How do you respond to fakeness?
What does it mean to be fake?
When I think of fakeness and being fake, the first thing that pops to mind is insincerity followed closely by inauthentic and not real.
In the normal world, fakeness is often used to describe someone who seems too caught up in image and superficial living, someone who is not being straight with others – not necessarily a liar, but more of a “spin person.”
Fake people feel empty or hollow and fakeness seems to impact our hearts with a sense of disappoinment or loss.
The greater issue with fakeness is that the ego itself is fake – 100%. The ego identity is a fake self, so it can’t be anything other than fake regardless of all the striving to be real.
Most of our lives are lived from a place of fakeness – what we take to be real in ourselves is mostly based on the fake – ignorance, misundertanding, false ideas and beliefs, wishes, hopes and dreams. There is a drive deep within us that longs for the real, for authenticity, but that drive is being co-opted by something fake trying to improve itself for others’ approval.
It’s a real conundrum – how can a person, identified with their fake self, become real and authentic? What kind of alchemy can transform fakeness into the real?