Self-reflection: Completeness

The second pillar of life is Wholeness, Completeness, Totality. (Look at the yin yang picture). “Whole” is a word very close to the words “holy” and “healing”, which is not by chance.

The psyche is the totality of the human mind – both conscious and unconscious. The conscious is the “I”, the ego, the persona, what we project to the world. The “self” is the unconscious, the things we know intuitively, the values, the power of life sitting at the very core.

We should keep the “I” connected to the “self” at all times and the “I“ should rely on the “self” that everything would be fine.

When the Little Prince met the fox, she told him: “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Truth can be understood only intuitively. We can search for it and analyze it, but in the end we know the truth, the right decisions intuitively.

Mizuta Masahide, a 17^th century Japanese poet and samurai wrote:

Since my house burned down

I now own a better view

of the rising moon

What is he talking about? Is it about taking down all the walls that the ego has built around itself, forced by societal norms and what “face” we try to have for the outside world? Is it that when these walls fall down, we are reunited with the “self” and can be that person, which we really are, and be happy with that union and completeness?

Often a change is needed to achieve that completeness, a breaking down of the walls. One has to be ready to lose everything in order to win. And there are preconditions that need to be fulfilled before that happens – three steps to climb:

The first one is to see, to have an insight. When you see, when you have an insight about the right direction, then half the journey is done.

The second step is to will, to want to take that step. Once you are there, at the second step, you obey that impetus.

And the third step is to dare, to have the courage to do that change in your life.

Soren Kierkegaard says that to dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.

In India they have a story that a person goes through three transformations in life – the camel, the lion and the child. The camel first goes with the caravan and follows every step the other camels make. Then it goes away as a lion and hunts down a dragon, fights, and in the last transformation the person is a re-born child with open senses.

Do not be afraid to be that reborn child and be complete.

Self-reflection: Movement

Bengt draws Tao, the yin yang picture and says that the first pillar of life is Movement.

TAO

Within the context of traditional Chinese philosophy and religion, the Tao is the intuitive knowing of “life” that of which cannot be grasped full heartedly as just a concept but known nonetheless as the present living experience of one’s everyday being.

Inside the picture you can see Movement. Everything changes constantly, life is Movement. It is the green color, the color of life. The inner connections of life are dynamic not static. Movement is a prerequisite for life.

“To live is to be born anew in every moment”. Every second 2 kilograms of cells in a person’s body are renewed.

“You cannot go into the same river twice – both you and the river would have changed many times.”

A Chinese proverb says: “Do not be afraid of what moves forward be afraid of what stands still.” Everything moves endlessly – here and now, and we need to be aware of that fact.

When we talk about Movement we need to talk about Order and Chaos as well.

Order & Chaos

If we imagine a scale between Order and Chaos, with Order on the left end and Chaos on right one – where is each person on that scale? We want to constantly control our lives, we strive for order, security, and safety. This strife can be culturally bound as well – cultures in countries like Sweden, Japan, Germany and Denmark are more on the Order side of the scale. Nomadic nations live their lives in between Order and Chaos and that is ok. “Life is not a problem to be solved but a reality, which should be lived and experienced” Soren Kierkegaard.

At the far left end of the scale, at the complete Order, things are Static and do not change. But this is unrealistic – life does not work this way. We just said that everything moves and that things change all the time. “It is at the edge of chaos that creativity happens.” The natural status, the optimum one is between Order and Chaos. It is where creativity and self-organisation happen. Balance contains order, traditions, rituals, plus everything else that are the opposite of that.

How does Movement come to play with “the self”, when taking personal decisions?

“There is only one path. If you are afraid, there are a thousand paths”. The right path is only one, once you have decided on it and stopped being afraid, you can see it clearly. If you are afraid there are a thousand paths, but they are not the right one and you will just get more and more confused. If you strive for order, if you are afraid of what people will say, of being poor, of breaking the status quo, you will not get to where you are going.