M2: Self-improvement (08)
“The map of the self” integrates in a single framework “the 5 levels of the self” plus “the skeleton of the self”. This framework builds order and meaning to all meditation practices that build “self-awareness”, “self-knowledge”, and “self-management” in a three-movement process that we call “the path to consciousness”.
The second movement, which we call M2 from now forward, gives order, balance and quality to the self and keeps it open to flourish. This corresponds to the traditional self-management process. Nevertheless, we prefer to think about it as self-improvement as this is the key movement that will move us forward and will help us to:
· transcend our myriad of autopilot modes so freely choosing new ways of being and doing in a way that we become a better self, which is the same as a better being and a better doing;
· stay in an improved state of being and doing when we notice and care for everything that intervenes and everything that surrounds the self, the others with whom I interact, and all other life which participates even it is not present in the situation;
· manage who we are and offer it to others in fullness, with respect and with responsibility;
· grow a better human being in a way that we contribute to a better, more beautiful world while we reach a much fuller and more harmonious life experience.
This movement is about better knowing the self (or knowing yourself better) in order to know what works and what doesn’t work, what will manifest as helpful to move forward and what will manifest as a blockage that creates resistance or fully blocks us in that moving forward.
The process goes deeper regarding our M1 findings. It is about searching for the experiences (think them as data), transforming them into behavioral patterns (information) and create useful knowledge (action). It is about making yourself lots of questions which could bring some meaning and direction, build efficient habits and positive thoughts, and set the ground for a new life.
Of course, from a life perspective, this is a never-ending movement as change will keep coming and impacting us, so we better keep open receiving the new and the different. Nonstop learning like if we were constantly in beta.
Now, let’s take a look at the steps that will lead us towards self-improvement: self-order, self-balance, self-motivation, self-improvement, self-unblocking, and embodiment.
Self-order
In our visual game, our first step is about unpacking the “5 levels of the self” to check what is inside with more detail, find the important categories, and provide us with some order to reflect on them. We refer to this process as “self-order”. This is how it looks like when we do the unpacking and categories are not yet there.
Next, we will enounce one at a time but including all most important categories. We will call them “categories of the self”. At this point, it is important to note that this categorization comes from our own practice and that our invitation is to understand them from an experiential perspective and with their widest meaning.
· the situational experience (or how we relate to others and with ourselves) can be explored by understanding how much of our behavior comes from our relationship with money and sex, with nature and technology, with childhood and elderly, and with hierarchy and assembly. Of course, any situation will present itself with a mix of them so our behavior (our role) will be conditioned also by a mix of them.
· the mental experience (or the thinking that fills our mind) can be explored by understanding what the nature of thoughts is as they arise, being them rational or creative, memory or imagination, belief or expectation, known (fact) or unknown (uncertainty).
· the emotional experience (or those feelings that make us vibe) can be explored by understanding what the nature of the emotions is as they manifest from the perspective of a mix of the six basic emotions: sadness-joy, fear-ra ge, disgust-curiosity.
· the physical experience (or how it feels to have a body full of sensations) can be explored by understanding how we are doing regarding sleep and movement, feeding and hygiene, plus the five basic human senses.
· the energetic experience (or how the energy inside feels) can be explored by understanding how close and how open we are when interacting all around.
This is how the whole unfolding of the categories match in the different levels of the self.
Nowadays, some technologies can help us to “self-monitor” some categories of the self. Profiling the categories of the physical-self (like exercising, sleeping, eating or breathing) is becoming very popular. Some early attempts are also profiling some other categories of the emotional-self and the mental-self. Jointly, they can provide a numeric view of the self that we call “the quantitative self”. They can of help to self-manage as long as we do not rely solely on them and we keep on with all other key practices.
Obviously, everything we just pointed does not manifest to us separate in life. They mix, hybrid, order and group, both in the outside and in the inside. They evolve and somehow consolidate up to the level that we feel that they cannot change anymore. This is what we commonly refer as our boxes. Actually, they could be understood also as spider webs that receive and hold everything we do in a cumulative way. Or as boxes that set the boundaries of how we behave in life.
· “the lifestyle box” (or the “lifestyle spider web”) has five sides (or categories) as follows: family, hobbies, partner, work, and household. Most of what we do in life and how we spend our time consolidates into these categories.
