Personal History is a Plan
Your personal journey revealed.
Si quieres leer o compartir este artículo en español.
@Victoria_Borodinova, at pixabay.com
Every mountain climbed or valley descended, every obstacle, pain, broken heart, and happiness you have encountered in your life is a dot connected by your personal history. Even if you have not connected it, if you have not assumed responsibility for it, or if those dots are invisible to your awareness, they connect. And consciously connecting those dots is part of coming to terms with who you are fundamentally. I will go further; you cannot assume accountability for your life until you have connected those dots. It has to be “somewhat” clear to your awareness what kind of monster you are and what you are capable of doing.
We are messy creatures; we are capable of wonderful moments, and almost in the same breath, horrendous deeds. There is no depth to our reality and unless we bring to the surface of our awareness those dots that make up the picture of who we are, we are lost in the maze of our beingness.
Take for example when you have done something reprehensible to a dear friend, you may recognize that you wronged them and you have asked for forgiveness; but unless you truly know what button was pressed for you to act despicably and recognize that it was You who did the deed, most likely you will repeat it. Even if you asked for forgiveness and felt whole-heartedly sorry, if you have not connected the dots that created that momentous event with your personal history and you have not grown by its presence in your life, then it is like it has never happened. You see, in life sometimes you win and sometimes you learn; and if you do not learn, then you lose precipitously.
Personal history is the connection of all the ups and downs that group who you are and the battles that are being fought inside you. Like every line is a subsequence of dots, or all pictures when seen up-close are milliards of dots, so is your personal history an incredible amalgamation and connection of eventful dots that bring forth the image of your being. Also, like the sea is the universe of innumerable drops, and as incredible as it may sound, every drop is a universe; so are You!
There is no way to over-emphasize the relevance of a person’s meaning in their life due to connecting the dots of their personal history. Jordan B. Peterson has made a direct correlation between assuming responsibility and the amount of meaning you experience in your life, which by the way is a grandiose idea. You need to get a full picture of it, if you are not aware of your personal history, then assuming responsibility is like working with your liver and not your muscular tissue. True it is better to start assuming responsibility and derive meaning in your life and not wait until you understand yourself and your personal history. If you do not take accountability for that in the process, you will pay a price no matter how much responsibility you assume.
Artist @Marialba_osio
At the most fundamental level you are an individual constituted by a multiplicity of “personalities” that have aims, beliefs, and act inside you with a purpose. If you are not aware when they have been in charge and have driven you, then the You who you think you are, is not in charge of anything. They are in charge of your life, and you are at their whim. I am sure you have heard by now the quote from Carl G. Jung “people don’t have ideas, ideas have people”. We are the most powerful creature that have evolved in the universe. Our being is the end result of evolution from at least 3.5 billion years of success, failure, adaptation, and survival; do you really think that all there is to you is what you have gathered and become in the few years you have lived?
We have no idea what consciousness is, what we know is that it runs so deep, that like in the ocean, there is no light whatsoever once you are deep enough. If our ancestor, the Australopithecus that lived two million years ago, had no idea that its survival depended on some brain functions that allowed it to spot a predator in the savanna of eastern Africa before they got too close; why do you think the complex process of your awareness is being modeled by the ideas and beliefs you conjure up today?
The depth of who we are is unfathomable, and we will never comprehend it. That dark and obscure aspect of our Self, which Jung called it the Shadow, it is a powerful and irrational source of our personality. It is hidden from our awareness; it is the Black Hole at the bottom of your galaxy, everything swirls around it. In Jung’s terms, the gradual integration and alignment of the conscious self with the Shadow into our consciousness is the process of psychological healing, and it is the work of a lifetime. If you assume responsibility for realizing the dots that connect your life while at the same time you aim with determination to achieve whatever you are aiming for, however shaken you are by life tragedies, nothing whatsoever will shatter you completely. You will endure and go on, and your life will not be the result of the aiming and objectives of the personalities that live within you.
