Some of the main challenges facing education at the beginning of the twenty first century concern our relationship with life and living beings. More precisely, the main theories of learning which inform educational practice in the west - such as behaviourism, constructivism, information processing, and situated learning - do not allow for a learning that results in the learner having a true understanding of the being of living beings and of life itself. Against this kind of learning, which will be called learning as modification and growth, a second process is proposed, called learning to be authentic, which is based on Heidegger's notion of authenticity as a state in which a true understanding of the being of living beings and life itself is present. This learning to be authentic allows for the entities involved to be approached in a way that is appropriate to life and living beings. It is experienced, on the one hand, as a process of letting go and quieting down, and, on the other hand, as a process of opening up and being in touch with the entities that are encountered. It involves a growing non-reflective self-awareness and the awakening of another way of being, and it demands a kind of educational practice that is in many ways different from what is current in most educational settings. Learning as modification and growth and learning to be authentic can merge into one process, which allows for the process learning as modification and growth to take place in such a way that it is guided by the openness that characterizes authentic existence. This integrated process, which constitutes a form of learning that results in the learner having a true understanding of the being of living beings and of life itself, will be called authentic learning.