What Is Self-actualisation?

[Pav]

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We may define it as an episode, or a spurt in which the powers of the person come together in a particularly efficient and intensely enjoyable way, and in which he is more integrated and less split, more open for experience, more idiosyncratic, more perfectly expressive or spontaneous, or fully functioning, more creative, more humorous, more ego-transcending, more independent of his lower needs, ect. He becomes in these episodes more truly himself, more perfectly actualising his potentialities, closer to the core of his being.

-Maslow, in Toward a Psychology of Being

Self-actualisation is much more than just improving your life circumstances, it is a profound change in your psyche, a different way of approaching life. Self-actualising people are motivated differently. They are not motivated by lack; the need to fulfil a deficiency. They are Being motivated, they do things simply because they love to. 

Maslow puts it much better than I could possibly hope to.

Deficiency-motivation vs Being-motivation:

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The coming-to-rest conception of motivation becomes completely useless. In such people gratification breeds increased rather than decreased motivation, heightened rather than lessened excitement. The appetites become intensified and heightened. They grow upon themselves and instead of wanting less and less, such a person wants more and more of it, for instance, education. The person rather than coming to rest becomes more active. The appetite for growth is whetted rather than allayed by gratification. Growth is, in itself, a rewarding and exciting process, eg., the fulfilling yearnings and ambitions, like that of being a good doctor; the acquisition of admired skills, like playing the violin or being a good carpenter; the steady increase of understanding about people or about the universe, or about oneself; the development of creativeness in whatever field, or, most important, simply the ambition to be good human being.

Activity can be enjoyed either intrinsically, for its own sake, or else have worth and value only because it is instrumental in bringing about a desired gratification. In the latter case it loses its value and is no longer pleasurable when it is no longer successful or efficient. More frequently, it is simply not enjoyed at all, but only the goal is enjoyed. This is similar to that attitude toward life which values it less for its own sake than because one goes to Heaven at the end of it. The observation upon which this generalisation is base is that self-actualising people enjoy life in general and in practically all its aspects, while most other people enjoy only stray moments of triumph, of achievement or of climax or peak experience.
Partly this intrinsic validity of living comes from the pleasurableness inherent in growing and in being grown. But also comes from the ability of healthy people to transform means-activity into end-experience, so that even instrumental activity is enjoyed as if it were end activity. 

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Deficiency-need gratification tends to be episodic and climactic. The most frequent schema here begins with an instigating, motivating state which sets off motivated behaviour designed to achieve a goal-state, which mounting gradually and steadily in desire and excitement, finally reaches a peak in a moment of success and consummation. From this peak curve of desire, excitement and pleasure fall rapidly to a plateau of quiet tension-release, and lack of motivation.

The schema, though not universally applicable, in any case contrasts very sharply with the situation in growth-motivation, for here, characteristically, there is no climax or consummation, no orgasmic moment, no end-state, even no goal if this be defined climatically. Growth is instead a continued, more or less steady upward or forward development. The more one gets, the more one want, so that this kind of wanting if endless and can never be attained or satisfied.

Self-actualising people are not as much dependent on others:

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The needs for safety, belongingness, love relations and for respect can satisfied only by other people, ie, only from outside the person. This means considerable dependence on the environment. A person in this dependent position cannot really be said to be governing himself, or in control of his own fate. He must be beholden to the sources of supply of needed gratifications. Their wishes, their whims, their rules and laws govern him and must be appease lest he jeopardise his sources of supply. He must be, to an extent, "other-directed," and must be sensitive to other people's approval, affection and good will. This is the same as saying that he must adapt and adjust by being flexible and responsive and by changing himself to fit the external situation. He is the dependant variable; the environment is the fixed, independent variable. 

In contrast, the self-actualising individual, by definition gratified in his basic needs, is far less dependent, far less beholden, far more autonomous and self-directed. Far from needing other people, growth-motivated people may actually be hampered by them. I have already reported their special liking for privacy, for detachment and for meditativeness. 

