Why 'self-actualization' / 'self-realization'?

Self-actualization — the proper (proactive) mindfulness, and the ultimate mental health!

The fundamental and ultimate process of positive life-change that I've come to call self-actualization is the primary and most fundamental subject of this website, but, unusually and for a most important reason, here it's fully linked to grounded clear-mindedness instead of airy-fairy notions of 'higher realities' or freaky 'higher' perceptions.

Self-actualization* is indeed THE most fundamental life task** of EVERYBODY, and everybody has a potential and natural desire and motivation for it, though this is almost always to varying extents covered up or occluded and distorted. It's not imposed upon us by any external agent (such as 'God') but is implicit and intrinsic in the fact of our coming into incarnated (physical) life. As I've explained in Exit 'spirituality' — Enter clear-mindedness, not only religions but ALL spiritual and metaphysical traditions and so-called spiritual paths have in their different ways, and in some cases very subtly, diverted people away from this true life task of theirs of self-realization (which is in addition to more individual-specific life tasks of theirs).

It's because of this lack, and indeed avoidance, of genuine self-actualization, resulting from interference from the garbage, that we have hugely overpopulated this planet and look to be on the verge of reaping unthinkable consequences of this (see The future of humanity — Countenancing the unthinkable).

So, what, then, is self-actualization / self-realization? Is it doing a bit of Yoga or Tai Chi and perhaps some manifestation practices (e.g., to get rich quickly or to get an 'ideal' partner or your dream mobile phone) to make your life supposedly better? Or is it going off to meditate in a cave or monastery for the rest of your years?

No, it's none of those, and is much more fundamental and all-including — but it does make your life MUCH better, including almost always in all sorts of ways you'd never considered as possibilities for yourself. True and full self-actualization is based on the understanding that our underlying and true nature and identity is none other than the all-pervading fundamental consciousness (or universal consciousness) itself — which is 'the Ultimate' as far as anyone can tell.

It transcends all concepts of 'God', 'Spirit', supposed higher beings or supposed higher levels of reality, and so is the 'highest' reality that we can ever know of. It's not something separate from yourself that you can worship, because it's you and everything. The moment you're into even the slightest trace of worshipping, you're way off-course for self-actualization.

When you become 'enlightened' (I'd prefer to say, when you gain fundamental clarity) you perceive directly this fundamental consciousness as being your true nature and identity*. However, that's only a particular, albeit fundamental and crucial, stage in your self-actualization process. Self-actualization is the process of making fully manifest in physical form your underlying true nature as fundamental consciousness itself — so that you become a full, undistorted** manifestation of your true nature, whose basis is vibrant awareness, love, fully responsible free choice, positivity, creativity, and the tremendous egoless individual power that naturally flows from these.

Through the self-actualization / self-realization process you do NOT lose your identity. Rather, you lose all your limiting false identities, all your 'masks' and pretences, and discover your true identity as a micro-aspect or micro-facet of fundamental consciousness itself. You thus open up what's really, and has always been, your natural state. By this means you become truly FREE. Few people know what real freedom is, because it can't be described meaningfully — but you come to experience more and more of it as you continue your self-actualization process.

You don't find the ultimate happiness by seeking happiness, and certainly not through seeking pleasure. Instead you discover it through your self-actualization process, in which life progressively becomes its own joyful 'pleasure'.

This site, therefore, is about the true means to come into enduring and deeply meaningful happiness* and freedom, which remains unsullied regardless of what life may appear to be throwing at you. In order to achieve that it's necessary to clear out all obstructions and 'negative' influences that you're carrying — including ALL beliefs and held opinions, no matter whether apparently 'positive' or 'negative', and never mind how deeply seated or ingrained.

As hard personal experience has shown me, the overriding proportion of such obstructions and 'negative' influences is a result of direct and indirect interference from the garbage, which cultivates unawareness / delusion, ego power, control, fear and negativity.

For this reason, on this site I give much information about how the garbage had been interfering with ALL people, and I include accounts of my own often severe personal experiences with it (manifesting for me as 'ascended masters', 'angels', 'guides' and what people often call astral or dark entities), and how we can securely, safely and indeed joyfully clear ourselves of its interferences and become truly free and self-actualized, living abundant and joyfully vibrant lives.

To this end, on this site I introduce and describe or at least point to methods to clear out old emotional issues and traumas, rigid patterns of outlook, and all manner of habitual physical distortions and other misuses of the body. You can find out effective ways of letting go of addictions and of actually resolving or healing so-called mental illness and 'personality disorders' — particularly as I show clearly from my own insights based on experiences of my own, what the real causes of these are and the ways in which the medical and mental healthcare services fail us almost completely over such issues (see, for example, Psychiatry: my personal experience — Gaining fundamental insights and Night terrors and hell experiences — Understanding and clearing them).

I also show how religion and 'spirituality' as normally understood can't properly resolve the latter issues and indeed tend to compound them, and how rationally-based self-actualization / self-realization is the one overall way forward.

There's 'mindfulness' and proper mindfulness, just as there's 'mental health' and genuine mental health!

