Episode 001: What is self-actualization + why it’s important

Episode Transcript:

[00:00:00] Hi everyone and welcome to the first episode from Mad for Purple. Not only is today, the first episode, it’s also my birthday and we’re in mercury retrograde. So I’m hoping that all the tech works and that this episode comes to you loud and clear. I was born during mercury retrograde, and I know others that have been also and feel the same way that maybe Mercury retrogrades don’t impact us the same way as someone born while Mercury is direct. Maybe we just try and fool ourselves.

[00:00:59] So today I wanted to talk to you about self-actualization. And some of the things that I think it’s important for you to know about it. So self-actualization was a term first coined by Kurt Goldstein back in 1939/40ish, but it wasn’t really popularized until Abraham Maslow introduced his hierarchy of needs theory in 1943.

[00:01:23] So Maslow believed that humans have, an order of needs ranging from physical to psychological, which must be met before one’s full creative, intellectual and social potential can be fulfilled through internal drivers versus external rewards such as money or power. Now, according to Maslow, this ability to self-actualize or be motivated internally to individuate in a holistic sense is only available to us if our other needs within that hierarchy pyramid are met first. Now, in my opinion, this is a limiting approach to self-development, which may have been fine 80 plus years ago. But we’re now living in an era of yes and, not yes or. Now, this brings us to another psychologist, Carl Rogers, and his theory, which is that instead of having a hierarchy, each of us holds concepts of self image and ideal self.

[00:02:18] So if you picture a Venn diagram with two circles on it, the lesser, the overlap between those two circles, the more in-congruent the individual is. Meaning the less they will love and value themselves. Now this can come about due to environment, trauma, and our conditioning, but we’ll get to more of that later.

[00:02:35] Now, on the other hand, if the overlap between this self-image and ideal self, if the overlap is greater, then the greater, the capacity there is to fulfill one’s potential and achieve the highest level of human being-ness, that one can. So Carl called that becoming a fully functioning person. In Carl Rogers’ words, “Becoming a fully functioning person means that the individual moves towards being knowingly and accepting the process, which he inwardly and actually is. He moves away from what he is not, from being a façade. He is not trying to be less than he is with the attendant feelings of guilt or self-deprecation. He is increasingly listening to the deepest recesses of his psychological and emotional being and finds himself increasingly willing to be with greater accuracy and depth that person, which he most truly is.”

[00:03:28] So we have all these things that impact our self image and create incongruency, starting with the conditioning we receive in our childhood. So most of us are born into a family unit of three to five individuals. And in Human Design, what is shown is when you have three to five people come together, a transauric entity is created called a Penta. Now Penta is deeply, deeply homogenizing.

[00:03:55] The Penta has no awareness. It has no emotions. It has no ego. It’s just pure life force, workforce energy, trying to be expressed. And the purpose of the Penta is to fulfill the directives of the program, the matrix, if you will. Which is all about human evolution on the physical plain and doesn’t take into account our individual soul expressions.

[00:04:18] We received conditioning from how and what we eat. The environments that we’re raised in, so by environment I mean the people, places, and things that we’re surrounded by while we were growing up. Conditioned by the friends that we’ve chosen to, the communities that we’re in and even societal expectations.

[00:04:36] You think about gender, sexuality, how we dress, whether you wear makeup or not. All of these things, could very well be coming from conditioning and this conditioning creating this greater incongruency of self. Another factor is trauma. Whether it’s the big T from violence experienced or witnessed, or if it’s a smaller T’s of things that caused you to doubt yourself or yourself worth.

