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Personal Growth – Who am I?

Hello everyone! By the time you are reading this post, I am most likely outside of US attending some urgent family matters. It looks like I will be there until the end of the year and maybe even permanently. Sometimes things happen and we have to leave our regular lives, jobs, friends, and all other things we have in order to help our family members. This being said, I will try to post as much as I can during the next few months, so please bear with me until I return to a normal research and posting schedule. Thank you.

Today we will be discussing psychology. I realize this is a deviation from SEO (at least on the surface), and as many of you know we do it here on this blog from time to time. Generally speaking, the responses via email and comments for the non-SEO topics have been great too, so here we go.

If we look at the practice of psychology in general, the two most common problems people seem to face are – relationships with others and lack of self-esteem. If we dig a bit deeper, it seems that mostly the difficulties in relationship arise from the self-esteem issues. This means that almost always it comes down to guiding a person to clearly see, understand, and come to agreement with himself (or herself).

This is a place where the puzzle begins. What is exactly himself? Where is the starting point, if it’s a mess inside the head? It’s somewhat similar to a question about happiness – the answer seems to be the obvious, but yet it’s not so simple, if we really think about it.

This question is difficult because if we look inside ourselves, we see a complete mess. Introverts know their world a bit better than the extraverts, but the introverts are more inclined to confuse themselves. Extraverts seem to be able to take a look at themselves, but once they see the mess inside this idea fades away.

As a result, both introverts and extraverts have to look at themselves as if they are looking at the unknown entity, some metaphoric separate being, which expresses itself in thoughts, feelings and actions. A permanency of its reactions is referred to as their character, their individuality, and they are very happy when this uncontrollable individuality creates an approval from the surrounding society. They also become deeply sad when the surrounding society does not understand or approve of this set of reactions (a character).

This is the foundation of self-esteem – how well “I” match with what is expected by others. I think it’s an absence of the esteem altogether. If it’s not myself who is evaluating my “I”, then it’s not “self”-esteem anymore.

Everywhere, in every country, family, society, we are taught to strive to be accepted by others, to conform, and that’s what results in sad things later on in life. Instead of looking for a place that matches our inner “I”, our being, we instead waste our life trying to find a way to change our being, our “I” to conform to the existing societal requirements and possibilities. This is when the inner mess beings, and soon a person completely forgets who he is, what he is, and what he wants from life.

What I think about myself – is not what I feel. What I feel – is not what, I do. What I do, does not match with what I want to think of myself…

I am – my body

This is the most naive, but very natural way of self-consciousness. We daily see our body’s reflection in many mirrors, and every time – it’s a miracle! – it completely belongs to us and does what we want. We want to lift our hand – it lifts. We want to make a face – done. Body directly reacts to our urges, which creates an illusion of wholeness or togetherness with “I”.

Adult person says “I walk”, “I eat”, “I breathe”, “I am cold”. When his body feels discomfort, he says – “I don’t feel well, I am suffering”. However, it’s not him who is suffering, it’s only the body…

An infant in his first months of life perceives his body as something external, alien. He is playing with his hands, like if there were toys, and only after some time passed he starts noticing difference between his limbs and objects of the surrounding world. Adult can resurrect in his memory similar feelings – think of a leg when we sat on it for a while and it becomes sort of “wooden”. At that moment we acknowledge that there is a leg, but it feels like it’s not ours, like it’s outside or external.

In reality, it’s actually not that hard to distance our “I” from our body – we just need to focus our attention. for example we can get into a cold shower and watch that only our body is getting cold, and as if our “I” is watching from outside. It might take a few tries to catch the right focus, but it’s not that difficult to do.

To experience this type of division from ourselves is very important, because this lets us relate to our bodily discomforts philosophically and keep our balance, even when our bodies are not comfortable. In other words, we can suffer from hunger, or we can say, that our body wants to eat, and not suffer mentally at the same time.

