What Self-Actualization Looks Like and How to Achieve It

[Giulia]

Thank you for posting this very interesting article, Tony

Here is a summary along with the outcome of some brainstorming:

Summary

Self-actualized people are those who are living to their fullest potential. They are constantly striving to grow and learn, and they are not afraid to challenge themselves. They are also deeply accepting of themselves and others, and they have a strong sense of purpose in life.

Here are some of the key characteristics of self-actualized people:

Realistic acceptance: Self-actualized people are realistic about themselves and the world around them. They accept their strengths and weaknesses, and they don't try to be someone they're not. They also accept others for who they are, without judgment.
Efficient perception: Self-actualized people are able to perceive the world clearly and accurately. They are not easily swayed by emotions or biases.
Peak experiences: Self-actualized people have peak experiences, which are moments of intense joy and appreciation for life.
Autonomy and independence: Self-actualized people are independent and self-reliant. They make their own decisions and live their lives according to their own values.
Freshness of appreciation: Self-actualized people have a fresh appreciation for life. They are able to find joy in the simplest things.
Need for privacy: Self-actualized people value their privacy and alone time.
Democratic and participative orientation: Self-actualized people are interested in the welfare of others and want to make a difference in the world.
Concern for others: Self-actualized people are compassionate and caring. They are concerned with the well-being of others and want to help them reach their full potential.
Unconventionality: Self-actualized people are unconventional and independent thinkers. They are not afraid to challenge the status quo or go their own way.
Humor: Self-actualized people have a good sense of humor. They are able to laugh at themselves and at the world around them.
Brainstorming

List of some ideas for how to become more self-actualized:

Identify your values and goals: What is important to you in life? What do you want to achieve? Once you know what you value and want to achieve, you can start to make choices that are aligned with your goals.
Challenge yourself: Step outside of your comfort zone and try new things. The more you challenge yourself, the more you will grow as a person.
Be accepting of yourself and others: We all have strengths and weaknesses. Accept yourself for who you are, and accept others for who they are.
Be grateful for what you have: Take the time to appreciate the good things in your life. Gratitude can help you to feel more positive and fulfilled.
Give back to others: Helping others is a great way to find meaning and purpose in life. Find a cause that you care about and volunteer your time.
Self-actualization is a journey, not a destination. It takes time and effort to become a self-actualized person. But it is a journey that is well worth taking.

From a personal point of view, what I really struggle with most is being accepting of others, if they are the direct cause of my loved ones’ distress. I am working on this.

I have also given up wanting to make a difference in the world, unless this has to do with my own individual behavior. In order to do this I no longer watch the news.

[anthonychipoletti]

Giulia, I am still trying to understand self-actualization and the effect of the conditions you mention as points of view in your last comment here. I think I need to think more about these concepts in detail to clarify my ideas about them.

[Giulia]

Thank you, Tony.

In addition to my previous comments

From a personal point of view, what I really struggle with most is being accepting of others, if they are the direct cause of my loved ones’ distress. I am working on this.

I have also given up wanting to make a difference in the world, unless this has to do with my own individual behavior. In order to do this I no longer watch the news.

I am not sure about “realistic acceptance”. I don’t know what different people may judge as “realistic”, but for me it seems to suggest that one would not try and challenge shared points of view, which is the opposite of what I do. In other words, in order to be the self-actualized person I am, I always challenge what is supposed to be “realistic”.

What about you?

[anthonychipoletti]

Giulia, as you can see from many of my forum comments, my idea of reality is conflicted and incomplete.

I trust the spiritual existence as real, because this is what I believe gives us life and never repeats events.

Most recently, my idea that we are always in our spiritual life has become mandatory, spirituality is life.

However, I cannot imagine any physicality in my spiritual life, only the actual presence of our loved ones.

I am more convinced than ever that Divine Source has shared this life with us forever and completely.

The human concept of the physical world with all sorts of conditional and temporal limits seems unreal.

Only in the past few months have I formed the concept of human existence being a tangible dream state.

Now, however, I feel that we also have experienced the tangible dream state forever as a memory cloud.

Just as our human brain needs to dream a human dream for memory and planning, our spirit also dreams.

Each dream our spirit dreams may or may not have physicality, however, physicality only happens in a dream.

By physicality here I mean only the form of matter such as atoms and molecules Our spirits are huggable

[Giulia]

Thanks for your thoughts, Tony. I have also often compared physical life to a dream we wake up from. To keep the dream symbology, I would add the expectation that we wake up from this "dream" enriched and that we can hence grant our spiritual self multifaceted features that spiritual beings that do not incarnate do not have access to.

From this perspective being self-actualized may mean different things to different people: I would never feel self-actualized if I did not approach what I think is "real" the way I do.

[anthonychipoletti]

Giulia, a thought I had just a few hours ago was we might be incarnating ourselves through our spirit dream.

Someone who is able to manage their dream events, more than I would even try to, might also reincarnate.

[anthonychipoletti]

Giulia, just now I thought about what might help to actualize our true selves. My opinion is that humans are so immersed in temporal, conditional physicality that we lost our understanding of what it means to have eternal life as a free gift from our Divine Source. Eternal means forever, without beginning, without ending.

[Giulia]

Giulia, just now I thought about what might help to actualize our true selves. My opinion is that humans are so immersed in temporal, conditional physicality that we lost our understanding of what it means to have eternal life as a free gift from our Divine Source. Eternal means forever, without beginning, without ending.

