and matter.

This however, is not the truth of our existence. When we emotionally and spiritually mature beyond a society that has never been allowed to be their Authentic Selves - we begin to see through this illusion. And to see through the illusion is not to abandon any role or identity we accidentally unconsciously played and were merged with for a false sense of security.

No, we must integrate all roles and all identities and radically and compassionately love ourselves into becoming the most authentic versions of ourselves. The True Self that sees all the roles and versions of us as a process of becoming.

This my dears, requires courage. And it will break your ego into dust. You will not make superficial people happy in the process. You may not be understood at family holiday gathering. Some of your friends may have concerns. Your colleagues may avoid you like the plague. This is how disruptive the Authentic Self is to an emotionally and spiritually immature society. Authenticity terrifies the ego.

Being Misunderstood Liberates the Authentic Self

My colleague and friend Ralph, who recently crossed over to what is next for their spirit, was a wise trauma therapist and meditation teacher. These are the roles they played and yet wasn’t identified with as they truly understood authenticity. And they would always say “the doors to the cage aren’t locked.”

Ralph lived this teaching. This is a metaphor of the conditioned self trapped in a cage of societal constructs that causes suffering. And only the Authentic Self can free the conditioned false self. All of this was contained in that small one phrase teaching. This is how a true master teacher serves humanity.

To be authentic is to not be understood by the masses who are hypnotized with the illusion of “success” or “being someone.” I’ve been lucky to work with successful people for decades. Some folks seemingly “have it all.”

And it is only when you reach the mountaintop of what you think you needed to have to become successful: the next degree, the car, the relationship, the certification, the business, the money, etc…that a spiritual crisis may emerge.

Because for the Authentic Soul, superficial things are not going to touch the depth of our hearts and souls. And waking up to this often is through a crisis, breakdown, or Dark Night of the Soul.

Superficial folks around you will not understand why you are not happy, not fulfilled, and not okay. “But you have it all?!” they will say. Well indeed you do have it all…materially. Yet we can be materially fulfilled and emotionally and spiritually bankrupt.

Those career labels I told you about before? Well, I suffered burnout in half of them. Why? Because my soul and Authentic Self was not aligned and seemed to be allergic to superficial stuff. My soul could literally give a sh*t about some certification, she came here to learn. So burnout was a symbol and a metaphor.

Also this is what the physical body does when we cross our unspoken needs, wants, and desires. The deepest parts of me - the WISE and TRUE aspects of mySelf were crying out to be heard. And my wise body slowed everything down into survival mode until the soul was allowed to shine through.

As a complex Trauma survivor myself, I do want to be clear here that this needed to happen. There was no other way for me to listen to the wordless cries of my soul. Complex Trauma can cause our Authentic Self to nearly drown in the sea of fragmented parts that needed to do whatever we needed to do to survive, be seen, and be understood.

The burnout that occurred in my body is also something that can happen universally when our traumatized parts try and silence our Authentic Self. So many of us trauma survivors and neurodivergent humans have to become someone at the superficial level in order to put the puzzle pieces of our soul back together. And that superficial someone may end up totally burnt out because our soul has been suppressed in the process.

So the Dark Night of Soul occurs. And this goes on for as long as needed until Authenticity is fully loaded. It can even happen multiple times if we have really stubborn parts or need to level up even after we think we went fully authentic. Because our authentic self can widen and expand beyond what our conditioned mind can even comprehend.

This is where a “healing journey” may start or when you start reading spiritual books or get interested in alternative practices, the “woo” and stuff that may weird parts of you or those who know you out. I call this a “Soul Recon Mission” and it is okay. This is natural to the human spirit.

And I want you to know that you cannot get your process wrong. At all. Whatever happens outwardly is the inner movement of the soul. Of course you can take some wrong turns that can absolutely cause a lot of suffering and this is why trauma-spiritual support are helpful.

Yet the outward process is still symbolic and a metaphorical one. And your process is your process. It is not easy, it is often messy, and it is definitely uncomfortable. Can you absolutely go through multiple periods of burnout and Dark Nights of the Soul - Yes. Can support also be helpful - Yes. Is all of this worth it - You can only say Yes, on the other side of it all.