Also, we can remember the instincts, which are “pre-programmed” in our genetics and completely out of our control (at least that’s what scientists have been saying). Of course, we resist our instincts, but we do not control them completely, and this very “resistance” does not end well. Instinct – is the voice of life itself, and attempt to shut it down leads to death.

Our “I” does not rule our instincts, and we can only observe them in direct or indirect form. We could try saying “I am – my instincts” and this will probably will be a decent attempt to come close to the truth. Fundamentals of instinctive behavior is placed in us by our nature, and not obtained via upbringing, and that’s why we can trust them – they will not fail us, because they need what a human being is.

However, “I” is not my instincts, and “I” is not my body. Physical cover – is probably one of the conditions of this puzzle, which we have to solve once we enter this world. A meaning of solving this problem lays somewhere else.

I am – my brain

The next, and the most problematic level of misunderstanding is identifying ourselves with our thoughts, with what’s happening on the surface of our consciousness. Here we can see the same approach of comprehension – “I am what I control”. A skill of controlling inner dialogue creates an illusion that this is exactly what demonstrates “I”, my “I”. The logic here is that we can get credit and be proud of achievements only when they resulted from our free will, and not from animal instinct or psychological automatism.

In classical psychology there is a meaning of “Ego”, which is described as a center of the cognitive area of a personality; and beginner enthusiasts of the psychological ideals easily fall into misconception and confusion that “I” and Ego are the same. This is very far from the truth. Ego – is just an adaptive mechanism, a layer between outside and inside worlds. Its function is utilitarian, but via strange flow of things this very Ego with all of its contradictions is placed into the top of the pyramid, which creates ground for all psychological problems that follow.

Metaphor from life. We know, that a ship is controlled by a captain, and if a ship asks a question about, where is its “I”, the right answer would be “I – is captain” (lets leave out romantic notions of a soul of the ship for now). But then this strange metamorphosis happens, and suddenly this ship starts to thin that it is – a control point, because the turning of the steering changes direction of the ship and in a way expressing the freedom of the ship’s will. But isn’t this ship gone crazy? Didn’t he forgot who he really is?

This same thing happens every time when a human begin associates himself with the flow of his thoughts in his consciousness. Thoughts – are only circles on the water surface, a result of wind, but not wind itself. To thing that “I” is my thoughts, to equate “I” and Ego – is a well-known form of mental disorder.

In everyday life, this creates many practical problems, which are impossible to solve, without moving on to the next level of consciousness. This is exactly this point of applying efforts, which many practicing psychologists work very hard on – it’s necessary to kick the patient out of his habitual confidence, in order to be a thinking human being and a healthy human being.

Psychologists even came up with a special word for this – rationalization, but they use it in a much more narrow meaning – for example, to describe a form of psychological defense, when a patient makes up a rational explanation to his irrational behavior, in order to avoid the need to admit a true nature of his actions.

In other words, when a person commits a some sort of indecency (for example cheats on his wife), and then instead of accepting the fact that he really wanted this, and this act of his really shows his “I”, he starts making up a rational “explanation”, which lifts responsibility from him and lets him continue in his happy illusion, that he is a good husband. He says – “I did it, because…” – and right there starts a lie. This is what rationalization is – a lying to ourselves via a logical rationalization of our actions.

In a more broad meaning, cognitive comprehension of ourselves leads form of internal position – where “I” is what, I think of myself, “I” am like I decided to be – and this is the most confused and delusional silliness ever existed.

For example, a person, after reading some very smart articles on some site, gets impressed by a logic of the thoughts expressed on there about subjectivity of all moral measurements and tells himself – “Great! From now on I will think that there is no good or bad in people, and people are neutral, they cannot be judged”.

After he said this, he thinks that it’s now done: if I understood it – I changed. However, as soon as his close friend betrays him and does something bad towards him, then suddenly a situation becomes very interesting and contradiction – to call this friend a bastard is a “no no”, since we by now have decided that there is not good or bad, but at the same time it is somehow impossible to forgive this friend – inside everything is burning and we want revenge.

