Authenticity is meant to manifest itself. Ironic, considering that self-knowledge and the path of self-discovery are referenced as being the most difficult of earthly pursuits. Efforts to understand the material world, one another and the nature of meaning itself are each peripheral and downstream of questioning Who am I? Why am I? How should I? In the Eastern spiritual tradition aligning oneself with divinity begins with a deep relationship and recognition of the Four Nobel Truths:
First Noble Truth
Life is full of suffering, or dukkha. This suffering is inherent to the conditions of life, including birth, old age, disease, death, sorrow, grief, desire, and despair. Buddhists believe that people must accept this suffering and cannot avoid it.
Second Noble Truth
Samudaya or the causes of suffering. Namely by attachment, or tanha, which can also be translated as thirst, desire, lust, craving, or clinging. Buddhists believe that desire for pleasure, material goods, and immortality is futile and can only lead to suffering. Ignorance, or avidya, is another aspect of attachment that contributes to suffering. Buddhists believe that ignorance is the inability to see the world as it is, which can lead to vices like greed, envy, hatred, and anger.
Third Noble Truth
Nirodha or meaning the stopping (or cessation) of suffering, through breaking the cycle of craving and desire. Buddhists believe that understanding and recognizing desire is key to understanding Buddhist philosophy and living a life free of suffering.
Fourth Noble Truth
The Eightfold Path is the path to liberation from dukkha.
The motivating factor of liberating the self from what has been translated as ‘suffering’ is somewhat of a misrepresentation. Inspired by the antithesis of suffering or some sort of eternal state of bliss once enlightenment is unlocked or achieved runs opposite to the direction of the Second Nobel Truth. The goal is to live in balance or harmony with the cosmos and divinity of existence. In practice, this means working to recognize why we harbor the desires we do and explore ways to satisfy them.
Within both Eastern and Western traditions distinctions between masculine and feminine energies have been a means by which desire is classified and explained. The masculine energy of the Tao, seeks to assert the self as separate from the collective. Masculinity is that which seeks to engage with chaos, conquer it, and bring it into oneself. Freud's concept of Eros in psychoanalytic theory. Ultimately, the masculine would like to remake the universe in its own image based on the fear of never being understood or recognized as an individual.
In contrast, the feminine energy of the Tao, seeks to synthesize itself within the natural flow of a larger system. Femininity is that which seeks to find something more powerful than oneself, endear oneself to it, and join it, providing some kind of value in exchange for protection and borrowed power. Ultimately, the feminine would like to merge and achieve perfect unity with the rest of the universe. Freud's concept of transference is the idea of making another person or ideology the mainstay and cornerstone of one's own life to forego the process involved with the recognition of one’s own mortality, shortcomings, and inadequacies.
From the Jungian school of thought, the erotic as well as transferic impulses are generated by the concept of the "shadow." The unconscious aspects of one's personality that are repressed or denied. Embodied also in the anima and animus archetypes of masculine and feminine. The shadow contains the traits, impulses, and desires that we find unacceptable or uncomfortable to acknowledge ourselves. It represents the darker, often more primal side of human nature that we tend to reject or project onto others rather than recognize as foundational to ourselves. The litmus test to check the nature of our shadow is to look at others and find out the qualities we like the least. The cowardly, carnal, covetous, cruel creature that we so desperately try to constrain within the caverns of our own corpus.
From the masculine aspect of shadow, we find ourselves forever striving toward an ever-unfinished process. A slave to creation. From the feminine aspect of shadow, we again find ourselves striving toward an ever-unfinished process. A slave to integration.
Man is primarily a creative animal, destined to strive continually toward a goal and to engage in the art of engineering, that, is, externally and incessantly building new roads for himself wherever they lead. Man loves to create and build roads; that’s indisputable. But why is he also so passionately fond of destruction and chaos? Perhaps the reason is that he himself has an instinctive fear of achieving his goal and completing the project under construction? How do you know if perhaps he loves his building only from afar, but not from close up; maybe he only likes building it, but not living in it. He loves the process, but he’s not so fond of the achievement, and that, of course, is terribly amusing. In short, man is made in a comical way. Mechanically after construction, there is nothing left, not merely nothing to do, but nothing to learn. If you reach the same result with consciousness, that is, having nothing left to do, at least you’ll be able to flog yourself from time to time, and that will liven things up a bit. Although it may be reactionary, it’s still better than nothing. -Notes from the Underground, Dostoevsky, Part I, IX.
Our behavior is the end result of the battles between short and long-term desires. The mysticism of the Western World, particularly psychoanalytic theory has its own manner in which to describe the work toward the embodiment of self and the integration of a transcendent understanding of a universal being. Each proselytizing that there is no end. There is no eternal bliss and euphoric triumph. There is the unceremonial integration of aspects of the self previously arrested. Just as The Truths do not compel an individual to completely dissolve the self, Being (or the Zen notion of “non-doing”) doesn’t posit the complete abandonment of creation.
As Faust was able to resist temptation after tasting it. He was able to resist the solidarity of pure academia, resist the pit of debauchery offered by hedonism, and resist megalomania despite his political aptitude. Seeking fulfillment through an ability to become self-reliant and sovereign through recognition of interdependence and the implicate order: a synthesis of the masculine and feminine impulse the balance of Yin and Yang.