Self Actualization

Self Actualization in Community

August 31, 2017 By gwynn

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured. ~Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

Over the last few weeks I have written to you about individuation/self-actualization and three parts (Release, Revolution (The Goo), Reclamation) of this process as I see it.

In these emails you may get the impression that this is solitary work, work we do off on our own. But just as Inanna needed the help of the Ninshubar, we too need the support and help of community in our own individual processes of taking off our cultural and familial leashes.

We humans are social creatures. We always have been. Throughout evolution we have relied on our communities for support, for protection, for security, for the accumulation of resources and the meeting of our basic needs (such as food, water, shelter, a sense of safeness, and a sense of belonging).

In most cases, except those rare instances, when we wander off by ourselves into the wild, we die.

I deeply believe this is also true of this deep inner work of unearthing, unraveling, and unlearning; of release, revolution, and reclamation :: we need our community. Not to do the work for us, no, only we can do that. Rather to support us, to hold us, to mirror back to us, as we move through it all. To accept as as we are, while also encouraging us to dig deep and unravel and bring those hidden, those stuffed down, those forgotten or ignored parts of us into the light.

This community can look however we need it to look. Perhaps it it includes our therapist (I know mine does!), close, sister-like friends, family, intimate partners. Any and all of the people who “get it.”

Sometimes the communities we need to gather around us as we do this work, are doing their own work at the same time, in tandem, right along side us. So we can both witness and be witnessed, see and be seen, hear and be heard.

And sometimes, for whatever reasons, just the right person or people enter into our lives at just the right moment, and then for any and all of the reasons, they are only with us briefly.

Community can look like any of these things. It can be fluid. It can be solid. It can sway and be deeply rooted like a willow tree.

And.

As I mentioned in the first essay of this series, one of our basic human needs is that of belonging. Without our sense of belonging (and safety, and having needs of food, water, shelter met), we cannot do this deeper inner work. We need to feel a part of something. We need to feel that we matter to our community in some way.

This need can, of course, go wonky on us. The whole reason cults work is based on this need for belonging. Those aren’t the kinds of communities I’m talking about.

It is important, that our communities, where we find our belonging, are ones that encourage our own growth, that encourage us to question the “authorities”, that invite us to do differently, and still be accepted and included.

It is in these kinds of communities, where we find something akin to unconditional (within some amount of reason) love and acceptance. These kinds of communities where we feel we are fine just as we are. These kinds of communities where we don’t have to do or be exactly like everyone else in order to belong.

Those are the kinds of communities that allow us the space to do this deep work of unraveling our cultural conditioning, of unearthing those generations old stories of how we are too much and not enough and unworthy and undeserving.

It is only in these consent-based, non-authoritarian communities where we can truly and deeply do this work. (I’ll be writing more on authoritarianism in my next essay/video series).

And it is with this love, this support, this loving encouragement for us to move outside our own comfort zones and boxes, that we can truly thrive.

I talk more about this in the 14 minute video below ::

This essay and video series is in part to share with you the topics we’ll be unearthing, unraveling, and unlearning in the six month circle Becoming Unleashed. We begin September 22. If you are interested, you can learn more and request an application here. xoxo

To read the other essays and view the other videos in this series, click the links below ::

What is “Individuation”?

Release

The Goo as Revolution

Reclamation

Reclamation

August 24, 2017 By gwynn

Dance till you ache and drop, laugh till you cry. Sing till your lungs burst, and journey till the very road ends and dream by the moonless starless nights. Sleep with a secret smile on your lips, your body flush with the imprints of lips. Come alive, my dearest …reclaim yourself from the living dead.

Life beckons. ~Srividya Srinivasan

Over the last few weeks I have written to you about individuation and two parts (Release and Revolution (The Goo)) of the individuation process as I see it. This week I will talk to you the third part :: Reclamation.

First though, I want to share with you a bit more of how I view this entire process. I see it through the lens of the myth of Inanna.

In short (links to fuller versions of the myth are below), Inanna, the Sumerian Goddess of Heaven and Earth goes to the Underworld to sit with her grieving sister Ereshkigal. To enter the Underworld she must pass through seven gates and at each gate she removes a piece of clothing, so that she finally enters the realm of her sister naked.

This is the process of release. Of setting down that which we do not need, that which does not serve us.

When Inanna enters the Underworld, her sister kills her, hangs her on a hook, naked and leaves her for dead.

This is the time of The Goo. Of transformation. Of revolution. Of being in-between death and rebirth.

Inanna’s handmaiden, Ninshubar, goes to Inanna’s uncle after she has been gone for three days and asks for help to bring her back from the Underworld. The uncle creates two creatures that Ninshubar takes to the Underworld and gifts to Ereshkigal.

