Just wanted to note that April 5^th was Darbella’s and my 23^rd anniver­sary! Happy anniver­sary to us!

So, you all received the e-mail detail­ing how sub­scribers to the BLOG can now down­load 3 of my e-books, absolutely free. I’m not sure if this is a “for­ever” thing, but let’s assume so, for now. If you look at the top of the e-mail ver­sion of this BLOG, sub­scribers have a link to the free e-books.

If you know any­one who would ben­e­fit from my e-books, and ben­e­fit from this BLOG, send them to: http://www.phoenixcentre.com/cgi-bin/prolinkz/pl.cgi?free

So, last week I men­tioned the idea of gates — blocks to pro­gres­sion through the maze that is life. One of the things I said was that the first 3 Chakras are phys­i­cal, and that most peo­ple get stuck there. I want to talk more about this, as well as explore what it means to “express yourself.”

The Three Lev­els of Self

The Haven’s “take” on this matches my own. In a nut­shell, we come into the world as Authen­tic Selves — this “self” is pure poten­tial. The authen­tic self is the con­tainer for every­thing about us. It con­tains our full skill set, and all of the resources we are born with.

The authen­tic self col­lides with social pro­gram­ming, and in a sense becomes the repos­i­tory for the aspects of our self that are deemed imprac­ti­cal, scary, or “wrong.” Thus, as adults our authen­tic self is basi­cally a repos­i­tory for every­thing that has not been “ele­vated” to make up our Actual Self.

Our authen­tic self thus con­tains the things about our­selves we have been taught to repress.

In other words, when we are born, we are 100% authen­tic self. By adult­hood, the mix is likely 10% actual self, and 90% repressed mate­r­ial, still con­tained in our authen­tic self. Through con­di­tion­ing, this mate­r­ial has often receded into our sub­con­scious or unconscious.

Encul­tur­iza­tion

Taken from an old issue of Play­boy. I wish I knew who drew it…

I tackle this issue in depth in my book, This End­less Moment, in the sec­tion on “Decon­struc­tion.” Briefly, our authen­tic self col­lides with our fam­i­lies, tribes (I use this word to denote groups, i.e. small town vs. city, con­ser­v­a­tive vs. lib­eral, reli­gions vs. not, etc.) and cul­tures. This col­li­sion is meant to be benign — this is our “encul­tur­iza­tion,” where those in charge of us and our “proper upbring­ing” bring to bear the col­lec­tive wis­dom of our culture.

If encul­tur­iza­tion did not hap­pen,
we would be unable to function.

How­ever, the method of this process, reduced to its essen­tials, is the cre­ation of dual­ity. We learn me / not me, good / bad, right /wrong, among oth­ers. Now remem­ber, this is not based upon some uni­ver­sally agreed upon norm, but is very spe­cific to the tribes and cul­tures we grew up in.

In this process, we start to repress what is frowned upon, and empha­size what is held in high esteem.

This process con­tin­ues through­out our school years, as more and more peo­ple impose their per­spec­tive (and will) upon us. As sim­ple and com­mon exam­ple: most six-year-olds are a bun­dle of energy, and in first grade are taught to sit still and shut up. We learn to do so by force of will, aka tight­en­ing mus­cles to keep from wig­gling. Hold­ing stuff in is the method­ol­ogy of enculturization.

By the time we reach adult­hood (in years, not in matu­rity) we have “stuffed” great por­tions of our selves.

The stuffed mate­r­ial may be obvi­ous. I see this a lot. Some­one will tell me about some­thing their mother does that they hate, for exam­ple, and then a few min­utes later will give an instance of doing exactly the same thing, but will jus­tify it. Yelling at kids is a good exam­ple. They know they hated it as a kid, and yet engage in the hate­ful behav­iour them­selves, sort of on autopilot.

One of my favourite clients tells me that her mother gives ter­ri­ble advice, espe­cially about rela­tion­ships. Yet, where does she go for rela­tion­ship advice? Yup. Mom. (For the record, mom is still wrong, but my client believes the “encul­tured” rule that “Moms give good advice.”