· “the personality box” (or the “personality spider web”) is described by “The Big Five Model”. The theory states that personality can be boiled down to five core factors, known by the acronym OCEAN. Each letter matches with one side (or category) of our box: extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness.
Let us add some comments regarding “The Big Five Model”. Academics like Jordan B. Peterson state that this model is the most widely accepted personality theory held by psychologists nowadays. In addition, according to the best public information at hand, this is the model that the major technology companies use to catalog and classify us.
· “the bias box (or the “bias spider web”) represent all cognitive or emotional biases which potentially are limiting or conditioning us. Biases are systematic patterns of thinking and feeling that are common among most human beings.
Well known examples of biases are the “confirmation bias” (the tendency to listen more often to information that confirms our existing beliefs), the “anchoring bias” (the tendency to be overly influenced by the first piece of information that we are exposed to), “the actor-observer bias” (the tendency to attribute our actions to external influences and other people’s actions to internal ones) or the “availability heuristic” (the tendency to estimate the probability of something happening based on how many examples we remember). Even if scientist still don’t agree on their number and categorization, there are hundreds of them at work. Daniel Kahneman has made an outstanding work helping us understand how they fill decision making with irrationality.
Some biases can mix with specific situations and crystallize in “popular sayings” and “themes” (kind of “social biases”) to deepen confusion even more (like “more is better” or “money makes happiness”). Furthermore, they strongly contribute for what grows as “politically correct”.
Biases (along with popular sayings, themes, and the politically correct talk) distort thinking, influence beliefs, and sway the decisions and judgments that we make. They fully condition our perspective about reality and how we experience it. Big institutions use bias to their advantage to get people think and behave as it fits better to their interests. Tristan Harris (at The Center for Human Technology) does an extremely good job at highlighting how tech corporations squeeze out our bias for profit. Part of our automatic pilot comes from here in such a way that we could also call it as “remote control” automatic pilot.
The following drawing illustrates these boxes. We can also to think “the lifestyle box” as “the box outside”, while “the personality box” and “the bias box” are “the boxes inside”. All boxes group together in a concept that we will call “the boxes of the self”.
The boxes of the self are very important from different perspectives. They consolidate the latest version of who we are at any moment, representing the most visible, easiest face of how others perceive us. Perhaps also how we perceive ourselves. They set the ground for “the comfort zone”. Both, our own comfort zone and others’ comfort zone, which can result in conflict when change is not welcomed.
What is important it to recognize that their sides are usually strong and high as walls. And they protect us as much as they jail us. When so, we need to enter into “self-liberation” or “self-unblocking”.
The well-known “thinking out of the box”, when applied to the boxes of the self, is a key step to facilitate any moving forward and any improvement of the self. So, exploring our boxes should be a key step in our meditation practice.
As we introduced in self-knowledge, journaling is a key tool here, may it be unguided as in a conventional diary, partly guided by using prompts, or fully guided as the “The Self Authoring Suite” or the “Lifebook”. By the way, Jordan B. Peterson offers “Understanding Myself” as an easy and accessible personality self-assessment tool.
On the other hand, retreats designed with sharing activities (in small groups or around a circle) can be helpful to spontaneously reflect on the categories of the self and the boxes of the self. Intimate sharing, when done with full opening and exposing vulnerability, can eventually activate or trigger reactions. This could happen either when we share or when we listen the sharing of others. These reactions become the seed for further reflection and deeper self-knowledge. This is also at work when we intimately share with a therapist or with a beloved one. Of course, deep listening is key.
Self-balance
Eventually, we will enter into a “self-balance” process when practice reveal us that something inside feels unbalanced. Unbalance happens at the individual level of “the levels of the self”.
Maybe it manifests as a level stronger and bigger than all others.
Maybe hooked in the past (attachment), maybe fully attracted to the future (grasping).
Maybe too closed and blocking the new, maybe too open and preventing the grounding of the new.
These drawings serve as a summary illustration of the self-balance step.
Self-balance is about fully recognizing that our experience happens in the present moment, in the here and in the now. The past is gone, and the future is yet to come. The only thing that really matters is the present. This is the horizontal axis that supports self-balance.