It is important to note this part of the story :: that ultimately our rebirth is in many ways dependent on those who are in our community. That it is only with the support of others that we can move through challenging, death-like times. That not one of us can return from the depths of the Underworld, of our own shadows and unconscious, without the help of others.

Eventually, the creatures ask Ereshikgal to release Inanna. Because the creatures held space for Ereshkigal’s grief, allowing her to wail in the rawness of her own pain without judgement or trying to “fix” her, Ereshkigal agreed.

This is another important part of the story to take note of :: it is through the love and acceptance of others that we are each able to change ourselves (and our own minds). If the creatures hadn’t accepted Ereshkigal as she was in her rawness and profound grief, the story would have ended very differently.

And so Inanna returns to reclaim her role as Queen of Heaven and Earth, first passing back through each of the seven gates and (consciously, mindfully) reclaiming the clothing she had left behind on her descent.

The ascent is the time of reclaiming. At each gate Inanna, has the opportunity to retrieve what she left behind or not. Perhaps some of the articles of clothing have also transformed. It is a time of looking within and deciding what is wanted, what is needed.

(There is a bit more to this particular myth, after Inanna returns, but I won’t be talking about it in this essay.)

This reclamation is perhaps, in many ways, the most challenging part of the process. It is different from challenge of setting down or the discomfort of sitting in the in-between.

It is a time of deep vulnerability. As we connect to those parts of us that need and want filling, satiating, to be fed. As we connect to our own strengths and power and daring. As we do the work of claiming our space and time in the world, going against all we were conditioned to believe.

This is when we bravely go against the status quo, against our patriarchal culture and mindfully step into who we deeply want to be, without apology, without shame.

I talk more about all this in the 9-minute video below ::

To read the other essays and view the other videos in this series, click the links below ::

What is “Individuation”?

Release

The Goo as Revolution

Self Actualization in Community

Here are a couple links that give more detail and analysis of the Inanna myth:

Inanna’s Descent into the Underworld

Inanna’s Descent: A Sumerian Tale of Injustice

The Goo as Revolution

August 17, 2017 By gwynn

The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can’t be any large-scale revolution until there’s a personal revolution, on an individual level. It’s got to happen inside first. ~Jim Morrison

Last week I wrote to you about releasing those stories we’ve all been told since birth – those stories of how we are too much, not enough, how we should be ashamed of who we are, of even daring to exist. This week I want to write to you about what I call The Goo.

The Goo is that space and time of metamorphosis. It is when the butterfly is in its cocoon and has fully disintegrated from its caterpillar state, but has not yet begun to form into a butterfly.

It is an uncomfortable time.

It is an in-between time.

It is a time of not-knowing where we are really going or what is going to happen next.

And often, it can be a time with lots of fear, worry, and anxiety.

It is that middle time between being unconsciously compliant to mindfully defiant; between being fearfully silent and courageously speaking up and out; between mindlessly going along to get along and willfully demanding justice for our selves and others.

It is a time of transformation.

It is that space between letting go what no longer serves us and (re)claiming those parts of us we have shoved down, ignored, pretended weren’t important.

It is a time, like releasing, like reclaiming, that we approach over and over, revisiting with each layer, each aspect of our unconscious, the conditioning handed down to us, the stories that were fed to us. It is a time that ebbs and flows with our own seasons and rhythms.

In some ways it is a time of rest. A time of stillness. A time of opening and allowing.

In other ways it is a time of massive action. Of profound moving. Of destruction and then creation.

Some liken it to the time in the Underworld from the myths of Inanna or Christ.

It may look like death, and is also the early moments of rebirth.

It is a time of revolution.

Of allowing the destruction of what no longer fits, what no longer works, what is no longer right for you.

Of embracing creation of who we want to be, new ways of doing, new ways of being in the world, in our communities, with our families, with ourselves.

I talk more about this in the 12-minute video below ::

To read the other essays and view the other videos in this series, click the links below ::

What is “Individuation”?

Release

Reclamation

Self Actualization in Community

Release

August 10, 2017 By gwynn

How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also If I am to be whole. ~C.G. Jung

I wrote last week about the process of individuation, what it is, what it means, and if it’s even necessary. This week I want to dig a bit deeper into this part of our human evolution, part of what it may look like, and why it it is important for the shifting and changing of our patriarchal culture.

To be honest, our culture doesn’t want us to move through this process. It doesn’t want us to know our own minds, to be self-aware, or to bring our unconscious and shadow into consciousness and light. Because when we do this, when we move from a state of unconscious reaction to a place of mindful being, well, our authoritarian culture starts to fall apart.

As you know, I deeply believe that the personal is political; that we need both self-actualization AND social liberation to become truly free.

