Giving away your authority means giving away your power, your privacy, your inherent solitude. Means giving away your discernment, your own knowing. It leaves you desolate, desperate, confused about your confusion. It makes you run, run out of fear of being caught, punished from an external authority. it creates division within yourself, conflict between what you can and cannot include in your experience (lest anyone or you disapprove). It takes away your ability to be your own safe haven. Your own container.
Giving away your authority means you can’t be totally honest with yourself. About what’s actually happening within you. The real disappointments, the real disillusionments, your real longings. It means you have to edit yourself so as to not ‘upset’ an external authority. Whether that authority be a partner, parent, spiritual teacher or God.
Giving away your authority means not trusting yourself. That distrust comes from a sense of deep shame that something is inherently wrong, unworthy in you. And so you punish yourself by not trusting yourself. By not being your own guardian. You seek others to let you know your okayness and in that you become their slave. You seek others to let you know you are worthy. And in doing so you are bound to them. In seeking your worthiness without, the fire within you burns less bright.
In seeking your worthiness without, the fire within you burns less bright.
The antithesis to internal authority is fear. Fear of yourself, fear of the other, fear of external authority – if there is such a thing.