Whatever comes from the past is simply information about the past, which we choose to accept or disregard. Whatever we anticipated about the future originated in the past, which we choose to accept or disregard. This “we choose to accept or disregard” matches with how closed we are (if we keep accepting what arises) and how open we are (if we choose to disregard what arises). This is the vertical axis for self-balance.
This self-balance is about being able to screen what is coming from “the categories of the self” and “the boxes of the self” when they manifest in the present moment. It is about cultivating freedom of choice for “staying with it” (we close) or “letting go” (we open) in the present moment. This is why sometimes we think that “thus and now” illustrates it better that the traditional “here and now”.
Self-balance comes when we fully master self-centeredness and are able to dance between focused attention and open awareness while remaining in the anchor of attention in the body. We could also understand it as a harmonic movement of the skeleton of the self, a skeleton of the self that opens and closes converging with the axes (like if it was breathing) and where the attitude is anchored at the point of intersection. We like to understand the fruits of self-balance as “presence with openness”, a deep sense of peace and serenity fully open to accept what is happening.
Practices that cultivate “self-compassion” and “gratitude” are key for self-balancing. These practices help us to move out of regret and resentment and into acceptance and gratitude. Regret and resentment happen to be a strong destabilizer of the present moment with thoughts like “Something happened in the past that should not have happened and that prevents me from being at peace now”, or “Something is happening now that shouldn’t be happening that is preventing me from being at peace now”, or “Something needs to happen in the future in order for me to be at peace now”.
Self-balance is the needed starting point for the next step forward.
Self-motivation
Self-motivation is about setting the inner landscape that will feed us with strength and direction to move forward into self-improvement. This landscape has two main elements: vision and values. The vision correlates with intention and impact; it is the why and the what for. The values correlate with attitude; it is the how.
“Envisioning” is key and it’s about building our own 360º “vision”. It is about imaging a better future we long for, a state where well-being is created, and suffering is relieved all around. A vision that embraces “in detail” both “create well-being and relieve suffering” is a strong vision that will permanently motivate ourselves from the inside as long as we keep it alive. A good practice about envisioning will contain the categories of the self and the boxes of the self, those specific elements which can be kept or that can be changed.
Complementing our vision are our “values”. Our values represent that which is worthy and valuable regarding how we live. We want to freely embrace those values that are important for us. By committing to act by those values as much as we can, we will be able to integrate them in our attitude.
When so, the vision and values will unfold into multiple intentions and attitudes while containing the seeds of multiple actions and impacts. Sometimes, we illustrate this inner landscape as a large meadow of flowers and bees to be tended and cultivated.
In our conceptual framework, envisioning and values mainly happens at “the skeleton of the self” when we are able to practice on the following issues:
· unpacking attention, intention and impact in order to move from “oneness” to “wholeness”;
· unpacking attitude in order to move from “unconscious values” into “freely chosen values”;
Moving from oneness to wholeness means transcending the oneness of the self and expand it to embrace the interconnectedness of everything. This is about bringing “triple-win” into the center of our being and doing by incorporating the wholeness into the scope of my attention, my intention, and my impact:
· the self, now or in the future;
· the other or the others which whom I interact with (“the small other”), now or in the future;
· whatever other life that is not present (“the big other”), now or in the future”
A drawing that helps to understand this would include the following table by the side of attention, intention, and impact of “the skeleton of the self”.
However, for the sake of simplicity, we will draw these unpacking by adding a superscript number “3x2” on top of the words, like this: “attention3x2”, “intention3x2”, and “impact3x2“.
Of course, “aligning” our desired vision and our freely chosen values is a key element of the process as it sets the new motivational framework that will drive us forward.
Journaling practices such as “Discovering the Ideal Future”, “Letter from Old Age”, “Letter from the Deathbed”, “The Obituary Challenge” or “Entering the Field of the Future” (by Otto Scharmer) help in this envisioning process. Guided meditations, like “Remembering Motivation” and “Positive Future”, and anchors of intention (be it notes, quotes or micro-situations) help to keep it alive. Also, practices about value recognition in others, being family members or public people, greatly contribute. Also, the already mentioned “The Self Authoring Suite” and “Lifebook” proposals. Rituals where there is declaration or demonstration of the new vision with the freely chosen values are also a great tool. From our own experience, the more we enter into details and the more coherence we find among them, the more powerful and transformative will be the envisioning exercises and rituals.