[00:05:01] And all of that is stored in the body. And this impacts our self image. So, how do we move from what we aren’t from that facade into who we truly are? How do we bring that self image and ideal self closer together? There are a few different ways of doing this. One of my favorite ways is through archetypal work, whether that’s through

[00:05:24] the 13 moon mystery school model or with Caroline Myss and her Sacred Contracts or through Human Design and its numerous archetypes. What’s great about working with archetypes is it gives you a structure of looking at a specific expression of that energy

[00:05:41] in all its forms in the full spectrum of what that archetype can look like. So it’s something that’s outside of oneself, which makes it a little safer to play with and you’re able to relate to that archetype in all the different ways and eventually integrate it into self. Another tool to use is therapy, whether it’s talk therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, EMDR, all of these different therapy methods they allow for an awareness. Awareness of the mind. Energy healing such as Reiki, the Expansion Principle™, these things help to bring what’s in the body, what’s being stored in the body energetically, bring it to the surface to be released cause true healing can’t happen until it’s removed from the body. As long as you’re still having fight or flight moments, adrenaline spikes, cortisol spikes, the body is going to be on high alert for these things.

[00:06:36] And being on high alert all the time that just adds to stress and anxiety and our mental health. So one of the great things about energy healing, specifically the Expansion Principle™ is that there’s no need to revisit traumas. There’s no need to revisit any of the T’s, big or, small. And some of those T’s aren’t even ours.

[00:06:59] They are things that have been passed down generation to generation, but there’s no way that we could even know the origin. So that’s where the Expansion Principle™ being an intelligent energy it can find the seed no matter where it is in our past, present, future, parallel lives or in our lineages.

[00:07:15] Now I’m sure there are many other methods that I have not touched on. If there’s one that you’re particularly fond of or found great results with, I would love to hear about it. Either email me or if you’re in the Facebook community Mad for Purple Podcast, you post a comment there and let us know. I love this conversation and I’d like to have it long after this episode has published.

[00:07:39] Now in closing, I just want to leave you with a vision. A vision of a world where we’ve all done the work. We’ve all done the healing. We are all self-actualized. We have ended the cycle of trauma and violence for our children, for our children’s children. So that they are able to grow up as themselves. As their ideal selves with the truest self image that they could possibly hold where you’re looking at the Venn diagram and there’s barely any gaps.

[00:08:11] What would be possible in a world like that? Just thinking about it I can feel the emotions, the love, the joy, the creativity and just the being ness that would come up that. It’s potent.

[00:08:24] Thank you all for listening to this first episode.

[00:08:27] I am greatly honored and grateful to be in a position to speak to you, to provide you with nuggets of truth on your journey, whether it’s spiritual, or religious, or somewhere in between, just honor you on your path, on your journey and I will see you in the next episode.

[00:08:47]I just wanted to take a few minutes before we get to the takeaways to expand a little bit on conditioning around gender and sexuality. I didn’t go into it as deep as maybe I should have within the episode, so I just wanted to take the opportunity to clarify that I believe that gender and sexuality are on a spectrum and that any conditioning that we receive around these things is around being cis-gender around being heterosexual. I just wanted to add that so that, you know, as a listener that no matter your gender, no matter your sexuality I honor that.

[00:09:26] Now the key takeaways from the episode. Number one. Self-actualization is the process of bringing the self image and that ideal self closer together to create a greater capacity to reach one’s highest level of human being-ness. Two. We all have conditioning and or carry trauma, which impacts our self image. Three. A few of the ways healing can be facilitated is through archetypal work therapy and energy healing. And last but not least, anything is possible in a world full of self-actualized humans being.

[00:09:57] Thanks again so much for listening.

[00:09:59] If you’d like to connect after this episode, you can find me on Facebook and my Mad for Purple Podcast group or on Instagram @madforpurple. And I’d like to take this opportunity to invite you to get the congruency of self guided meditation that I have created for you. You can do that by going to the show notes and I’ll have a link there for you or if you go to madforpurple.com/links. And as always, don’t forget to hit that follow or subscribe button so you never miss an episode.

Key Takeaways:

Self-actualization is the process of bringing the self image and that ideal self closer together to create a greater capacity to reach one’s highest level of human being-ness. Two. We all have conditioning and or carry trauma, which impacts our self image.
We all have conditioning and or carry trauma, which impacts our self image.
A few of the ways healing can be facilitated is through archetypal work therapy and energy healing.
Anything is possible in a world full of self-actualized humans being