Creativity & Authentic Self
A companion to John Eisenhauer's online novel: by realizing your Authentic Self, you are a creative person.
Everyone has to have a thing (no, not that). Each person should find an avenue of self-expression. Dance or graphic arts (things that I ABSOLUTELY cannot do). Writing (a thing that I foolishly convinced myself that I can do). Whatever the thing is, it should bring the creator clarity. My writing has been freeing me: it has been bringing my essence – an intellectual, emotional, and sexual being – into progressively greater focus. In a sense, it doesn’t matter if anyone likes ‘Brandon’: because I’m getting so much out of writing it. Oh, BS. I want to be validated…to be liked. I’m a bit of a ‘Sally Field’ (dated reference, you might have to google it).
- From my substack essay Self, Ethics and Your Sexual Essence
I’ve been fibbing a bit in my essays. I’ve been implying that everyone has the potential to know his or her Authentic Self. I wasn’t fibbing about Authentic Self (something that I believe with every molecule of being). To remind the reader, this is the notion that a person has a sublimated essence that he or she is driven to become: to consciously manifest. This essence – which one strives to know – is multifaceted. It is sexual: both attraction (gay, straight, and so on) and identity (cis or trans) based. It is intellectual: a propensity for math, music, letters, whatever. It is emotional: a person’s temperament.
I also state that this Authentic Self arises from the Primordial, the very cradle of the Unknowable Creation. That wasn’t the fib: that’s what I honestly believe. I call myself a ‘non metaphysical mystic’. Science and facts are critical for an understanding of physical reality. But there is a realm that is completely incomprehensible to the human mind. Because the human intellect has limitations. Suck it up, buttercup.
As William Shakespeare said in Hamlet (1623): There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. The bottom line for me is thar there is great value in developing a wordless connection to the Unknowable: it is for that reason, that certain aspects of Taoist and Buddhist thought resonate with me. That might be a bit much for you. Still, it should not be a tough sell that a person has fundamental deposition: a sexual essence (gay, straight…) as well as talents and abilities. Even if my take is a tad ‘touchy-feely’ for you, you should agree with me on that much.
As I mentioned in the essay The Gnosis of Elliot Page, Carl Sagan (the renowned astronomer and science communicator) said in his book The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective that ‘All of the rocky and metallic material we stand on, the iron in our blood, the calcium in our teeth, the carbon in our genes were produced billions of years ago in the interior of a red giant star. We are made of star-stuff’.
I maintain that – not only one’s physical being – a person’s fundamental psychological and emotional being (Authentic Self) is made of star stuff.
That’s not the fib. What’s the fib?
Not every person can access his or her Authentic Nature. I’ll have to unpack that over several essays. Many people – a majority – cannot connect to who they really are. Those people compensate for this inability to embrace self-knowledge by being sheep: letting others think for them. These are the people who harass gays. Embracing Authentic Self is creative process. There is nothing more individualistic than embracing one’s individuality. That makes the creativity unique to the specific person.
The fib was that every individual has the capacity to access his or her Authentic Self. Most people are limited and lack the strength of character and grit to seek out that Authentic Self and to cultivate it. Most are sheep. They believe nonsense that plays into their venality. The number is far greater than the trolls that support Trump. It is most.
If a person lacks the ability to access his or her Authentic Self, there is no Authentic Self.
I believe that I was driven to connect to my Authentic Self all of my life. I was blocked by alcohol and drugs (which my idiot parents gleefully encouraged):see the Prologue to ‘Brandon’. A person can have the potential to realize his or her true nature. But – if that person depends on fools can be frustrated in the endeavor. My parents were fools. They embraced the notion that aggressively encouraging their son to drink in high school was a good thing and made them righteous parents. It did not. If that were not bad enough, the drinking – which was zealously enabled by my idiot parents (they routinely bought me booze so that I could watch TV and drink in solitude) – interacted with a prescription drug that I am required to take. I’m a grand mal epileptic. Alcohol causes seizing. I kept seizing in high school because of my drinking. As a result, the prescribed amount of my anticonvulsant was repeatedly upped until I was swamped by soul-destroying side effects.
For decades, I experienced physical, emotional & psychological side effects. The physical included problems with my oral health: my gums were so soft that I could not eat solid foods: I now have a heart arrhythmia that was probably caused by my excessive ingestion of this drug. The emotional/psychological included suicidal ideation, depression, acute confusion, behavioral disorders.
I quit drinking (and a person like me should not do that at all). I cut the intake of the prescribed drug to a fraction of what it once was. I am now pursuing the realization of Authentic Self: an opiniated and creative bisexual.
This is a creative process.
Writing is central to the embrace of my Authentic Self. What you are currently reading is part of the pursuit. With every word that I type, I get closer. My free online novel Brandon Gets His Big Break is a big part of the process. This is so important to me that the next essay will do a deep dive into ‘Brandon’ and the significant role that it plays in my personal odyssey.
The online Britannica Dictionary defines 'creativity' as the ability to make or otherwise bring into existence something new, whether a new solution to a problem, a new method or device, or a new artistic object or form.
In my case, writing – both fiction and opinion pieces – is integral to the process. This is a recognized form of ‘being creative’. Whenever a person embraces his or her Authentic Self, that individual changes reality in a dramatic fashion. Let’s say that a guy embraces his gayness and clearly expresses that fundamental nature by how he presents himself. Some people will love the presentation and others will hate it (to the extreme of possibly killing him for his self-expression). The same is true of a trans individual. To realize Authentic Self. – to paraphrase the Britannica definition – that person must bring something into existence (a new solution). A creative person produces something that provokes a response in others.
To realize your Authentic Self, you have to be a creative person. Most people aren’t.
Namaste & Shalom,
John Eisenhauer
Excellent. Thought provoking!