How can we begin this process? How can we begin to take off the cultural leashes that have been put on us? How can we shift from a place of unconscious reaction to mindful being?

A possible place to begin is by unearthing, examining and then releasing from our being all those stories we each have about being too much, being not enough, being ashamed of who we are, being ashamed of our very existence.

Those stories we’ll all been fed since birth. By our families. By our communities. By our culture.

Those stories that got into our skin and sinew and bone.

Those stories that keep us quiet, small, focused on pleasing and caring for others while sacrificing our own pleasure and care.

Releasing these stories is a life long process. We release them in layers. I think of this work in terms of a three dimensional spiral that we move up and down, in and out of. We each have many aspects to these stories we all hold, unique to our own lived experience and ancestral history.

As we unearth, examine and release each piece, however, we are creating space for different ways of being. As we bring each of these stories out of our unconscious and into our consciousness, we can mindfully shift the ways we are in the world and with ourselves.

It isn’t a direct path. There is no lock-step prescribed “right” way of doing this work.

And.

There are some pretty common tools and processes that we can all use to connect to these stores and move them out of our being.

I talk more about this in the 12 minute video below ::

To read the other essays and view the other videos in this series, click the links below ::

What is “Individuation”?

The Goo as Revolution

Reclamation

Self Actualization in Community

What is “Individuation”?

August 3, 2017 By gwynn

The aim of individuation requires that one should find and then learn to live out of one’s own center, in control of one’s for and against. And this cannot be achieved by enacting and responding to any general masquerade of fixed roles. ~Joseph Campbell, Myths to Live By

A person with a well-differentiated “self” recognizes his realistic dependence on others, but he can stay calm and clear headed enough in the face of conflict, criticism, and rejection to distinguish thinking rooted in a careful assessment of the facts from thinking clouded by emotionality. Thoughtfully acquired principles help guide decision-making about important family and social issues, making him less at the mercy of the feelings of the moment. What he decides and what he says matches what he does. He can act selflessly, but his acting in the best interests of the group is a thoughtful choice, not a response to relationship pressures. Confident in his thinking, he can support others’ views without being a disciple or reject others’ views without polarizing the differences. He defines himself without being pushy and deals with pressure to yield without being wishy-washy. ~excerpt from The Bowen Center (Differentiation of Self)

What does it mean to individuate? How is it related to self-awareness? Is it even necessary?

Individuation is a term used originally by Carl Jung. According to Jung, it is a process in which the individual Self develops out of an undifferentiated (i.e. still connected to familial and social norms and conditioning) unconscious. It is seen as a developmental psychological process during which innate elements of personality, the components of the immature mind, and the experiences of the person’s life become, if the process is more or less successful, integrated over time into a well-functioning whole. It is a process that begins as early as the age of two and continues on throughout our lives.

In short, individuation is our ability to know our own minds. To not be ruled by our unconscious (which includes our social and familial conditioning). To be able to think for ourselves, to understand what motivates us to do the things we do, to be able to hold our own thoughts even when they are unpopular or go against the current “norm” (while also being open to reason and logic and other ways of thinking and doing).

To be “individuated” is directly related to being self-aware. Through the process of becoming more self-aware we are able to individuate more. It is a life long journey. We do not “arrive” or become fully individuated 100% self-aware – there will always be layers to the unconscious for us to unearth, unravel, and integrate or dislodge.

It is the process of unearthing, unraveling, sifting, unlearning, and reclaiming all the messages we have been given since (perhaps before) birth.

It is the process of releasing our stories of too much, of not enough, of shame.

It is the process of learning to sit in discomfort, in the unknown, in the in-between. The ability to look at the shadow and not only the light aspects of who we are.

It is the process of (re)claiming who we are and who we want to be. It is in the (re)claiming of our wants, our desires, our deserving. It is in the connecting to our strength, our power, our daring.

It is owning all of who we are.

In terms of survival of the human species, individuation is not necessary. We don’t need to do this to live. It is not a basic human need. In could be argued that it may be a part of our evolutionary process, and even so, it is not necessary.

When we look at Maslow’s Hierarchy (right), individuation (what Maslow calls “self actualization”) is that the “top” of the pyramid. This implies that it cannot be achieved unless the other needs are met. As in, if you do have stable sources of food and shelter, you aren’t going to be working on “self-awareness” – you’re going to be working on finding stable sources of food and shelter!

What I find to be true of the pyramid is that the three base layers are necessary for our survival as humans. We need food, water, shelter. We need a sense of safeness. We need a sense of belonging.

We do not need self-esteem or self-actualization in order to survive.

However.

I would argue that in order to thrive, we do need those two “upper” levels.

I talk more about this in the 15 minute video below.