Here it is – internal conflict, on a intellectual level a person thinks there is no good or bad, but on a level of his emotions continues to give out judgments and ratings to the left and to the right. In this same way, he continues to judge himself for every miss and praise for every smallest victory. This is what creates a ground for absence of confidence in himself – a real behavior does not match with conscious understanding of himself… How can he even trust himself?

Brain is very flexible in this game it plays, and that’s why psychologists do not like intelligent patients. If patients intellect is not very high, then it’s relatively easy to understand or “shrink” them – patients logic has many contradictions, by looking at which it can be explained to a person that he doesn’t know anything about himself and later force him to study himself from scratch. However, it’s not so easy with the smart ones – their logic is much thinner and deeper, and it’s much more difficult to destroy it.

The same thing usually happens with short sighted people, but with strong beliefs (principled) – these are impossible to understand via logical thinking – they are not interested in logic, because their internal rationalization is built upon blind faith in some rules and principles. These are dogmatics, which are even more difficult to “shrink” than smart ones. Let’s leave it at that.

So, “I” – is not my brain, and not what I think about myself, and not what I think is right and wrong, and not my principals, and not my views, and not what I decided or what conclusion I came to when thinking through something – this is all just a surface information, which is in no way truth. “I” – is something else, that is much deeper.

I am – my memory

In a way, a memory belongs to the area of brain and consciousness, but this area of misunderstanding (memory) is worth to be looked at separately. Just now, we discussed how the conscious understanding of oneself and what problems arise from tying ourselves with our opinions, ratings and principals. Only one question is left – where are all these thoughts stored? We don’t think them up every time from scratch?

A human being has a depository for this – a bank in which all final decisions for situations are stored. A person remembers about earlier decisions and knows, that right person – is a consistent person. This is what he has been taught, and that’s why he is now at all costs, wants to hang on to the once-formed views and becomes ashamed when he is caught in inconsistency.

However, the principals and opinions always lag behind the flow of time. Formed yesterday, they don’t work today. Consistency, definition and predictability of a behavior – relax, create a feel of solid ground under the feet and with that create an illusion of self-confidence… but this illusion falls apart with the first encounter with changing reality.

To have a strong character and to be consistent in views is accepted as a virtue, which deserves a deep respect. On the contrary, an absence of a defined position in life and flexibility in views is accepted as low-life conformism.

To have a character – is good, not to have a character – is bad. “I” – is my consistency of my views and values, “I” – is my character, and my character – is my personality. This is what a commonly accepted and utilized upbringing programmes into every child.

This is why it turns out, that a person from the very early childhood starts building, growing, and showing off his character. From all different features, abilities, views and principals formed a unique bouquet of individual attributes, which are collected together for one goal – to earn acceptance and respect. Because a character – is good, and good character – is even better.

A character is one of the aspects of Personality, it’s a mask, which we show others, and what’s more dangerous – to ourselves. We believe in our character and are very afraid to loose it, because deep inside our soul we clearly understand, that all our ego-centrism, all our psychological defense from admitting the entire miniscule ness in terms of the universe, is built on evasive foundation of the memory of ourselves. Take this memory away – and what’s left?

From the point of Ego, memory loss is equal to death, but does “I” die as well in this case? If I lost my memory about myself, will my further behavior be the same as before? Will I arrive at the same conclusions and will my further behavior be the same as before? Will my new character be the same as the one before, if it is to now form in different environment?

I leave these questions for your own thoughts, because I don’t have the answer.

I am – my feelings

Before we take a look at the question from this position, we have to first determine what feelings we will be talking about. If we look at the most accepted common conception of the psychological types mainly introduced and described by Carl Jung, there is an interesting point, which we have to study a bit closer. It basically says that there are four types of psychological functions – thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition. First two are commonly accepted as rational, and the latter two as irrational.

