Do you know that feeling where you know there is so much untapped potential, but you don’t know how to release it and channel it? It feels like a reservoir that you can’t access, but you know you can share it with the world. Living authentically is what we are craving – we’re living in a world that has lost sense of what that means.
Purpose Of Self-Development
The first point I need to make is that the whole purpose of self-development is the realisation of Self. All of it is bringing you back into that alignment of selfhood. Much of the industry doesn’t do that now, but this should be the purpose of all self-development work.
Self-development t can become an addiction in itself. One thing doesn’t work, and then you end focussing your energy on loads of other things. Before you know it, you’ve spent thousands of pounds on courses and gurus, and you’re still miserable but with a few more skills.
We see it in the rise of half baked self-development online – the stuff that gives you a quick dopamine hit, but there is no lasting change. The whole point of personal development is knowing yourself and becoming who you are.
Most of us are in a neurosis state because we are off trajectory and never quite ‘feel right’. There is always something there niggling away, and we can’t put our finger on it.
Meaning
I believe this is a manifestation of the world going through a meaning crisis. People have lost sense of how to interact with life – they don’t know how to make sense of reality anymore – and this is because of poorly developed psychologies.
With the development of technology, it’s become much easier for people to search online and consume tons of content to fill the voids within themself or mirror that they’re suppressing.
The digital world is full of information that will give the illusion of psychological progression. We have online guru’s, collective crazes like radical diets (veganism and carnivorism), entrepreneurial types that appeal to our inner need for worthiness.
A significant issue here is that our psychological blind spots often get transferred onto other people who become manifested figures of what we are seeking.
Take Jordan Peterson, for example, who has become a father figure for so many young men. They’re looking for a sense of Self, and Jordan Peterson is a figure they’re putting on a pedestal because he is filling that unconscious need for a healthy father archetype. They’re transferring this onto him.
Projection
Just be careful who you are transferring your psyche onto. Become conscious of where that attention is going. Are these people psychologically hygienic? Because if they aren’t, your mind can become infected in the same way as a virus mutates.
Most people never engage in this proper psychological work because they’re entirely unaware of it. They never quite ‘feel right’ – but they don’t know what it is. They go through life, and at some point, their soul screams at them. They end up depressed or with severe anxiety because they’re living an inauthentic life. Their Self is being unlived, and it needs to express itself in the world.
I’m on my own path; I am in no way enlightened or individuated or any other fancy term. I catch myself often being hooked on online content that I’m unconsciously seeking through my complexes. I’m fortunate that I am aware of these things in my psyche and continue to work with them.
Living Authentically
Ask yourself why you’re listening to this podcast now? Are you after a fix? Is it because you don’t feel right for some reason? Are you after someone to give you that all-important information that is going to save you from yourself?
I know these questions because I’ve been at that stage for years – trying to fix myself and constantly improve. But the thing is unless you know yourself, it’s futile. You’re just putting water into a polluted lake.
I’m still on my path of individual selfhood. I don’t have the answers for people – nobody does. Knowing yourself at the deepest levels and living out that life is the only thing that can satisfy that itch.