Such people become far more self-sufficient and self-contained. The determinants which govern them are now primarily inner ones, rather than social or environmental. They are the laws of their own inner nature, their potentialities and capacities, their talents, their latent resources, their creative impulses, their needs to know themselves and to become more and more integrated and unified, more and more aware of what they really are, of what they really want, of what their call or vocation or fate is to be.

Since they depend less on other people, they are less ambivalent about them, less anxious and also less hostile, less needful of their praise and their affection. They are less anxious for honors, prestige and rewards.

There are differences in their interpersonal relationships:

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In essence, the deficit-motivated man is far more dependent upon other people than is the man who is predominantly growth-motivated. He is more "interested," more needful, more attached, more desirous. 

This dependency colors and limits interpersonal relation. To see people primarily as need-gratifiers or as sources of supple is an abstractive act. They are seen not as wholes, as complicated, unique individuals, but rather from the point of view of usefulness. What in them is not related to the perceiver's needs is either overlooked altogether, or else bores, irritates, or threatens. This parallels our relations with cow, horses, and sheep, as well as waiters, taxicab drivers, porter, policemen or others whom we use.

Fully disinterested, desireless, objective and holistic perception of another human being becomes possible only when nothing is needed from him, only when he is not needed. Idiographic, aesthetic perception of the whole person is far more possible for self-actualising people (or in moments of self-actualisation), and furthermore approval, admiration, and love are based less upon gratitude for usefulness and more upon the objective, intrinsic qualities of the perceived person. He is admired for objectively admirable qualities rather than because he flatters or praises. He is loved because he is love-worthy rather than because he gives out love.

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One characteristic of "interested" and need-gratifying relations to other people is that to a very large extent these need-gratifying persons are interchangeable. Since, for instance, the adolescent girl needs admiration; one admiration-supplier is about as good as another. So also for the love-supplier or the safety-supplier.

Disinterested, unrewarded, useless, desireless perception of the other as unique, as independent, as end-in-himself, in other words, as a person rather than a tool, is more difficult, the more hungry the perceiver is for deficit satisfaction.

They are more often ego-transcending:

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We are confronted with a difficult paradox when we attempt to describe the complex attitude toward the self or ego of the growth-oriented, self-actualising person. It is just this person, in whom ego-strength is at its height, who most easily forgets or transcends the ego, who can be most problem-centered, most self-forgetful, most spontaneous in his activities, most homonomous. In such people, absorption in perceiving, in doing, in enjoying, in creating can be very complete, very integrated and very pure. 

This ability to center upon the world rather than to be self-concious, egocentric and gratification-oriented becomes the more difficult the more need-deficits the person has. The more growth-motivated the person is the more problem-centered can he be, and the more he can leave self-conciousness behind him as he deals with the objective world.

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It is unwise to forget that frequently the problems and conflicts of the growth-motivated person are solved by himself by turning inward in a meditative way, ie, self-searching, rather than seeking for help from someone. Even in principle, many of the tasks of self-actualisation are largely intrapersonal, such as the making of plans, the discovery of self, the selection of potentialities to develop, the construction of life-outlook.

There is a difference in perception (Deficiency-perception vs Being-perception):

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What may turn out to be the most important difference of all is the greater closeness of deficit-satisfied people to the realm of Being.

For instance, I think that our understanding of perception and therefore of the perceived world will be much changed and enlarged if we study carefully the distinction between need-interested and need-disinterested or desire-less perception. Because the latter is so much more concrete and less abstracted and selective, it is possible for such a person to see more easily the intrinsic nature of the percept. Also, he can perceive simultaneously the opposites, the dichotomies, the polarities, the contradictions and the incompatibilities. It is as if less developed people lived in an Aristotelian world in which classes and concepts have sharp boundaries and are mutually exclusive and incompatible, eg, male-female, selfish-unselfish, adult-child, kind-cruel, good-bed. A is A and everything else is not-A in the Aristotelian logic, and never the twain shall meet. But seen by self-actualising people is the fact the A and not-A interpenetrate and are one, the any person is simultaneously good and bad, male and female, adult and child. One cannot place a whole person on a continuum, only an abstracted aspect of a person.

