Is self-actualizing self-indulgent?
I assert: Anything other than being on a self-actualizing track (and it doesn't end there) is self-contraction.
And contrary to popular interpretation of Maslow's hierarchy of needs pyramid, you do not need to stack up treasure chests along each ascending rung up the self-actualizing pyramid. In fact, having too much may actually hold you back. I call it the "fat and happy" syndrome - being too comfortable - too complacent to bother to expend the energy to move anywhere much less go up what looks like a steep hill. Does it surprise you that the Maasai of East Africa - living a traditional herding lifestyle, with no electricity or running water in huts made of dung - "are equally satisfied and ranked relatively high in well-being as the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans"? (via Boing Boing).
I spent last Christmas in Guatemala living with a family. They exchanged the simplest of gifts - practical, inexpensive items - like scented deodorant or a little nicer-than-ordinary shampoo. These are people that wash their clothes and dishes in a pila not a dishwasher or washing machine and hang them to dry. I went shopping with Erica when she was looking for something for her husband and parents and her average gift purchase (they did splurge slightly more on the kids) was in the $3 range. I spent an extraordinary three weeks with them - and they were not deprived in any way. I was humbled. In the West we tend to fixate on what we don't have instead of appreciating the immense abundance we are privileged with. There is no one that has the means to be reading this blog that can objectively say you don't have most of the rungs of the pyramid nailed - it's much much more of a minimalist structure than you imagine.
Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough. - Oprah Winfrey
It was when I had the "least" in my life that I was able to leapfrog a few rungs on the self-actualizing track. I was jolted out my own complacency in 2001. Without dragging out the whole story - because this is not about a woe-is-me-pity-party. Let's say I truly identify with Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, when he talks about living out of his car for a few months. And having just read the cover story in current issue of Business 2.0, I can relate to one of the founders of Oddpost (unfortunately not the part about the $29 mil sale to Yahoo) on being so broke he had to resort to selling his car. After a start-up (where I was on exec but not founding team) folded, then another ill-conceived (that's what happens when I don't pay attention to my authentic voice) business idea where I lost quite a bit of money and a divorce to top off matters - if it hadn't been for the generosity of friends and family, I'd have been homeless.
I knew no stability for nearly two years. Enough of that, you get the picture. But I was committed to be true to myself - reclaiming my integrity and having a clarity of purpose - and that was enough to sustain me. It's be a long story to adequately explain - or perhaps it's not possible in words - how you can have single to double digits in your bank account for over two years and experience the periods of joy as I've never experienced before. But something shifted that idyllic summer of 2002 when I totally gave up the past and committed to staying true to myself.
Self-actualization is ultimately not selfish, it's selfless. It's not about what you "want", it's about becoming who you are and expressing that - not shrinking away from it. "Successful" people may or may not be self-actualized - they are not necessarily correlated. Self-actualization isn't about external success. Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Jesus, Buddha, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln and many many others were self-actualized.
With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward. - Henry David Thoreau, Walden
I'm definitely not saying you should strive to emulate any of these people - as I've said Exceptional People Are Exceptionally Themselves - but they do demonstrate possibilities. Just be fully you. Self-actualization is about realizing and expressing your purpose for being. The winners for the John Templeton Foundation's Power of Purpose essay contest were just announced last week. The winning story illustrates the simplicity of purpose and the compulsion to evade it.
I remember reading The Anatomy of the Spirit a few years back immediately after the start-up ended. By the time I got to reading the "highest" chakra level - you could view it as progressive levels of personal development - the author was now talking about people like Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi - and it scared the living daylights out of me. Then I stumbled onto a book on a shelf at the library called The Cliff Walk: A Job Lost and a Life Found soon after that was a story about a literature professor that falls off his own precipice and ends up a carpenter. It sent chills down my body. I don't know if the prof was meant to be a carpenter - only he would know that - but I knew my own reaction was I was scared I would be lead down a path towards a purpose that was alien to everything I had ever thought I knew.
"Come to the edge," he said.
They said, "We are afraid."
"Come to the edge," he said.
They came.
He pushed them — and they flew.
- French writer, Guillaume Appolinaire
Via this interview "Living the Creative Life:an interview with Angeles Arrien" I find out: The verb "to fly" comes from the Old English word flowan, which means "to flow."
Buckminster Fuller (definitely exemplifies self-actualized) says he was standing on the shores of Lake Michigan readying himself to commit suicide. But then a thought entered his mind:
I told myself: "You do not have the right to eliminate yourself, you do not belong to you. You belong to the universe." (via DoctorG - well worth reading Bucky's entire essay)
If you are worried about whether it would be self-indulgent to self-actualize - it's quite the opposite - it'd be self-indulgent not to self-actualize.
People typically feel trapped by life, trapped by the universe, because they imagine that they are actually in the universe, and therefore the universe can squash them like a bug. This is not true. You are not in the universe; the universe is in you. - Ken Wilbur, One Taste
Man, there is a LOT here. I couldn't possibly read all of the books you mention in this one post anytime soon--but I want to!
I can totally relate to how a time of despair can lead on down the road to self-awareness. It's a process that's so hard to describe, but it has something to do with stripping away what doesn't matter and giving you an exquisite look at what's really there.
My one book recommendation Jack Kornfield, After the Ecstasy the Laundry. He does an amazing job of explaining how this process works, and the four "gateways" to greater self-awareness. Tragedy/adversity is probably the most common one. Some simply get a calling to delve deeper. And I'm having troubly remembering the other two.
Posted by: Jory Des Jardins | Oct 02, 2004 at 02:53 PM
Look up the name Beyers Naude. He is a guy who truly self-actualized. He was a South African Aparteidnik because that's what he was born into. Then because of the Sharpville massacre he realized his core. He became a key anti aparteid activist. Sacrificed tons in doing so but clearly become more who he truly was.
Posted by: johnza | Oct 04, 2004 at 09:28 AM
i agree that not self-actualizing is self-indulgent; the problem really is not with self-actualizing itself, but with the fact that it is such an easy refuge for extreme narcissists, who are naturally drawn to it for the wrong reasons and can use it as a defense for their pathological self-absorption. likewise positivity can be a refuge for the insensitive. both are spaces that can harbor the wrong motives, but you can't blame the concept itself for its being misused by those with less than worthy intentions.
Posted by: cynthia | Oct 07, 2004 at 09:30 PM