Faking It Till You Make It is Ancient Wisdom
Apprenticeship, not authenticity, is the forgotten path to transformation
This post was inspired by Cynthia Bourgeault’s course “Practicing Living Presence: Discovering the Mind of Christ Within,” especially her teachings on Chapter Two of Kabir Helminski’s Living Presence. If you’ve ever wondered why the spiritual path feels more like circling a drain than ascending a staircase, you’re in good company. Cynthia’s reflections on spiraling growth, remorse as a sacred entry point, and the illusion of linear progress offer a refreshingly honest framework for inner transformation. What follows is a grounded, irreverent take on why your healing journey might feel messy—and why that mess is a sign you’re right where you need to be.
The Cult of Authenticity and Why It Trips You Up
We live in a time where people are told to “just be yourself” like it is the master key to everything. That sounds nice until you realize the “self” you are being is mostly habit, reaction, and stuff you picked up in middle school.
In the old wisdom schools, nobody expected you to show up fully formed. You arrived a mess, got handed a broom, and learned the rhythm of the work. You copied those who had walked ahead of you. You wore the shoes until your feet learned the path.
It was not about suppressing who you were. It was about giving you a shape that could actually hold the wine of transformation. And until you had a vessel that could hold it, no one was going to pour.
Why “Imitation” Used to be a Compliment
Today, imitation is what you accuse someone of when you think they lack originality. In the ancient schools, imitation was called apprenticeship.
You didn’t start with your “voice.” You started by learning the craft exactly as it had been handed down. The woodcarver cut the same pattern as the master. The monk sat in the same posture as the abbot. The Sufi repeated the zikr the same way the sheikh did.
Cynthia Bourgeault, in Practicing Living Presence, leans into this when she talks about beginner meditators mimicking their teachers. From the outside, it may look like a bad impression. From the inside, it is how the deep muscle of the heart gets trained.
The Sufi path even makes this a formal stage. In The City of Separation, the “pretenders” are simply the students wearing the clothes of the path before they fit. The point is not to impress anyone. The point is to keep showing up in the form until the form begins to shape the soul.
The Trouble with Authenticity as a Starting Point
The self you are so eager to express on day one is usually what Helminski calls the false self. It is stitched together from survival strategies and old storylines.
When you insist on being “authentic” from that place, what you are really saying is “let me keep my habits and call it liberation.” That is not transformation. That is ego in a halo.
Wisdom traditions never confused the raw self with the essential self. The path does not aim to polish the false self. It aims to dissolve it so the essential self can breathe.
Copying as a Spiritual Practice
Think of it like learning an instrument. At first you fumble, strain, and produce sounds that make the cat leave the room. But you keep copying the teacher’s hands. Over time, the movement becomes second nature. Only then does your music appear.
In spiritual apprenticeship, the same thing happens. You copy how your teacher sits, how they breathe, even how they respond when the neighbor’s leaf blower starts mid-prayer. You borrow their steadiness until you find your own.
VMB once saw a student spend the first six months of meditation just learning how to sit without looking like a marionette with tangled strings. No shame in it. The posture itself was a sermon, even when the mind was wandering.
The Sacred Environment Matters
In the ancient schools, the setting shaped you as much as the teaching. You learned not just from instruction but from absorbing the pace, the tone, the way the teacher closed a door or poured tea.
A real apprenticeship is like being steeped in a strong tea. You might not understand every word of the instructions, but the atmosphere itself seeps into your bones.
That is why monasteries, Sufi orders, and other serious schools have a rhythm. The rhythm holds you when your inner life is wobbling.
Why This Isn’t Hypocrisy
The difference between hypocrisy and apprenticeship is simple.
Hypocrisy is pretending to have virtues you have no interest in cultivating.
Apprenticeship is practicing virtues you have not yet mastered because you desire them deeply.
The posture of prayer, the bow before meditation, the patient listening in conversation — these can be real before you feel real. The outer shape trains the inner current.
It is the same in every craft. You learn the stitches before you design the tapestry. You sweep the shop before you invent the masterpiece.
The Apprenticeship Arc
The Sufi stages make room for the awkward early years. The “pretenders” are simply those who are trying on the clothes of the path before they fit. Over time, the fit changes. The forms you once adopted become transparent because the quality they were meant to grow is now alive in you.
In Zen, they say “First the mountain is a mountain. Then it is not a mountain. Then it is a mountain again.” In apprenticeship, first the form is just a form. Then it is a struggle. Then it is the natural way you move.
At that point, what you express is authentic. But it is an authenticity that has been formed, not flung out raw.
Patience: The Unmarketable Virtue
No one puts “patience” on the workshop flyer because it doesn’t sell. But formation moves at the speed of integration. You cannot fast-track this.
You put in the repetitions. You keep the form even when it feels like you are just going through the motions. The form is the container. The wine ferments on its own timetable.
Some days you will think nothing is happening. Other days the smallest shift will feel like sunrise in your chest. Both are part of the same fermentation.
Apprenticeship Hazards
Three things trip people up in this stage:
Comparison — Looking at others and deciding you are behind. You are not behind. You are on your row in the vineyard. Keep working it.
Restlessness — Constantly wanting to change practices or teachers before the form has had time to work.
Performance — Turning the form into a way to get approval. This is when you start praying with one eye open to see who noticed.
The antidote is the same for all three: stay with the work until you forget why you are counting the days.
How to Apprentice Yourself Well
Pick one core practice and stay with it long enough to feel its grooves.
Watch your elders — not just what they say, but how they carry themselves in the ordinary.
Borrow steadiness until it becomes yours.
Resist novelty — don’t rush to “upgrade” before the basics have settled in your bones.
Remember the endgame — the point is not to look like your teacher but to awaken the essential self the form was designed to serve.
Closing: From Borrowed Form to Native Grace
Faking it till you make it, in this older sense, is not a mask. It is a training yoke.
One day you notice you no longer think about how to sit, breathe, or pray. The shape you borrowed is now the shape you live in. The words you once repeated by rote have become the voice of your own heart.
That is when authenticity arrives — not as unfiltered impulse, but as the steady flowering of a self that has been shaped, tested, and readied for love.
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—Virgin Monk Boy
(spiral-dweller, fog-walker, snack-based mystic-in-residence)
A gift from Heaven, on a beautiful Sunday morning!🌅Good Teacher, thank you for lending us your steadiness until we find our own.🕊️ But leaf blowers do still try to aggravate me. Just sayin. 🧘🏻♀️
As I read this post I was struck by how very similar the divine apprenticeship is to the military. Bear with me here and forgive me if this is offensive but I noted that every one of the bullet points are precisely what the higher-ups expect from recruits in the services. You arrive a mess, they further dismantle your 'self' and they expect emulation of those who trod the path before you. Can we be warriors for authenticity? Does the 'warrior' aspect conflict with essential self?