Difficulty of self-actualization

[WonderSeeker]

What does your experience tell you about the difficulty of self-actualization work?

Say you've been at this for five years now. Was year one the hardest? Did you underestimate the time-commitment? The emotional labor? Does the difficulty stay the same and you just become used to it? Or does it get harder/easier?

I'm closing in on one year since committing to this work. It has already been very rewarding. On the same token, it has been an emotional roller-coaster. I now truly appreciate why most people would rather just live life blindly. Cheers!

[Leo Nordin]

31 minutes ago, WonderSeeker said:

What does your experience tell you about the difficulty of self-actualization work?

It never felt difficult to me... Even in the absolute earliest stages of self improvement. I quess basef on time and all the internal changes to your beliefs about the world changing so much makes it an unbelievably difficult task for most people. They have too much ego and ignorance etc. 

It is nothing compared to the difficulty of school. Because school is the largest suffering creating machine in the world. School equals = lifetime suffering for the majority of people, because it creates ego constantly and if you unwire the ego they will force you back. 

For me there is no difficulty because I'm doing it on my own terms. I will probably quit school to become somewhat homeless soon. Keeping up ego abd suffering to stay in the system is somewhat difficult now when I've awakened. 

[JosephKnecht]

1 hour ago, WonderSeeker said:

What does your experience tell you about the difficulty of self-actualization work?

Level of difficulty: Impossible.  

Years of practice, dedication, trial and error, self-doubt, doubt of others just to arrive at Nothing.

You have to lose yourself completely. You have to become aware of how you are deceiving yourself. You can't trust anyone, not even yourself.

But lucky for you, the possible is in the impossible.

[WonderSeeker]

50 minutes ago, Leo Nordin said:

It is nothing compared to the difficulty of school. Because school is the largest suffering creating machine in the world.

I take it you have negative experience with school? The way school is administered today is certainly conducive to suffering. I'm in grad school right now; I understand. Best of luck to you!

 

9 minutes ago, JosephKnecht said:

Level of difficulty: Impossible.  

That's the spirit!  

[RawJudah]

Self-Actualization work is life long. Am I right?

[Member]

@RawJudah ?

[fridjonk]

Year 2 was definitely the most difficult for me. After that, it was much more smooth sailing but of course, difficult moments will always arise as long as you're alive. I just learned to deal with them better after establishing a good foundation.  

[fridjonk]

2 hours ago, Leo Nordin said:

It is nothing compared to the difficulty of school. Because school is the largest suffering creating machine in the world. School equals = lifetime suffering for the majority of people, because it creates ego constantly and if you unwire the ego they will force you back. 

 

If you can't handle school, you won't handle enlightenment. 

Simple as that. 

But if its a conscious choice that you don't want to continue school, that's different. 

Edited October 4, 2020 by fridjonk

[Leo Nordin]

1 hour ago, WonderSeeker said:

I take it you have negative experience with school?

Not more than anyone else, I've always been a good student and had liked it to some extent more than most. Living half a life is just not worth it, not when you know what a full fledged life looks like, that's why I don't want to limit myself for much longer. I only do what's needed. 

46 minutes ago, fridjonk said:

But if its a conscious choice that you don't want to continue school, that's different. 

Yes that's it? out of some reason people always question my texts, even though I wrote I HAVE AWAKENED. Hahaha 

Then it's obvious that I'm not being delusional?‍♂️ but yeah I'm young you all can question me. I also am using ego now, otherwise I wouldn't be asking for advice about going homeless lol, ego is good for survival, remember that. 

[Shin]

It will be both.

Easier cause you will be able to handle your emotions more easily.

Harder cause the amount of emotional trauma will increase in degree.

 

[aurum]

9 hours ago, WonderSeeker said:

What does your experience tell you about the difficulty of self-actualization work?

It was a lot harder than I ever imagined, but it's also been more rewarding.

I think over time it can get easier. After a while you've released a lot of trauma and transcended a lot of your conditioning. You start to hit compounding rewards. In my experience that's when it gets really fun

At the same time, it's not a linear process. You might be flying high for a while and then crash into a new trauma out of no where. Important thing is just to stay present with whatever is arising.

[Origins]

14 hours ago, WonderSeeker said:

What does your experience tell you about the difficulty of self-actualization work?