We may not be aware when we perceive in a need-determined way. But we certainly are aware of it when we ourselves are perceived in this way, eg, simply as a money-giver, a food-supplier, a safety-giver, someone to depend on, or as a waiter or other anonymous servant or means-object. When this happens we don't like it at all. We want to be taken for ourselves, as complete and whole individuals. We dislike being perceived as useful objects or as tools. We dislike being "used".

Because self-actualising people ordinarily do not have to abstract need-gratifying qualities nor see the person as a tool, it is much more possible for them to take a non-valuing, non-judging, non-interfering, non-condemning attitude towards others, a desirelessness, a "choiceless awareness". This permits much clearer and more insightful perception and understanding of what is there.

The most efficient way to perceive the intrinsic nature of the world is to be more receptive than active, determined as much as possible be the intrinsic organisation of that which is perceived and as little as possible by the nature of the perceiver. This kind of detached, Taoist, passive, non-interfering awareness of all the simultaneously existing aspects of the concrete, has much in common with some descriptions of the aesthetic experience and of the mystic experience. The stress is the same. Do we see the real, concrete world or do we see our own system of rubrics, motives, expectations and abstractions which we have projected onto the real world?

Self-actualising people are more capable of real love:

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The love need as ordinarily studied is a deficit need. It is a hole which has to be filled, an emptiness into which love is poured. If this healing necessity is not available, severe pathology results; if it is available at the right time, in the right quantities and with proper style, then pathology is averted. Intermediate states of pathology and health follow upon intermediate states of thwarting or satiation. If the pathology is not too severe and if it is caught early enough, replacement therapy can cure. That is to say the sickness, "love-hunger," can be cured in certain cases by making up the pathological deficiency. Love hunger is a deficiency disease, like salt hunger or avitaminoses. 

The healthy person, not having this deficiency, does not need to receive love except in steady, small maintenance doses and he may even do without these for periods of time. But if motivation is entirely a matter of satisfying deficits and thus getting rid of needs, then a contradiction appears. Satisfaction of the need should cause it to disappear, which is to say that people who have stood in satisfying love relationships are precisely the people who should be less likely to give and receive love! But clinical study of healthier people, who have been love-need-satiated, show that although they need less to receive love, they are more able to give love. In this sense, they are more loving people.

I have already described in a preliminary fashion the contrasting dynamics of B-love (love for the Being of another person, unneeding love, unselfish love) and D-love (deficiency-love, love need, selfish love).

1. B-love is welcomed into consciousness, and is completely enjoyed. Since it is non-possessive, and is admiring rather than needing, it makes no trouble and is practically always pleasure-giving.

2. It can never be sated; it may be enjoyed without end. It usually grows rather than disappearing. it is intrinsically enjoyable. It is end rather than means.

3. The B-love experience is often described as being the same as, and having the same effects as the aesthetic experience or the mystic experience.

4. The therapeutic and psychogogic effects of experiencing B-love are very profound and widespread. Similar are the characterological effects of the relatively pure love of a healthy mother for her baby, or the perfect love of their God that some mystics have described.

5. B-love is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, a richer, "higher," more valuable subjective experience than D-love (which all B-lovers have also previously experienced.) This preference is also reported by my other older, more average subjects, many of whom experience both kinds of love simultaneously in varying combinations.

6. D-love can be gratified. The concept "gratification" hardly applies at all to admiration-love for another person's admiration-worthiness and love-worthiness.

7. In B-love there is a minimum of anxiety-hostility. For all practical human purposes, it may even be considered to be absent. There can, of course, be anxiety-for-the-other. In D-love one must always expect some degree of anxiety-hostility.