Other mate­r­ial is buried in the sub and uncon­scious. Carl Jung was big on “Shadow work,” which is a process of explor­ing the sub­con­scious mate­r­ial. Hid­den there are the “scary parts” of our selves. At least, they were scary to our tribes. It would do us well to explore this mate­r­ial, as much juice and fun is con­tained therein.

Any­way, by adult­hood all that we are
(have become) is our Actual Self.

This is the socially accept­able rem­nants of all that we could have been. It’s actu­ally quite func­tional within the para­me­ters of the cul­ture we grew up in.

If you want to see this at work, watch “The Amaz­ing Race.” The peo­ple with the most highly devel­oped (largest) actual selves are the ones who func­tion well in for­eign cul­tures, espe­cially the cul­tures that are really dif­fer­ent. They have learned some flex­i­bil­ity, as opposed to judgements.

The major­ity of peo­ple are like the con­tes­tants with poorly devel­oped actual selves. They are the ones who get all worked up when peo­ple don’t speak Eng­lish, aren’t inter­ested in going faster, or are liv­ing in what the “racer” con­sid­ers poverty.

Hov­er­ing above the actual self, is the Ideal Self.

The con­tents of the Ideal Self is tribal. What is ideal in North Amer­ica is not nec­es­sar­ily ideal else­where. Now, by ideal, I do not (and The Haven does not) mean cor­rect or right. Ideal means “what the soci­ety sub­scribes to as being highly use­ful or desir­able.” This ideal self model cre­ates a pull toward try­ing to take one’s actual self (which, by def­i­n­i­tion is incom­plete) and force it even more firmly into society’s ideal mold.

Once you see that this pat­tern of devel­op­ment is not only true, but true for you, you also see why you are stuck.

Chakras 1, 2, and 3 are all about the areas most often cov­ered by the ideal self. These areas involve secu­rity, prop­erty, own­ing, pos­sess­ing, how one uses rela­tion­ships, and how one relates to self.

Initially,the self described here is the actual self try­ing (but always fail­ing) to be ideal. The ideal self is a myth — a cre­ation — some­thing our soci­ety mar­kets as “being the best you can be.” It always involves con­form­ing to the herd men­tal­ity, being more like every­one else, and striv­ing cease­lessly to fit in (albeit at a higher level.)

The goal of the ideal self is to get a leg up on oth­ers, prefer­ably by using the other per­son as a step­ping stone.
And always failing.

Because oth­ers are also strug­gling to get a leg up, there is a lot of jostling about and not a lot of help in the process. And remem­ber, since to goal is “ideal,” or per­fec­tion, it is a project doomed to fail­ure — as no one, ever, is perfect.

The only way through this block is to let go.

You can­not fol­low the herd rules and expect to shift from this sys­tem to the next phase in per­sonal devel­op­ment. Shift­ing requires, in a sense, writ­ing an entirely new script for your­self. This script is one of self-exploration. You begin to exam­ine ground­ed­ness, rela­tion­ships and self-esteem from another per­spec­tive — what can I learn about myself and my way of being in the world? This explo­ration is not about get­ting ahead. It’s about gain­ing depth.

One way to begin this work is to ask your­self this:
What is your marker for success?

Many peo­ple use money or “suc­cess” (which is mea­sured in more money) as the marker. Or they may pick sat­is­fac­tion, but as you unpack it, it’s linked to more “stuff.” This fits with the West­ern notion of “Ideal” equalling end­less growth, end­less “more,” and we’re see­ing the results of this sin­gle minded focus as the econ­omy teeters on the brink.

Many of my clients, as a mat­ter of fact, put this aspect so high in their list that it eclipses par­ent­ing, good relat­ing, and per­sonal satisfaction.

If you allow your­self (typ­i­cally with the help of a ther­a­pist) you can shift all of this by doing a com­bi­na­tion of depth work and body­work. The depth work is a process for extract­ing mate­r­ial from your authen­tic self, and the body­work helps to let go of the tight­en­ing down you’ve been doing since some­one first told you to “con­trol yourself.”

The move­ment through the first gate (at the junc­ture between solar plexus (self esteem) and the heart (com­pas­sion­ate liv­ing and engage­ment) requires a com­mit­ment to depth and flu­id­ity, as well as a goodly dose of accep­tance (of the stuffed material.)

We will look at this in more depth next week.