“This man is so authentic!”

 “That girl is fake, a phony!”

 “I will not listen to them – I must be true to myself!”

What does it mean to be authentic, or true to myself? Who should I be true to? Who do I betray when I am inauthentic, or fake? Who is my true “I”?

When I am true to myself, I am not true to everything I have – to my nose, or to my headache, or to my boredom. I am true to… to what? Who am I truly?  

Perhaps my true self is natural, spntaneous energies within me, as the Swiss-French thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau said?

Or perhaps my true self is the rational part of myself, as the Roman philosopher Marcus Aurelius believed?

Or maybe there is no fixed self in me – I create myself again and again every moment, as the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre explained?

Or maybe something else?

Now that you are familiar with the issue of authenticity, you can reflect about it in the company of your friends, whether online or face-to-face. There are different ways of running such a group. It can be a reading group which discusses a short text, or a discussion group about a specific case-study, perhaps from the literature or the cinema. But an especially powerful way of doing it is in the "Contemplative Companionship."

In a Contemplative Companionship, the participants don't argue with each other. They don't speak from their opinions, but from their heart, from their deep self - in togetherness with the others. Like a group of musicians creating music together, they create a philosophical symphony together. 

Here is a video-recording of the contemplative companionship of several Agora team-members.

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If you decide to start your own contemplative companionship, we invite you send us the results!