The Winding Path

Steve Pavlina recently posted a great article on the topic of self-acceptance vs. personal growth. This is a topic which has been on my mind a lot and it is one which I’ve discussed a few times with others recently. Since beginning the process of conscious personal development I’ve been faced with the apparent conflict between growth and self-acceptance. The conflict stems from the implication that the desire for personal growth means that you’re unhappy with yourself. Thus as long as you’re trying to grow, you’re unhappy. I agree with Steve’s suggestion that this is not the case at all.

Steve promotes the idea of rooting your idea of self in a permanent and unchanging concept, such as unconditional love, service to humanity, faith in a higher power, compassion, nonviolence, and so on. In this way you don’t identify your ’self’ with your situation in life, but rather with a few core, unchanging principles.

While I agree that identifying your ’self’ with your situation (your job, possessions, relationships, achievements, etc.) will inevitably lead to suffering as your situation declines, I’m not sold on the idea of ‘permanent’ principles as the alternative keystone of self-identification. Since I don’t believe that anything, including such wholesome concepts, is unchanging, I don’t believe that rooting your self in any of those concepts will result in a permanent foundation of your inner being.

Change is inevitable. Everything around us is in a continual state of flux and so even those concepts which we think of as permanent and unchanging are also gradually shifting. Our relationship with those concepts also changes constantly, to an even greater degree. One day we may find providing service to humanity to be effortless, but the next day circumstances may conspire to make the same situation extremely difficult.

I believe that rooting one’s identity in any concept will lead to instability. I’m not suggesting that Steve is wrong; it’s obvious that his beliefs have worked wonders for himself, and will be very likely to do the same for others, however I don’t believe his proposed paradigm shift is appropriate for me because of other conflicting beliefs.

Steve’s proposal doesn’t work for me mainly because my actions are out-of-line with what I believe to be my core principles. This misalignment is the result of not actually having thought about my core principles much, and living much of my life purely through reaction to the circumstances of the moment, without any properly considered direction or drive. Perhaps once I’m more able to consistently think, feel and act in a way which is in line with my principles I would be able to identify with those principles. Until then I’ll keep trying to improve with the understanding that I’m not perfect, and that’s ok.

To that end I propose that rooting your identify in the fact of your existence is enough. Your ’self’ is simply the fact that you’re alive. Everything else is secondary. Not even your thoughts, emotions, reactions or behaviours define who you are, they’re the results of particular aspect of your existence, but they’re not you in as much as neither the data inside a computer, nor whatever is displayed on the screen, is the computer itself. And certainly your relationships, career, and possessions are not you much like the high-rise office a computer is in, and the important multi-million dollar work the computer is used for, do not make the computer any more or less than it is.

You are you. It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.

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The last month and a half has shown me more clearly one of the areas in my life which I can work on to make some dramatic improvements. I spent most of the month internally wrestling with a desire to attain something which was explicitly denied to me. These are two clear courses I could have taken (though many more possible courses exist):

I could have accepted the situation, acknowledged how it made me feel, and if that didn’t lead to dissolving any negative emotions, accept those emotions, but not dwell on them because that would have only made them stronger.

Otherwise I could have acknowledged the situation, clearly defined how I wanted the situation to be, then thoroughly planned how to bring the reality into alignment with my vision, acting on that plan immediately, continually and stoically until the vision became reality, adjusting the plan as necessary as external forces acted upon it.

Instead what I did was dwell on the negative emotions, grasp at any positive ones, and ultimately I did very little to reduce the negative emotions or make the positive ones into something more permanent. My feelings, thoughts, and actions were all largely unconscious, or, in the face of some degree of conscious awareness, overridden by desire.

For most of my life I’ve tended to think negatively. In high school this meant I was very sarcastic and pessimistic. Calling me dissatisfied and apathetic would have been quite accurate. None of which was much of a problem when a lot of people around me felt the same. I had friends who really enjoyed my sarcastic humour; I didn’t say much, but when I did if it wasn’t serious then it was usually concise, dry, sharp, and funny, but with a strong negative inspiration. I had an average childhood and teenage years; the only thing I was better than average at was using my brain, but at that I was superb. My happiest times were making my friends laugh with amusing observations delivered with bitting force, and learning, and being acknowledged for the results of that learning (I had good grades and won quite a few academic awards, all without putting in much effort).

All of this means that my conscious mind is my strongest asset, but it’s powered by a lot of low-level negative emotion. My emotional state has been consistently low for most of my life, there have been very few peaks or troughs. Trying to experience life through emotion is challenging because the majority of my emotions have been tinged with negativity, and unemotional intellectual pursuits have seemed more rewarding.

It’s generally acknowledged that the conscious mind works in the realm of pure thought, usually voiced (either with our own voice as it sounds inside our head, but sometimes with the voices of those we spend a lot of time with). It’s not so clearly acknowledged or even understood how the subconscious mind works. I believe it works in the realm of images, impressions, feelings, desires; abstract concepts. It has no concept of logic, it is not at all rational. Our conscious mind acts as a filter between reality and our subconscious. Throughout our life our conscious thoughts filter into our subconscious, then re-emerge at a later time as ideas, impressions, and feelings. Thus, the more negative thoughts, the more negative emotions. The only way to change the negative emotions is to replace them with positive ones, which is achieved via positive thought.

What I will do from now on is to focus on the source of any feelings and if they are driving me to action, I will determine if they have a positive, helpful source before acting on them. If the source is negative, even if the direct result seem pleasurable and positive, I will not act on the feeling unless I can do so in a way which is undeniably positive. I will then identify the thoughts inspired by the negative feelings (and if possible the thoughts which inspired the feelings) and replace them with positive ones, repeated over and over until they become accepted by my subconscious as reality.

That’s not to say that simple, harmless indulgent activities are out of the question. Temporary stress relief or pleasure is fine as long as it’s not harmful, it’s purpose is not detrimental, and the resultant good mood is used to create a more permanent form of happiness. Pleasure, when used solely as an escape, is far more damaging in the long term.