Personally, my process to becoming an integrative practitioner was difficult and beautiful. Decades of inner work allowed me the time and space to integrate all dimensions of my being into my Whole Self. You cannot even imagine how misunderstood this process has been personally and professionally.

It is wild to me when folks reach out because they are inspired or want to become like me. And I also understand it. Many perceive that life is easy when you are authentic or work authentically. No, this could not be further from the truth.

To live and work authentically is to disrupt the status quo. And the status quo wants to remain the same. If threatened with authenticity, the status quo can be quite aggressive. Why? Societal conformity is riddled with unprocessed inter-generational pain, collective trauma, and conditioned beliefs that are passing off as a: culture, field, group, workplace, family, or system looking like “that’s just the way things are.” Classic denial and dissociation at the collective level. Authenticity requires honesty, truth, and embodied wisdom. The collective unconscious has not yet earned wisdom or known the wholeness that is the Authentic Self.

Professionally, I have been misunderstood at all levels. Bullied, harassed, and treated like the next guru. Again thankfully to earned inner wisdom, wise ancestors that were searched for in earnest, and deep/consistent inner work, I know I am not the projections that someone casts upon me from their screen of their consciousness.

To have done the inner work and met, included, transmuted, and embraced all aspects of myself is to truly know thyself. This is not a humble brag either. This is permission from me to you to discover who you truly are. Because at the deepest level, I am you and you are me. What is possible for me is possible for you too.

So when I am harassed online by some healthcare practitioner who isn’t trauma-informed and doesn’t embrace the spiritual dimensions of being human - I know that is their stuff, not mine. Because to include someone’s mind, body, spirit, and energy in their hopes, dreams, and goals just makes sense to me. Yet to western traditional healthcare when I first talked about these things…let’s just say it wasn’t well received by everyone.

Yet my soul knew to follow the inner wisdom of my Authentic Self. I can’t imagine how sick I would have become if I kept squashing my authenticity into a suffocating box of conformity. Being near death at the time of my decision to go fully authentic; I can tell you that it was a great choice of the soul. The risk was worth the reward.

And if you think for one second the reward is “vibing high all of the time” - that too is an illusion of the idea of the Authentic Self. The reward also includes feeling every single emotion possible; and yet not getting lost or grasping onto any of them as they are me.

Emotions are passing through me. I am witnessing emotion in the field of my soma and awareness. Because to be human and authentic is to be fully alive. And to be fully alive is to sense fully with the mind, body, and spirit.

Who I know myself to really be is the one who witnesses all the waves in the ocean of my being. So don’t get it twisted; being authentic is not to be confused with “positive vibes only” That is a dissociated spiritually immature trope to get you to deny your body and live only in the spiritual realms where we have less power to make real 3D changes to our lives and the in the lives of others.

Yet we are less powerful if we are only in the spiritual. The seat of the greatest untapped power is the body, the bridge from the spiritual to the physical. Where we bring our visions into reality. Where we are most empowered is being interconnected to all levels of our being: mind, body, spirit, and energy. This process I call “integration.”

You’re Earning Wisdom

The secret that the western world does not want us to know is how truly powerful we really are. We are not dis-empowered beings that need to look outward at emotionally immature leaders or a spiritually bankrupt society for permission to exist, belong, and matter. Yes, that is what many of the “perceived powers that be” want us to believe. And why is that?

It is because if they keep us fearful of who we actually are: empowered co-creators, they can continue to attempt to control us and make us hate one another. Hate anyone who is “different” and doesn’t conform to their collective insanity.

The western world attempts to function off of dominating the self and other. Yet indigenous wisdom and ancestral ways of being prove that we are interconnected and highly relational beings. Within each of us is a mind, body, spirit, and energy that picks up on these dimensions of being in others and the natural world.

When when understand ourselves to be more than just a solid material self that is to be controlled and dominated; this process invites a curiosity into the deepest existential question one can ask: “Who am I? This is a natural process of maturing as an adult and coming into our Meta-cognition of being aware of being aware.

