By our own authority

How many of us do things, have beliefs or have interpretations of events which we never thought of ourselves – ones accepted by us even though they were given to us by others? This means accepting someone else’s decisions, someone who came before and who, presumably, knows better. Otherwise why accept their decision?

To accept someone else’s decision is to accept their view of what they think our lives should be and how we should live it. In other words (whether we actually like it or not) we conform to someone else’s set of values, someone else’s views of life, not our own. We are not living by our own authority.

Very few of the judgements we make on a daily basis, about what is “right” or “wrong” are made by us, based on our true understanding of the situation as presented. It often seems that the more important the decision, the less likely we are to use our own thoughts and ideas, based on our own experiences. This is particularly so if we, now no longer children, were brought up to always do what we were told by someone we hold as an authority figure – this is denying our own authority. Other people may offer advice, they will certainly have their opinions. But they do not know our problems, they do not know the troubles we have seen nor do they know the effects that our life experience has had on our outlook on life.

When all is said and done we are all Human Beings not just Human Doers. Just doing what others tell us to do, or to think, has not got us very far – in fact it has got us into a great deal of trouble! We are all members of the species ‘Homo Sapiens’ (reasoning man) why not try to live up to the promise of that?

Borrowing strengths builds weakness – we must grow strong ourselves. This means experiencing Life in all its wonder and glory. It means making mistakes; it means failing sometimes; it means falling down; it means getting up and trying again. Remember, we are all wayfarers on the journey along the Road of Life. And we all stumble on the Road. Those who stumble a lot we tend to call bad; those who stumble less we call good. But we all stumble.

This also means that we MUST accept responsibility for our own actions. To do otherwise is a) not honest and b) trying to see ourselves as others see us, or more to the point, as we THINK others see us - the image we think other have of us, which we feel we must live up to, to keep our place in the world. This is a recipe for personal disaster and great anguish.

Living under such mental conditions can only produce a person who is but a ‘shadow’ of themselves; incapable of choosing for themselves; incapable of spontaneous, self directed activities; at best patient, docile, disciplined to an almost pathetic degree, but increasingly irresponsible as their ability to use reason is diminished; finally such a person becomes but a creature governed mainly by their conditioned reflexes. Such a person is not living by their own authority.

Any human beings who have been forced to conform and have accepted a life devoid of thinking, who have been constrained in their ambitions, pride and personal achievements, have resigned themselves to the constriction, even the slow death of the attributes which are the distinctive elements of human life. Applying physical strength, or intellectual energies to please others and to fulfil their ideals, does nothing except reduce us to being a commodity, reducing our scope for happiness and increasing the likelihood of stress and lack of harmony in our lives. It reduces the ability, so needed today to dream of things that never were and ask, “Why not?”

This form of existence is an affront to the human spirit. It offends. This is deeply felt by many and the inevitable reaction to it is rebellion in some form or another. This form of existence is unnecessary and is the cause for much of the mental distress so increasingly evident in our society today.

Anyone in this situation needs the courage, the strength of character to actually look at what they are doing through their own eyes, to see what is actually there, not the view that they have been conditioned to see (by those deemed to be authority figures, or what the political or corporate ‘spin doctors’ want them to see).

To do this we need clear vision and an understanding of our true humanity, our true potential. No one can tell us who we are or what to see and how we should react. We must live by our own authority.