6 Can I Change My Self?
Danielle was sick of herself. She had reached the point where she literally could not stand her own character. Danielle didn’t know exactly when she had reached that point. It had come about slowly, when she began noticing how frivolously and shallow she acted with a certain group of friends. Then, Danielle had met a new friend who had a curiously powerful presence, poise, and command, even a sort of nobility. Until then, Danielle had only seen such characters in movies. Spending time with her new friend made Danielle realize even more how incomplete, immature, and discordant her own character was. Danielle’s big question was, though, whether she could change herself. She hoped so. She didn’t want to live the rest of her life as she was.
Constancy
We are, in our person, relatively constant, and thank goodness for that. Imagine waking up each day not knowing who you were going to be. If we were not familiar with ourselves inside, we’d have no chance of navigating the constantly changing external world. We need a familiar base from which to operate. Something must be stable in the world to deal with its instability. We must be that stable thing. That the self endures in a relatively stable and enduring makeup is one of its several critical attributes. The edict to know thyself is to ensure that we put ourselves in situations that we can manage and avoid situations that we should know that we cannot. Our own knowledge of our interests, affinities, preferences, capabilities, character, indisciplines, and limitations keeps us relatively secure, engaged, and efficacious in the world. Those tending toward excess know to avoid its temptation. The gullible avoid the schemer if they can. The weak enlist the strong, and the timid rely on the bold. Enduring character can be a navigational blessing.
Change
We might nonetheless have things about ourselves that we don’t like and would rather change. Good for you if that’s the case. Perfect satisfaction with yourself is probably not a healthy state, at least for long. Growth begins with recognition of one’s limitations. Few things are a greater spur to maturation than to see just how immature or incomplete one is. That’s the power and allure of a model. A model shows us how far we have to go. If you can, place yourself in situations where you come into contact with individuals whose growth and maturity exceeds your own, whether in your neighborhood, workplace, church, or school. For a season, move through new circles, join groups, attend meetings, and volunteer, until you have doubled, tripled, or quadrupled the number of individuals with whom you come into direct contact and can observe. Identify those who seem most integrated, aware, and whole, and get to know them. Let your intuition draw you to those who might subtly spur you to pursue your own growth.
Possibility
You must first, though, believe that growth and maturation is possible. The individuals least likely to change are those who believe that they cannot do so. Expectations are everything. Believe yourself to be stuck as you are and where you are, and that’s who and where you may indeed remain. Learn to see new awareness as your gateway to personal change. You won’t change until you can see new things. To see new things, interact with others who already see those things. Walk with a botanist along your usual grassy stroll, and you’ll learn to see plants and their wonders that you never knew were there. Take the same stroll with an ornithologist, and you’ll learn to hear, see, and identify birds you’d hardly noticed were there. Take the same stroll with a meteorologist, and the wonders of the sky and air will open to you. The same stroll with a thespian, linguist, philosopher, or photographer would open other worlds to you. Greater awareness, the first step in growth, is certainly possible. Let your own deep affinities, desires, and ambitions take over from there.
Probability
Change, though, isn’t just possible. It is instead probable, one could even say assured. You plainly changed enormously as you matured physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially through your first two decades. That natural, indeed irresistible, growth likely continued through your third decade. You might want to return to your childhood character or the person you were in your youth, but you clearly cannot do so. Your growth and adaptation were inevitable. The bigger question, though, is whether your change is probable once you have physically and mentally matured. Some individuals may not change significantly once mature in years. But ask around, and you’d likely find that most of us in our later years would say that we continued to change. Without even especially trying, the change across a decade of life, whether from twenty to thirty, thirty to forty, forty to fifty, or even in later years can be significant. Life itself, in all its physical and relational challenges, continues to force us to adapt. Your change isn’t just possible but probable.
Purpose
The question, then, is whether you intend to promote your positive change or instead let it happen at its own pace and on its own course. If you just let it happen, then you’ll call your course your fate. If instead you guide your growth and promote your maturation, you’ll call the outcome your transcendence. Fate takes its own course. In transcendence, we participate. We are naturally purposeful beings. Even on a day with nothing in particular to do, we’ll find something. We’ll make it up, if we must. Or more likely, something will find us, and off we’ll go. The question isn’t being motivated and purposeful. The question is instead toward what. Consider adopting the direction of a greater awareness. The opportunity that your genuine transcendent self offers you is to become aware of the division within yourself between consciousness and unconsciousness or darkness. Your goal may then be to confront and overcome the darkness, even integrate it in a way that it becomes good. Make the change that you seek, your growing awareness, your continual transcendence. The resonance that you see in your most-admired acquaintances is their embrace of their full transcendent self, the one through whom the transcendent creator lives and moves as their being.