8. B-lovers are more independent of each other, more autonomous, less jealous or threatened, less needful, more individual, more disinterested, but also simultaneously more eager to help the other towards self-actualisation, more proud of his triumphs, more altruistic, generous and fostering.

9. The truest, most penetrating perception of the other is made possible by B-love. It is as much a cognitive as an emotional-conative reaction, as I have already emphasised. So impressive is this, and so often validated by other people's later experience, that, far from accepting the common platitude that love makes people blind, I become more and more inclined to think of the opposite as true, namely that non-love makes us blind.

10. Finally, I may say the B-love, in a profound but testable sense, creates the partner. It gives him a self-image, it gives him self-acceptance, a feeling of love-worthiness and respect-worthiness, all of which permit him to grow. It is a real question whether the full development of the human being is possible without it.

Maslow's Toward a Psychology of Being is without a doubt the most important book you will read in your self-actualisation journey. Maslow goes into a lot of depth into the differences in cognition of self-actualising people. This book will give you insight into what it is means to be more fully human.

Motivation_and_Personality.pdf Here (in chapters 11 to 13) Maslow gives an in-depth description of the characteristics he found self-actualising people to possess. I strongly recommend reading it now.

[Pav]

The original thread was deleted since it was hi-jacked, so I have reported it here.

On a side note, I don't agree with the censoring of Ant/Socrates. He may have been rude/an asshole when expressing his opinions, but surely we are capable of handling that without letting our egos get offended. Conflicting opinions ought to be viewed as a good thing. They stimulate discussion, show you ideas which may not have been presented to you before, and hopeful trigger you to question your own beliefs. 

[Isle of View]

Thanks for reposting @Mat Pav

 

20 minutes ago, Mat Pav said:

On a side note, I don't agree with the censoring of Ant/Socrates. He may have been rude/an asshole when expressing his opinions, but surely we are capable of handling that without letting our egos get offended. Conflicting opinions ought to be viewed as a good thing. They stimulate discussion, show you ideas which may not have been presented to you before, and hopeful trigger you to question your own beliefs. 

I would happily agree, but when conflicting opinions degenerate to hateful insult, the line is crossed. I'm not aware how much you've seen from what he wrote before he deleted his own original posts.

Back to topic: great selections from a good work. Liked it the first time already.

Chris

Edited April 24, 2016 by Isle of View

[charlie2dogs]

how you perceive another person, and what they do, has a huge affect on things, for example someone could say something to you that wasnt nice, you can react to it emotionally or you can see what they are and where they are and not play into the game, and it has no affect on you.

[charlie2dogs]

On 4/24/2016 at 9:29 AM, Mat Pav said:

The original thread was deleted since it was hi-jacked, so I have reported it here.

On a side note, I don't agree with the censoring of Ant/Socrates. He may have been rude/an asshole when expressing his opinions, but surely we are capable of handling that without letting our egos get offended. Conflicting opinions ought to be viewed as a good thing. They stimulate discussion, show you ideas which may not have been presented to you before, and hopeful trigger you to question your own beliefs. 

you are right, i had a number of communications with ant, he challenged me, l loved it, it gave me a chance to challenge him.  I never thought he was rude or got out of hand with me, but then i think ant knew that there was more to me than just functioning as an identity.  I didnt know he had been censored.

[Saarah]

@charlie2dogs I'm pretty sure in 95% of the posts I've seen from you you've always mentioned something surrounding the 'identity' or 'consciousness'. Stop repeating the same stuff I'm getting dizzy every time I read your stuff!! :'D

[charlie2dogs]

4 minutes ago, Saarah said:

@charlie2dogs I'm pretty sure in 95% of the posts I've seen from you you've always mentioned something surrounding the 'identity' or 'consciousness'. Stop repeating the same stuff I'm getting dizzy every time I read your stuff!! :'D

but saarah, thats where its at moving from the identity to functioning as a being of consciousness,

[Saarah]

9 minutes ago, charlie2dogs said:

but saarah, thats where its at moving from the identity to functioning as a being of consciousness,

That's the most concise way you've put it all year! Lol ?