Here is the problem: Jung says that feelings are rational! The only difference is in that thinking answers the question of “Is it right or wrong?” and feelings answer “Good or bad?”. Thinking is trying to give a logical value and feelings an emotional one.

In this key it’s interesting to look at the difference between male and female psychology, since the feelings area almost entirely belongs to women. Most women have a feeling as their dominant psychological function, when men are more or less balanced between the other three. This is material for another topic, so we will not dive into it in here completely, but the secret is hiding here – men and women look like creatures from different planets.

For the question we are addressing, the more important is a different type of feelings – irrational. These are the ones that do not follow any logic, don’t depend on thinking, and don’t obey our will. These emotions, which appear against our rationale have a lot more psychological energy than any logically formatted and polished thinking.

First and foremost, these are: anger, fear, sadness, and joy. These are the emotions are inborn in us from nature and do not depend on our upbringing. Influencing our hormones, they set the overall scheme of reacting to a current situation. Anger demands active actions or aggression, fear makes us want to hide and seek safety, sadness comes with loss of something or someone, joy – when we obtain something or someone. These emotions can be accepted or denied, but cannot be controlled – they are part of our animal nature, which we are trying to compensate with upbringing.

Other emotions can be called subjective, due to the subjective and objective reflexes. These emotions are learned by humans during out lifetime – being upset, being mean, jealousy, compassion, liking and disliking, love and hate… and so on. In psychology these emotions sometimes are called neurotic, since they express skewered interpretation of the reality and are sign of abnormal psychic. The level or the volume is very important with these – the higher the intensity of these emotions, the worst it is for the person.

It is important to note that these emotions are always lay beyond logical control and appear independently from what a person thinks, or what he thinks right or wrong, or what he thinks good or bad.

For example, upbringing teaches a person to resist and despise aggression, calls this behavior bad, inappropriate and even in sports requires to have a sportsmanship, not a pure animal aggression. Aggression is dangerous for the society, because it is not controllable. Once a person goes through the entire course of social preparation and passes, he faces a situation when someone cuts in front of him in line and purchases last pair of tickets for a play premiere in a theater (or whatever else, I like theater).

Aggression in this case is a normal and natural reaction, however the upbringing demands that a person suppresses this emotion. The emotion does appear, but a person stops it and doesn’t let it show… because he needs to be a good person, balanced and kind. And since he never expressed aggression in it’s full, he even starts believing in his own goodness or righteousness. Aggression is suppressed, and goes into the subconscious, and a person stops even noticing that it even exists.

This is a classical form of conflict between conscious and subconscious, which slowly drives people nuts. Logic and conscious are saying one thing, and emotions and subconscious want the opposite. Since the forces are not the same – the subconscious always wins – either the emotions find their way out of the conscious control and this person faces boys in blue, or the personality splits up into parts and boys in white come and get him.

So, saying “I” am – my feelings or my subconscious, is more close to the truth, than a version about logic or conscious. Brains is filled with abstract and shown descriptions and discussions, which are given by the surrounding society, in order to stabilize a person in the society, but emotions reflect real views of a person – what he thinks and feels in reality, what he is like inside, not on the surface, outside.

However, this doesn’t answer our question. An equation placed between emotions and true human nature is a huge leap forward, a great achievement, that very thing that every psychologist is fighting for with their patients. Accepting and admitting the nature and content of our feelings is extremely important, but that’s not the end of the road. This is the branch, from which the understanding only begins.

Jung says the first and most simple step on the way to individualization is – separation of self from “I” (“I” – am my thoughts about myself) and admittance of own shadow (“I” is – my true feelings). According to Castaneda the path of the warrior begins with defeating fear, which in essence is the same thing. What about the entire Freud’s psychoanalysis)? This is a detailed description of the fight with Shadow and overcoming of the neurotic fears.

Once a person passes this test, he finally becomes an adult and independent. The balance is born in his self-evaluation, and his interpretations become stable and sober, his life style grows from scratch and now around his real desires or habits, he lives the way he really wants, interacts with whomever is interesting to him, he is free from the rules, because now he can announce his own law of life.

