Fifth Pathway - Persistently Looking Inward - Part IV

Fifth Pathway – Persistently Looking Inward – Part IV

Sin, crime, mistakes and other patterns of behavior that undermine personality development emerge from hard wiring in a person’s character.  Untreated alcoholism and drug addiction inevitably result in additional misdemeanors and felonies including theft, armed robbery, sexual assault, vandalism and other violations of law.  Within marriages and families, infidelity, deceit, poverty, unemployment, eviction and violence substantially damage relationships.  Empty refrigerators and cupboards are the clearest indication that alcoholism and addiction consume the family’s food budget.   Also, utility termination notices, lack of gasoline in the car, tuition arrears and failure to remit payment of other expenses are further evidence of internal deterioration.  An inventory excavates these defects of character.  Once exposed to the disinfectant of sunlight and spirituality, these traits become potential fuel for transformation.  Jung describes this dimension of human character as the “Shadow,” a bleak and hidden space in the mind and heart where dark traits lurk.  Childhood coping mechanisms became toxic and cynical tools.  Possibly, you perfected lying as a means of manipulation to gain the things you desired.  Cultivating a likability persona becomes a way of tricking people into liking you and granting your wishes though you may not feel favorable toward them.  As a person willingly embraces his or her full character, he or she neutralizes weaknesses and eliminate liabilities. In some instances, you will be able to convert previous ineffective and erroneous behavior into a new way of living.  Persistently looking inward is a pathway of healing that encourages and empowers you to clean house continually.  As you remove bad habits, you develop better ones that catapult you into the life you wholeheartedly desire.

Individuation is the formal term in analytical psychology that Carl Jung ascribes to the process of progressing irreversibly into adulthood.  Beyond physical growth and changes, a person distinctly separates his or her personality from parents and anyone else who contributed significantly to character formation during early childhood.  Practically, a person learns to think and live independently.  The need for external validation lessens considerably.  In certain instances, it necessarily disappears.  Fundamental decisions pertaining to love, work, sexuality, bodily autonomy, vocation, relationships and use of resources are made internally.  Intuition, the divine voice which lives and speaks genuinely and reliably within everyone, guides decision-making.  Mature adults do not require parental affirmation or other forms of external approval.  A person learns to trust himself or herself within an interdependent relationship with God.  Achieving individuation is a process of independent thinking.  A person learns to listen to his or heart and aligns motives with God’s divine design.  It empowers a person to utilize divine gifts to worship God in service of humankind.  It is a lifelong process of learning more about a person’s unique “Self” as a child of God and member of the human family.  This inward journey seeks synchronicity of mission, purpose and talent.  Ambition seeks a combination of God’s will and a useful desire to live purposefully with humility.  Whatever practical form dreams and goals assume is satisfactory; external trappings lose their importance.  The need for titles preceding your name, letters following your name, designer clothing, luxury vehicles, residing in a sought-after zip code or being on a popular social registry dissipates.  A person ceases to look outside of himself or herself for something that he or she can only find within his or her character.  As a person willingly embraces the challenges of achieving individuation, he or she pursues alignment with God’s will thereby enabling his or her soul to sing openly and freely to the glory of God. 

Individuation is the ultimate liberation from bondage to self and others.  “Without self-knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.”  George Gurdjieff’s provocative quote argues that freedom begins internally.  Any person who does not possess a free open mind wherein he or she thinks independently will be a slave to someone else.  Many people do not learn to think for themselves.  They are whomever their spouses, children, parents, siblings, extended relatives, friends and society tells them they are.  Gurdjieff insists self-knowledge is foundational to personal identity and independence.  Unless a person embarks upon the inward journey of self-discovery, he or she cannot function as an autonomous being.  To be free, a person must possess minute knowledge of his or her character.  Otherwise, self-governance is not possible.  Without that crucial attribute, a person cannot obtain dreams and goals.  Lack of self-knowledge means a person is unable to define any ambitions.  It further means that he or she does not have any discipline, focus or other attributes to achieve or succeed.  Anyone who cannot discipline himself or herself is incapable of leading other people.  Such a person allows other people to lead him or her.  In the process of differentiating from the people who initially fostered his or her identity, a person excavates his or her authentically divine and unique personality.  The need for external validation disappears.  Self-acceptance and self-expression, the aims of spirituality, emerge as individuals embrace the necessity of painstakingly toiling in the rock quarry of self-awareness and development. 

Persistently looking inward becomes a daily spiritual discipline of self-reflection.  Combine the vocations of geologists, archeologists, anthropologists and historians.  The first group of teachers and scholars study the Earth’s formation particularly rocks ridges in terrain which indicate dating and developmental processes.  Applied spiritually, you examine hardened contours of your character to understand origins and growth of your personality.  Your habits and coping mechanisms signify certain defining and influential experiences from your formative years.  Your initial reactions became permanent; they reveal how you have chosen to relate to people and respond to similar situations.  Analyze a solid habit the way that a geologist would.  When did this habit begin?  What is the primary cause?  Consider the Grand Canyon in Arizona or the Waimea Canyon on the island of Kauai in Hawaii.  Those rock formations equate with a candy store for a geologist.  There are similar fossilized traits in our character.  With liabilities, it is necessary to take them into the laboratory of self-analysis to determine how they corrode the positive aspects of character.  I suspect that negative emotions such as guilt, fear, regret, resentment and anger emerge from a definite past experience.  Perhaps, your family ganged-up on you and held a group session in which you were the butt of as many jokes as attendees told at your expense.  Chances are laughter in a public setting makes you fearful of reliving that humiliation.  Conceivably, you forego family gatherings lest you become the butt of jokes yet again.  Even more hurtful, parental betrayal and abandonment solidifies as an estimate of a person’s inherent worth.  The singer, actress and activist, Eartha Kitt, experienced that horror.  For many years, her parental abandonment defined her.  She accepted love and attention from anyone as it helped to fill the huge internal vacuum.  Over the course of her performance career, she cried an ocean of tears in response to an audience’s nightly applause.  In time, as healing unfolded in her life, she realized that her parents’ action did not define her worth.  In persistently looking inward, Kitt separated her intrinsic worth and unique character from her parents.  In so doing, she took a sledgehammer and smashed the rocks of self-contempt and masochistic suffering.  As she healed, she demolished detrimental patterns of behavior in which she allowed people to manipulate her by simply complimenting her.  As Kitt looked deeply within the mirror of her soul, she studies the rock-like formations in her character.  She discovered ways to transform these patterns into growth rather than allow them to remain as monuments of pain and hurt.