In order of priority:

1. Direction (where to place ones attention - most people have no idea when they get going "relationships, money, job, introspection, where?!", so make sure you start with introspection because that'll reveal to you where to start, even if you're incorrect you'll begin honing that inner voice and even if that's combined with seeking insight in the outer world)

2. Technique ("if its money, how to make it? Am I going to run a scan selling cigarettes to homeless people saying they'll bring ever lasting life or will I try and create a self help channel?")

3. Energy Awareness - Right now I'm utilising energy to create this comment for example, how aware am I of that energy that's running through my body, mind and even around me? Am I aware of the influence that my previous actions have made to produce this comment in the last hour or so? Am I aware of how I'm going to utilise my energy after I make this comment and am I thus managing my energy appropriately throughout the day? How about the energy that I have over my entire life. So many people talk about "oh we only have one life, x amount of years, etc, etc" you rarely here people approaching life from the perspective of "Okay how much energy do I have over my entire life, what is my return on investment for that energy? For example, I know if I run today I get some exercise which is good for my health, but if I then don't run for the next year that'll be an energy investment that was completely wasted." 

• I've noticed that the less aware I am here the less I prioritise the importance of organising my time, so I'd place energy awareness as more important than time awareness. As a consequence to that I've started to look at my energy from an entire lifespan point of view as well as with an investors mindset. So I'll literally read finance books just to apply to how I use things like my energy.

4. Abstraction - The ability to discover patterns in not just the cognitive informational stream of my awareness but my entire being and everything it experiences allows me to draw maps like the 1, 2, 3 noted above, without which I'm a fish in a bowl of water mindlessly skirting about every once in a while when, ideally, food is dropped into my bowl. This is especially important behaviourally both socially but especially in relation to myself of course, of which takes a long time to perfect and I still have a lot of work there because it ties into so many other mechanisms of the mind that you have to defeat like in a video game conquering all these aspects of a game you didn't even know existed because they were hidden. That's often the case of course, self-deception, patterns of poor parental, familial and social influences growing up that are a part of your conditioning, hundreds of cognitive biases, etc, etc.

5. Self awareness (encompassment of emotional awareness (EA) and emotional intelligence (EI)) - I'd love to be able to type about these separately but this points me back to number 3, ROI as it concerns spending heaps of time here. For this comment I'm going to focus from the angle of emotional awareness and channeling ability, something that is a subset to EA and EI. One point which has been a massive learning point for me was the ability to accept everything in existence, especially in my own experience. This is a path to generating a positive feedback loop between self awareness and the ability to translate the contents of that awareness into self actualisation. I know I'm not the only one here for various reasons, our being develops all of these patterns of denial, suppression and repression of our emotional experiences which can vary in severity. This has major, major problems for ones personal development because to me in order to authentically express ones own highest actualisation process they need to be able to surrender and accept to anything they're experiencing in order to (1) maintain awareness that its there rather than pretending its not (2) doing so long enough that they can transfer the energies/contents within that awareness into some form of self actualisation, and I would start energetically. See, in order to really comprehend this one needs to recognise what self actualisation actually means in a straight forward manner, or just the practical limits of its parameters. It's meant to encompass literally anything within your inner experience at a bare minimum. So why in the hell would you be rejecting literally anything in your inner experience? This is the problem that people who have literally any inner maladaptive conflict with the world have yet to completely comprehend, they don't realise that this exact conflict is an inner energy they're meant to be actualising within themselves. Whether that's emotionally resonating with the experience, determining the source of that emotion, backtracking in the subconscious mind to discover hidden narratives which exist that continually reinforce that conflict, etc, etc. The ability to "self actualise" has everything to do with starting in the inner experience, and its as simple as starting to learn to experience, learn about and expand non-judgementally those experiences towards self actualisation, which encompasses the full expression of literally every experience you've ever have, are having and will have. This is the key to massive amounts of motivation as well, because think about all the energy you're leaving on the table when you're having all these various inner experiences that have nothing to do with what you're trying to focus on, if you have the ability to be aware of those experiences while simultaneously learning to convert the energy that produces those experiences into what you're doing in that moment, wow man, you're on fire. There are so many useful nuanced relationships between energy awareness, abstraction and self awareness in the context of aiding ones self actualisation journey that it really pays to incrementally take the time to work at least some of them out.