Motivation
Consider your motivation to change, articulate it, and connect your motivation with the highest. You could choose any lower motivation to change and still do well for yourself and those around you. You could, for instance, simply want to give up a depleting practice, like procrastination or obsession. You could, for another example, want to improve your relationships, perhaps to be less cruel and more kind. You might, alternatively, want to develop a positive characteristic, such as to find more joy and creativity. Or you could want to rid yourself of a dark tendency, such as toward greed or narcissism. These are all excellent motivations, great spurs toward change. Yet don’t leave them disconnected from their generating and vitalizing source, your deepest consciousness into which the transcendent creator speaks and your authentic self made and reborn in the transcendent creator’s Spirit through whom the transcendent creator lives. Ground your motivation in a way that sustains it and gives it life.
Becoming
The extraordinary thing is not just that you can help yourself grow and mature but also that your genuine self wants you to do so. Hear yourself urging yourself to grow in character, to illuminate your darkness with transcendent light to bring your divided parts together. See the conflict between your adopted and manipulated identity and the authentic you, as your opportunity to modify your identity to better express your genuine self. Your inner self wants you to become aware of your manufactured identities and how you are engaging the world through them, either expressing or failing to express your genuine self. Your transcendent self wants you not to just have a better experience of your own but to see that you are the experience, indeed that the creator’s transcendent consciousness is engaging creation distinctly through you. Your transcendent self wants you to align your thoughts, words, and actions with the creator’s patterns, principles, and preferences, so that you may extend your reach deeper into creation, giving consciousness the pleasure of experiencing creation through you. You are a being in the process of becoming, wherein the process is the authentic you.
Obstacles
Don’t underestimate the obstacles you face in order to change, both external and internal. The next chapter on what might be wrong with you addresses some of those obstacles. Here, though, recognize that others around you may not want you to change, not even to improve. They may instead unconsciously depend on the brokenness that they experience in you, especially if they are broken in their unconsciousness, too. Your growth might enable and inspire them to grow, but it also may require them to grow when they do not desire to do so. We each have an internal challenge to growth. Growth disrespects the personas through which we live, creating an interior tension and dissonance, manifested in mental distress and even physical discomfort. Psychological or spiritual maturation sounds dreamy and mystical but can instead be arduous personal labor adversely affecting one’s physical state and mental mood. Don’t misconstrue as failure those healthy but uncomfortable signs and signals. Much as you must stress a muscle for it to grow, you must also stress your spirit and soul to grow.
Author
Appreciate who is the genuine author of change, too. We feel as if we are striving to push our own growth forward, outward, and upward. The sensation is that growth is up to us. But curiously, psychological and spiritual growth depends more so on aligning oneself with the transcendent author of change. You may, for instance, have had the sense of having strived for years to overcome a degrading habit or addiction, without much if any success. Yet then, in an instant, it’s gone. You may, alternatively, have had the sense of having no hope of ever changing some fracture in yourself, perhaps from a past loss, offense, or transgression. Yet again, in an instant, it’s gone. We are not blocks of wood, chiseled, carved, ground, sanded, and polished. We are instead living beings with spirits and souls. We need only to align with the revelation of who our transcendent creator made us. When the creator reveals himself within the transcendent process, our growth is his, in an instant. Perhaps you’ve experienced it. Recognize the author of life, and seek his transformation.
Programs
That’s why this guide doesn’t offer a program for change. You may need an elaborate program of education to become a doctor, lawyer, nurse, or engineer. You’d also need an elaborate training program to become a competitive swimmer, runner, bicyclist, or gymnast. You’d even need an elaborate program to become a licensed psychologist or respected theologian. Yet discovery of the transcendent path to the authentic, original, and eternal you isn’t a self-improvement program. It’s not even exactly a path. The revelation of the transcendent one through his Spirit is more like a personal introduction. Step into the presence of transcendence itself, and transformation will be deep, thorough, and instant, even if only gradually integrated and expressed. It may take time to recognize and rely on the transcendent creator’s Spirit. But encounter the genuine transcendent person, and you won’t be able to resist change.
Reflection
How constant and enduring do you see yourself? Are you pretty much the same person you were two years ago? Five years ago? Ten years ago? Twenty years ago? How have you stayed the same? How have you changed? What has been the cause of your change? What has encouraged your constancy? How much have you grown in the past decade? How much of your growth has been due simply to physical, mental, and emotional maturation? How much of your growth has been from deliberate or intentional exploration and commitment? How strong is your commitment to grow? What spurred your commitment? Is your desire to grow more of an external demand or internal urge? Can you sense your inner self urging, calling, or demanding that you grow? What would you like to see from your growth? What condition or characteristic would you like to see disappear? What condition or characteristic would you like to acquire? What percentage of what you say and do reflects your transcendent self, the authentic, enduring, unique, and conscious you?
Key Points
We live and navigate through a fortunately constant and enduring self.
Growth and maturation are nonetheless critical developments.
Changing one’s character through growth is clearly possible.
Indeed, maturation is probable or even inevitable, to a degree.
We can accelerate our growth with purposeful commitment to do so.
We may have a variety of motivations for improving our character.
The underlying motivation for growth is becoming your genuine self.
Recognize the several obstacles you face to growing and maturing.
Recognize, too, that the genuine author of change is not you.
Beware programs for change that do not point you to change’s author.