However, this is not the end of the road yet… the first enemy of our warrior is defeated, there are three more left.

I am – emptiness

Let’s move to the next logical question – if all of what we talked above is not “I” – then where do we look for it?

Here we will need to ask our own memory and pull out the earliest areas of conscious, which we can only barely touch. Try to remember the earliest times of your childhood, so partial and foggy – there is what we are looking for.

It’s important that there, where we have memories, is hidden our “I”, and the earlier the memory, the less foreign or noise thoughts it has in it, the more pure it is.

If we manage to resurrect one of these images in our memory (what’s so hard?), the let’s take a note that way back, two or three years from birth, we already had our “I”. Already then we clearly felt and knew ourselves and only from inside of this conscious we were looking at the world. Do not try to understand it with brain – remember it! Submerge into the memories about your childhood and find in them your “I” – “You” were there already.

The earliest, and the most elusive memories – are the ones torn out of the darkness of timelessness of the conscious hold the most important discovery – “I Exist!” (No words yet, no thoughts yet, no morals either, but “I” already am!

Take a look at this “I” closer – do you see anything strangely familiar? If not, dig up a vivid memory from three years ago and compare it to the earliest memories of your “I”. Are these two “I”s even slightly different from each other?

What about memories when you were 15, 20, 30, 40, 50, etc years old? What about today? Does your “I” today differ from your “I” from yesterday?

Our true “I” exists outside of words, opinions, meanings, outside of time and space. Even when we depart from the sacred (for the searches of the truth) here-and-now, our “I” stays where it always was.

Our “I” just exists, it doesn’t have any attributes, and doesn’t have a character, it cannot be described or divided, it’s whole and unchangeable during our entire life time. It cannot be modified or behaved, it cannot be taught, and the only function it carries is – conscious, and this it can do excellently from birth.

Happiness is obtaining of this unchangeable “I” with it’s quiet visibility. Conscious does not judge by itself, doesn’t rate anything – it intakes everything that happens around it without worries and fears. It is full to the edges with a fact of its own existence, when pain and satisfaction, sorrow and joy of the surrounding world do not bother it, these are just flashes on the TV screen.

However, multi-year focused development of the logical and calculating side of the psychic leads to shift of the pivot point from the true and quiet “I” to the always scared and worried Ego. And this is what makes a human being turn into a crazy monkey – a creature, lost in his own fears and doubts, mindlessly jumping between pride and misery of his Ego.

A human being forgets about who he really is, and feeling the emptiness of his own being, tries to find himself in his thoughts, in his beliefs, in his moral values, in his character, in his individuality, in his achievements and victories… without success.

Even the game of self-development doesn’t help here, because in reality there is nothing to develop (really). Yes, the brain can be trained, a character can be sharpened, a value system can be brushed up and combed over, but what all of this has to do with unchanged “I”? Any attempt to improve himself leads to only worsening the situation – in reinforcing the Ego, and to the deeper association of himself with something, that is exactly not “I”.

Practical use

So, what’s the use of all these psychological dialogues, questions, discussions if none of it can be actually used in real life? Usually, after people read something like this post, they wait for some instructions or recommendations – something along the lines of “10 Steps to Success… etc.” It is very important that we realize, following someone else’s plan (not your own), even if it is ideal, will never lead to a goal. Learning ourselves is a process, it’s an art – which requires us to place our soul, our heart, our experience, our intuition into it. We cannot find ourselves by following someone else’s steps.

Someone esle’s experience can be used as a pivot point, others’ findings as lighthouses on the seashores, but the steering wheel we will need to find by ourselves.

In a simpler set of words it’s a good saying: “I am – my actions”. Real actions don’t lie, like the brain does, and they are not as foggy as feelings and emotions. Every action, every real doing in real world – is a fact, it’s a hard and completely meaningful expression of the human being’s nature.

If you want to learn yourself – study your actions.

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