Will Pursuing Self-actualization Actually Lead To Lasting Happiness And Fulfillment?

[Zippie]

Will pursuing self-actualization actually lead to lasting happiness and fulfillment, or is that lifestyle just a small step up from living an average life? The impression I get from spiritual gurus is that the only way to actually be happy and fulfilled is to become enlightened, which is kinda depressing since that would mean 99.99% percent of the population are going live sad and unfulfilling lives. Sorry if this post seems super negative and cynical. 

[Aldo Marchand]

@Zippie

Even on the floor i think it's possible to do amazing things and raise people.

Enlightenment com be reached on various moments via personal develpment and meditation.

The main thing for me is to find new ways to transform our world in a better place to live with practical solutions 

appliied on the real life world.

13 minutes ago, Zippie said:

Will pursuing self-actualization actually lead to lasting happiness and fulfillment, or is that lifestyle just a small step up from living an average life? The impression I get from spiritual gurus is that the only way to actually be happy and fulfilled is to become enlightened, which is kinda depressing since that would mean 99.99% percent of the population are going live sad and unfulfilling lives. Sorry if this post seems super negative and cynical. 

 

[vizual]

As long as you are pursuing things in your life you won't be optimizing your happiness. Because you only pursue things if you think your life will be better when you attain the thing you are pursuing.

But I will say, pursuing things is surely a big step up from running away from things in regard to being happy. The pursuit definitely gives you a sense of power and purpose when you are engaged in it. So if you are currently running away in your life, go follow your goals/dreams/whatever.When you have eaten enough cake you will probably be looking for something 'more' anyway. Which might be enlightenment, or it might be becoming a big time philanthropist, or both, or something else.

[Extreme Z7]

@Zippie  Hey hey hey. . . . . . . . . . don't worry about it.

[Ajax]

@Zippie I will let Maslow answer for you:
"What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization...It refers to the desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming."

If you pay attention to Leo's videos... You will see that his enlightenment work composes only a fraction of the material he covers in his videos. I would recommend that you take time to understand the meaning of actualization and what it means for you. It is actually a psychology term and is not necessarily spiritual in its self...

You don't have to be enlightened to be self-actualized. It just so happens that there are no absolutes only levels and so the self actualized person can have the opportunity to climb up to higher levels, just to see what else exists there... I believe that even the enlightened person keeps trekking into the great unknown.

I personally don't even think the Buddha reached the top yet.

[Zippie]

38 minutes ago, vizual said:

As long as you are pursuing things in your life you won't be optimizing your happiness. Because you only pursue things if you think your life will be better when you attain the thing you are pursuing.

But I will say, pursuing things is surely a big step up from running away from things in regard to being happy. The pursuit definitely gives you a sense of power and purpose when you are engaged in it. So if you are currently running away in your life, go follow your goals/dreams/whatever.When you have eaten enough cake you will probably be looking for something 'more' anyway. Which might be enlightenment, or it might be becoming a big time philanthropist, or both, or something else.

Thanks a lot. This helps me feel a lot more at ease about pursuing self-actualization, but it also makes me wonder if it would be better to ignore self-actualization and just go for enlightenment straight away, though that would be a hard plan for me to buy in to right now. Idk man life is confusing af lol

Edited February 20, 2016 by Zippie

[vizual]

6 hours ago, Zippie said:

Thanks a lot. This helps me feel a lot more at ease about pursuing self-actualization, but it also makes me wonder if it would be better to ignore self-actualization and just go for enlightenment straight away, though that would be a hard plan for me to buy in to right now. Idk man life is confusing af lol

I think you should honestly ask yourself first. If you'd make chasing enlightenment right now your number one priority in life, is that something you really want to pursue the most, or do you simply use it as another excuse to run away again. If you use it as something as an excuse you are going to undermine the results of your efforts. Your spiritual work will be way more effective if you can authentically focus on your spiritual work without your "true" desires lurking in the background. The best way to find happiness is still to follow your deepest gut instinct and see where they may lead, and it's probably saying that you should go for your dreams. 

Of course you can still do enlightenment work in addition to you working toward your worldly goals in life, it would probably even be beneficial. There are 24 hours in a day, you won't spend all of them on one goal, probably.

[JevinR]

No, we just sit on these forums to jerk off to ideas of an awesome life then go to sleep