In midlife, it is natural to get curious and to begin to deconstruct what we have been told we are and to begin to heal and become who we truly are. Unfortunately, due to the colonization of the mind and body by the western world; the sacred transition in midlife to become authentic is often disrupted, misunderstood, and because most of society is highly traumatized…the transition into midlife can be a messy crisis. This is another spiritual awakening point however, if you turn inward (and possibly get support.)

Yet many are awakening to this sacred transformative initiation into being an emotionally and spiritually mature adult. To truly heal and awaking is to earn spiritual and emotional power.

This empowerment is earned wisdom. This wisdom is who we are at our core and an ancestral urge within. These are the energies once somatically embodied, create the wise elder within.

The Body is Our Sacred Compass

When we begin to heal and awaken within, we can start to see that our Authentic Self has an inner compass. We are wise, we have morals, and inner ethics that can guide us more and more towards our authenticity.

We may even evolve past the point of needing or even wanting spiritual gatekeepers to our True Authentic Selves. Because our Authentic Self is a Wise Self Leader. This inner leader doesn’t look outward to a false sense of authority - this energy within us is our soul. The soul being part The One who can detect the True Self in another.

And our Authentic Self, the bridge to our soul and spirit can detect the realness of Self or the fake conditioned false self in another. I refer to this process that unfolds into realizing more and more truth as: discernment.

In my own inner work and in what I teach my clients and those I mentor; we don’t need divination tools or oracle decks to discern the real and false self of another. We can use our own bodies as our sacred inner compass. Divination tools of course are fun and can be a tool - and these tools eventually will only confirm what your body knows once wholeness starts to arrive on the scene.

And I cannot even begin to tell you just how much partnering with your body can help you trust yourSelf more. You can also begin to trust others in a whole different way. Along with trusting the Universe at a level of being an empowered co-creator.

Healing into wholeness isn’t for the faint of heart. Because you will also see just how much many people’s words don’t reflect their actions or energy. You begin to see that many around us may be growing older and not wiser. We are living in a society that many adults are wounded children trapped in aging bodies. Many in “leadership positions” are those who perform and conform the most in an unwell society and definitely are not authentic.

This is why healing, waking up, and becoming whole is often subconsciously avoided by many - because it truly can destroy many of our illusions. Yet, once those illusions are grieved - a life of magic, wonder, flow, creativity, curiosity, connection, compassion, and authenticity awaits on the other side of your inner process.

Once we are whole, we aren’t waiting for anyone to save us. We become the one we have been waiting for. And once we heal past becoming who we needed - we can become who we truly are. This is the Authentic Self.

A Somatic Trauma-Informed Prompt to Embody 1% More Authenticity This Week:

• Remember a day in the recent past when you felt a little more like yourself; freer, more honest, more alive. Even just a little bit more like who you are becoming.

• As you recall it, what sensations arise in your body right now? Maybe it isn’t your body that is remembering, but your mind - what visions or thoughts are you noticing?

• If it is your body remembering; Where do you feel warmth, openness, or ease?

• If it is your mind recalling; What words or meaning come up?

• What shifts in sided your body or mind when you imagine letting that version of you breathe in this moment a little more?

• You are invited to come back to this prompt once or twice a day in the morning and evening and practice this week. Notice what shifts. Journal about it, voice note yourself and listen to it back, tell someone you trust what you are noticing, or even reply in the comments.

---

To be more fully human; follow my writings, practices, and love notes to humanity right here.

The authenticity in me, honors the authenticity arising in you,

-Shannon

This piece is part of a series I am writing on authenticity. If you enjoyed this article you may also like some of my Substack previous teachings and practices:

Ascension Invites Descending into the Body to Integrate Embodied Wisdom

Integrating Spiritual Awakening(s) are Part of Embodying our True Self

Radical Authenticity: Why I Quit Performing Wellness

Authentic Service In the Age of Collective Insanity

To learn more about my work you can visit my website. I am in the process of refreshing my offerings and soon will have space to work with a couple of new online coaching clients.

our body is a compass to the light of our soul