Writing as a process of transformation
There is a practical issue on how to connect the dots of your personal history, I will share what I have learned in over forty years of walking this path. Writing is an excellent medium to come to terms with your personal history. When I was sixteen, even before I started my conscious process of healing, I started a journal where I wrote stories, ideas, and sometimes drew sketches. I wrote a story of a seed that fell from the top of a sequoia and landed on the ground. It began to feel the moisture of the ground and it felt good, then something began to expand inside and cracked the seed coat and it was scared… you get the idea, we are pulled and pushed by circumstances and we tirelessly attempt to fit everything into our field of experience, because we are afraid of the unknown and we have powerful systems in place to avoid the stress they create.
Keeping a journal where you write what is relevant in your day, or ideas that you have encountered, is an important practice. It is a place where you can pray and dream, give form to your aspirations and discover what is underneath an experience or a feeling.
Writing has some wonderful advantages to integrate the subconscious levels into awareness. When we talk, we are scattered all over and it makes somewhat sense because of the undertow current of meaning we have and share in dialogue; we are sharing much more than words in a conversation. But, when we write, if it is to make some sense, you have to reduce the stream to a drop, and connect each drop to make the current flow – for the idea to make sense. If we do not, it makes no sense. That is why writing teaches us to think.
Under the threshold of your awareness there is the You that is really and most definitely YOU, and He/She/We is listening. I know it sounds like mumbo jumbo, but the most incredible realization I have come to, while I was writing and still working hard to make it the central cornerstone of my life, is that there is one of the personalities inside me that is doing its best to guide me and help me be whole. Its voice is soft, it does not press or impose, sometimes it goes quiet, not because it does not say something, but because the noise from my thoughts does not allow me to hear it. This dimension in me cherishes silence and time alone.
Artist @SplitShire in pixabay.com
Back to writing a personal history, allowing a regular and specific time to sit and write is crucial to finding and connecting those moments, experiences, and events that have impacted your life and been significant for you.
Take the time to be with yourself, you deserve it. After writing and reading your own words, you begin to ask yourself questions regarding the connection between those moments that were impactful and what you are living today. Similarities between people in your past and those in your present, echoes of your experiences of before, and the aspects of life that now are obstacles. It will become apparent what you need to do.
For me, I began to write about the hardest times I went through, and distilled the feelings in it; what I felt, what it meant, what feeling was in charge. I have written my personal history many times. Sometimes I have written down an obstacle that was at the forefront and asked the crucial question: what hidden benefit am I getting out of this experience? And after I encounter the answer, then I asked: when in my past do I feel an echo of the same feeling? You will be astonished by the connections that you will make.
You may think – I don’t have time for this!
Think about it again, if you had someone you liked and cared for, would it seem like a chore to spend quality time with them? In reality, most people secretly do not like themselves and confronted with the possibility of spending time alone is like wanting to go to the dentist to get a root-canal intervention. I had a spiritual guide in my twenties that once told me – if people knew what they had to endure and sacrifice to know themselves, they would never start the quest. However, you have a few formidable allies, one is the most powerful system you have implanted in your being: the sense of positive emotion, tap into it and it will fuel you. It is like a compass that will guide you toward what you need to do next and tell you on the way if you are on the right track. But we have neglected it for too long, as a teenager we decide that “fitting in” was more important than anything; later we assume the values of society and friends and use them to determine careers, business partnerships, and love relations… we have misaligned this compass and no wonder it is not working properly.
Assuming responsibility for your life and connecting the dots of your personal history will begin to realign your moral compass. If you successfully start this personal work and be faithful to it, it is a fire that will never be consumed, no matter what you encounter throughout your life.
Some call it God, others Atman, or Allah, others the ‘psychological resilience’ aspect of your personality. It does not matter what you call it, it is the unquenched fire of the Phoenix. Events in your life may destroy you, kill you for all real purposes and from the ashes you will rise again, and it will fuel your aim to accomplish Life’s Journey.
If you think you do not have time to learn about who you are and why you act as you do, then you do not have time to live; you will be living someone else’s life… might as well be dead.
Image from https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/ it is a construction wiki.
[1] If you are interested in a writing workshop, check out Jordan B. Peterson Self-Authoring Suite. https://www.selfauthoring.com/