I absolutely agree with, you, Tony

A different situation will of course arise if a 7-year old child experiences a NDE during his physical life, and this becomes his first and main memory, as in your case. Something similar may happen if a child is allowed to live in the blissful non-disconnected state for the first six years of her life, as in my case, and has then the drive to seek that state of connection back for the rest of her life.

Yes, I seem to have a good control over dreams, astral travel and other modified states of consciousness, but this does not mean that physical life has a dream-like nature for me: my dream knowings stand out as much more real. So the dream symbology might appears an interesting one to use to explain incarnation, yet I feel we come to create something much more tangible than dreams on this physical plane: I feel we create eternal and indestructible experiences that we could never create on a merely spiritual plane.

In order to continue to feel self-actualized, I feel I need to fully acknowledge the notion of ‘reality’ arising from my approach to life, and expect THIS incarnated version of myself as the most tangible and real that I could ever create, the best and most important purpose I have ever pursued and carried out BEYOND space and time.

As for RE-incarnation, I have often felt this idea is misunderstood and I personally feel it is unnecessary to conceive that we incarnate more than once. In my case I am experiencing what having multiple lives in one single life is like, and I prefer this option much more. Linear time can be an extremely heavy weight to carry around, and I’d rather never choose this experience again.

[anthonychipoletti]

Giulia, sometime during the 1970s I had a college professor who taught that humans between the ages of six years and ten years, who have normal mental health and the usual access to current events, actually form their global values, moral structures such as what is right and wrong in human terms, which then affects their entire lives.

Looking back now at my time, 1944 to 1948:

https://www.montana.edu/hosp/era04_1944 ... index.html


Significant National Events: 1944-[1948]
The Allies invaded Sicily from North Africa in 1943, and invaded France on June 6, 1944, D-Day. The successful, but costly, invasions led to the liberation of Europe from Axis occupation. In 1945, the European members of the Axis surrendered. Shortly before Germany’s official surrender, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met on the shore of the Black Sea at Yalta. The three men agreed at the Yalta Conference to divide Germany into zones of occupation, prosecute Nazi and Fascist war criminals, and repatriate prisoners of war, among other issues.

The alliance with the Soviet Union was a disconcerting necessity for the Allies. Hitler's military along with Axis forces launched an invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Over the next four years, the Soviet Union repulsed Axis offensives, eventually driving back the invaders. The attack on the Soviet Union greatly diminished the Axis military strength, providing a critical advantage to the Allies. Fending off the German invasion and pressing to victory in 1945 required a tremendous sacrifice by the Soviet Union, which suffered the highest casualties among the Allies, losing more than 20 million citizens. The bravery, perseverance, and sacrifices of the Soviet people were acclaimed and respected by the Allies. However, Premier Stalin was a vicious dictator and his totalitarian government committed ethnic cleansing, deportations, and mass executions, beginning with the Great Purge of 1934. It is not surprising that soon after WWII ended, Stalin’s Soviet Union became a bitter enemy of its former allies.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was quite ill during the Yalta Conference, died in April, 1945. Vice President Harry S. Truman became the 33rd U.S. President and two months later he attended the founding conference of the United Nations. In August, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and three days later, it dropped another on Nagasaki. Japan surrendered. WWII was over. More than four hundred thousand Americans had died in the war that, worldwide, had taken the lives of some sixty million people.

The end of the war marked the dawn of an age of economic prosperity. Since 1940, inequalities of wealth and income had been dwindling. By 1960, two out of three Americans owned their own homes.3 Truman advocated “Fair Deal” policies that included national health insurance as a high, but ultimately unattainable, priority. The U.S. approved the Marshall Plan that provided billions of dollars in aid for rebuilding Western Europe. In 1944, the G.I. Bill extended to the sixteen million Americans who served in the war a series of benefits, including a free, four-year college education, as well as important financial benefits. By 1948, the cost of the G.I. Bill constituted 15 percent of the federal budget. But, because of the rising tax revenues it generated, the G.I. Bill paid for itself almost ten times over. It changed the face of American universities. Inexplicably, most women and African Americans who had served in the war were not eligible for benefits.

In the election of 1946, Truman beat the Republican challenger Tom Dewey, but the GOP won both the House and Senate. The 1947 National Security Act established the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. The Department of Defense was created. In 1949, the U.S. signed the North Atlantic Treaty, then the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb. The National Science Foundation was established in 1950.

[Giulia]

Hello, Tony. Thank you for posting this summary of world events written from the point of view of the USA.

Italy was also affected by historical and political events, of course, but all I can remember from the years between I was 6 and 10 is that we were not allowed more than 30 - 60 minutes of television a day, watching children's programmes which had absolutely nothing to do with such events. I remember we often spent time with our grandmothers and other family members, we played in the playground with other children and went to school. Our family was not rich, my mother sewed our clothes and my grandmothers knitted. There was no junk food and my weekly pocket money allowed me to buy an ice cream or two. As the eldest child, I was trained to help my mother look after my brothers and help with the housework. I went to Sunday School and was very inquisitive because my parents never harassed me with religion, so I had lots of questions about what happens when we die. Since nobody answered such questions, I started my own inquiries.

Yes, I did have a religious background, but it was a protective and loving shell for me, which didn't tie in with what I started to hear at Sunday School. Hence my research journey, which is still ongoing.

So thanks for reminding me that I was not affected by world events save for the fact that the war had made people poor and money was not meant for luxury but for family life and experiences.