Yes, and they're worlds apart! 'Mindfulness' is widely recognised nowadays as a supposedly Good Thing to cultivate, and undoubtedly many people do benefit from it relative to how they'd been living prior to taking that on. However, what is generally recognised as 'mindfulness' (note that I nowadays put that term with its popular meaning in single quotes) is only a pale, and insidiously HARMFUL, shadow of genuine mindfulness.

What I'm inclined to call proper mindfulness is what the methodology presented on this site cultivates. 'Mindfulness' is generally meditation-based and more or less passive, based upon regular formal meditation, which itself is harmful through its ungrounding effects and the insidious 'cocooning' self-deceptions that it lands you with (it hides issues rather than addresses them). Proper mindfulness is actually what I prefer to call clear-mindedness in order to avoid it being associated in people's minds with 'mindfulness' and all the insidious harm that the associated meditation brings. It is a much more active and indeed proactive mental state, in which one is in a vibrant healthy balance of:

• being proactively peaceful observer of all one is experiencing, and
• actively engaging with life situations in thought-out, constructive and creative ways, often being forthright in taking appropriate action to improve the life experience for oneself and others — but in a lovingly aware, flexible and rational way, not driven by compulsions or emotions.

Similarly but much more brazenly, as I have explained in many places on this site, what is laughably called 'mental health' in our various cultures is an outrageous travesty of the real thing — a grotesque pantomime of the blind and ignorant leading (and unfortunately often 'treating') the blind and quite often not so ignorant! For a detailed explanation please see especially How all psychiatrists could begin genuinely to help their clients.

The methodology presented on this site gives you the real means to cultivate the proper, proactive, mindfulness that I call clear-mindedness, which is also part and parcel of the genuine and ultimate mental health. In the latter you have self-command in constantly improving your mental and physical functioning, without any call for the ignorant and seriously limiting and indeed harmful ministrations of 'mental health' practitioners or services.

See also:

• Do you want to be 'appropriate'? — Or authentic?
  This is on the homepage of my Personal website as an introduction to all my sites. It gives a particularly important practical angle on why self-actualization is so important, and why failure to go for genuine self-actualization is to let yourself down, while letting everyone else down into the bargain.

• Dissolving the ego — Why one could never achieve that aim

"Are you an atheist or an agnostic, then?"

Yes! — But also, just to confuse you, no! — But then again, am I a hummus eater or a baby eater, or a lover of cats or of choirboys, or a strangler of wet facecloths or of porcupines? After all, the public has a right to know, hasn't it? — And a useful — nay, crucially important! — purpose is served or benefit gained by garlanding me with such categorizations?

Perhaps somebody would like to explain to this ignorant bawzleflob the rational basis of those categorizations' supposed crucial importance, and their relevance to the contents of this site!

Oh, how people want to categorize, to label each other — especially to try to label awkward old cusses like this one, who've clearly broken away from the ways of the 'sheep' majority!

The reality is that I'm simply as I am and I think as I think, and don't think as I don't think — and fundamentally base my life outlook and deeds upon what makes the best sense on an awarely and rationally loving and caring basis.

As I've indicated further above, on the basis of my own observations and awareness and reasoning ability I've rejected all views of the nature of 'reality' and our life experience that are based upon belief — and that includes all that are based upon 'received wisdoms' / 'teachings', because all that is simply more belief, and belief informs us genuinely of precisely nothing apart from particular serious problems of mental functioning displayed by the believers. You can't be a fully positive force in your own life and the world at large if you're holding belief.

That means, for one thing, that I hold no belief in any sort of 'god' or 'divine presence'. However, I don't hold a disbelief in them, for that would be just another belief, albeit a negative one. Instead I live my life on the basis of an open-mindedly applied empirically based working model of reality and our life experience, which does exclude the existence of any conscious beings or presences of any sort external to or 'beyond' the physical 'reality' — that is, apart from human consciousness itself. So, for me their nonexistence is an observation / experience-based working assumption, not a categorical belief, but it's nonetheless proved to be a crucial aspect of the working model and associated strategy and set of methods that enabled me to clear myself of some very troublesome non-physical interferences that went disturbingly near to killing me or making me an intractable 'psychiatric case' some years ago.

A really fundamental truth (if anything at all could be called 'truth') is that about anything non-physical or metaphysical, including the nature of 'reality' and our life experience, we can't know anything. Thus even the first vestiges of belief inevitably obscure whatever is really true — what I refer to as 'What Is', whatever that is!

I don't accept the labels 'atheist' or 'agnostic', even though actually aware use of either of those terms would at least to some extent include my own outlook — especially 'agnostic'. The problem with the labels is that for the vast majority of people those labels are rigid categorizations, which imply particular belief systems and stereotyped notions — and indeed, many who regard themselves as agnostic or, especially, atheists, are locked into their own respective belief systems and so are really doing little better than those who have overtly religious or 'spiritual' belief. 'Atheist' would be sort-of applicable to me only if its definition included people who open-mindedly assume there's no god, whether or not also including those who believe there's no god.

"Aren't your beliefs similar to those of… [tradition, 'teacher' or writer]?"

For my response to that common question / comment, please see the relevant section in FAQ Corner, Part 2.