[charlie2dogs]

Just now, Saarah said:

That's the most concise way you've put it all year! Lol ?

i do understand how you feel,  when you have experienced self realization, and you try to define it to others it is hard, and it seems boring, most often to most, but what i do is try to cut out the practices, theories, journeys, paths, levels and point directly to the destination of self realization and how to get there.  I dont think i will be here too long, because you can only say things so many times before it becomes boring to those around you, and it even becomes boring to the one saying it because they already have the experience, but when it is your living experience you have a passion for it,  and as much as you want to give it to others, it all hinges on their own consciousness awakening.  It is confusing to many when you talk about becoming a being of consciousness, they dont get it because they are still the identity.  They cant understand the shift that one goes through and experiences of someone who is self realized until they have the same experience.  So i just put out there what comes from consciousness, until its time to move on.  I am just about at the point where i am going to leave the internet for good, it is a huge distraction, i stopped watching tv 15 years ago, and now i feel like the net is another thorn in the side at this point.   I have given most of my life to others and i want to experience some solitude and peace with my dog now. wishing you the best

[Isle of View]

11 hours ago, charlie2dogs said:

how you perceive another person, and what they do, has a huge affect on things, for example someone could say something to you that wasnt nice, you can react to it emotionally or you can see what they are and where they are and not play into the game, and it has no affect on you.

Yes, but some people are just the way they are. He has had not so much an effect on me as he had on the community. 

Toxic is toxic. You can have it in small doses only if you are to run a community.

 

Cheers, 
Chris

[charlie2dogs]

1 minute ago, Isle of View said:

Yes, but some people are just the way they are. He has had not so much an effect on me as he had on the community. 

Toxic is toxic. You can have it in small doses only if you are to run a community.

 

Cheers, 
Chris

Is it toxic only because you see it as toxic? it is toxic when others respond to things as a reaction generally from an emotional state or having expectations of others, that should not exist, all anyone had to do was simply ignore, and it didnt exist, those who reacted should examine why they did.

[Isle of View]

23 minutes ago, charlie2dogs said:

27 minutes ago, Isle of View said:

Yes, but some people are just the way they are. He has had not so much an effect on me as he had on the community. 

Toxic is toxic. You can have it in small doses only if you are to run a community.

 

Cheers, 
Chris

Is it toxic only because you see it as toxic? it is toxic when others respond to things as a reaction generally from an emotional state or having expectations of others, that should not exist, all anyone had to do was simply ignore, and it didnt exist, those who reacted should examine why they did.

You, my friend, have a funny mind-set: "There is nothing wrong when nobody labels it as such."

What kind of identity is it that you are using right now? 

 

[charlie2dogs]

15 minutes ago, Isle of View said:

You, my friend, have a funny mind-set: "There is nothing wrong when nobody labels it as such."

What kind of identity is it that you are using right now? 

 

when i began to function as a being of consciousness, everyone thought i had a funny mindset and most still do.  Most of my existence now is spent in the space of consciousness and not the identity.  It is very rare now that i allow myself to do anything as the identity, and if it should happen i am completely aware and in control as consciousness, not the identity, but even then there has to be a purpose for it.  this is what self realization is all about, its about functioning as a being of consciousness.  when i write or speak to groups or individuals on matters of personal growth it is done as consciousness not functioning as identity, but those in identity are not going to (get it)  until they experience transition for the most part.

Edited April 26, 2016 by charlie2dogs
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[Isle of View]

This didn't answer my question.

In order to use this forum, you assume an identity. You are not aware of it?

What kind of identity would protect "Ant"?

Or, given you are that lofty presence you write about above, what would be the purpose of being right?