Self-improvement
The next step is “self-improvement”. We like to call it the same as M2 to highlight its importance. This is the process of bringing quality into the self and all its elements. By “quality of the self”, we broadly mean to align the self towards the context of our envisioning, which revolves around creating well-being and relieving suffering. This is when we put action at the service of our vision and our values, which is the same as putting action at the service of our attention3x2, our intention3x2, and or impact3x2 using the ways of our attitude. Or if we turn it around, this is about putting our attention3x2, our intention3x2, our attitude and or impact3x2 at the service of our actions in the world. It works both directions. This is part of the beauty of the triangles in the skeleton of the self.
At this point, we will have plenty of elements to cultivate by acquiring the new that better matches our vision and values:
· new skills and new knowledge;
· new habits and routines;
· new practices;
· new behaviors;
· new relationships.
One key step in this process is to master “system 1” and “system 2” as introduced by Daniel Kahneman and covered by cognitive science. System 1 is our automatic, effortless thinking and behavioral process, sometimes also referred as fast-thinking or emotional response. System 2 is our deliberate, effortful, intentional thinking and behavioral process, also referred as slow-thinking or rational thinking. What begins as a system 2 process eventually becomes the domain of system 1. Commonly, our system 2 is not available in a crisis and all we have are the things that have become automatic system 1. We ultimately are looking forward two skills:
· to update our automatic pilot system (or system 1) to incorporate everything that will contribute to living our vision and values;
· to have access on demand to our rational system (system 2) to change, correct, or finetune whatever deviates in system 1 from our vision and values.
Another key step is to train “empathy” and “compassion”. It helps a lot to broaden the actual meaning of compassion as Buddhist psychology understand it in the context of “the four limitless virtues”: compassion, loving-kindness, joy, and equanimity all include each other. So, the key step is to train how we approach and relate with “the small other” and with “the big other” with compassion, loving-kindness, joy and equanimity.
Our main tool here are the “4Ps” of meditation: practice, practice, practice with patience. There is no shortcut or alternative route. We rely on the full power of neuroplasticity and memory reconsolidation in our brains.
Key mindfulness practices are “the loving-kindness practice”, “the compassion practice” and “the gratitude practice”. Also, when struggles arise, “the self-compassion” practice and “the resilience practice”. A practice like “the tonglen meditation” (Tibetan tradition) could help us go deeper. On the other hand, methodologies for behavioral change, like “Tiny Habits” by B.J. Fogg or “Atomic Habits” by James Clear, can result of help to may it easy what could otherwise look like a game of willpower and discipline.
We draw self-improvement, which means reaching “quality of the self”, by painting green the upper triangle and by retrieving the words automatic pilot, but now in between attention and action.
Self-sacrificing and self-unblocking
Often, we need to clear the old, or make room for the new, or create space for whatever could come. This can be one of the most difficult steps in the whole process. Letting go what is not anymore aligned with our vision and values could result in big changes, notoriously big when they imply the boxes of the self. This “self-sacrificing” step is a fundamental but a difficult part of self-improvement.
The ground of self-unblocking is moving from “self-limiting” categories into “life-expanding” categories. Additionally, self-unblocking is about clearing “competing commitments”: categories or movements of categories in opposition. They manifest when there are two (or more) conflicting goals simultaneously.
This “self-unblocking” step is especially key when there is a will to change which finds an important inside opposition to change. If this happens, the key exploration is to understand the (hidden) intentions of the part inside that resist to change and is blocking us with an inner narrative of self-criticism and self-sabotage. The list of some common hidden intentions inside that prevent change and that should be the focus of our exploration, as introduced by Tim Desmond, are maintaining connection and protecting a relationship; maintaining the illusion of control and avoiding responsibility for life; and maintaining fairness.
Self-unblocking is also about “resilience”. Lots of situations could happen that will manifest as setbacks and failures in our way towards our vision. We need the skill to reframe those situations and overcome them with a learning approach. Embracing a perspective like “sometimes you win and sometimes you learn” (instead of the more classical “sometimes you win and sometimes you lose”) fully illustrates resilience.
Journaling as well as mindfulness practices like “the self-compassion practice”, “the resilience practice” and “the gratitude practice” can and will help a lot with this self-sacrificing and self-unblockage steps. When difficulties about changes in lifestyle, exploration of perspectives like “minimalism” and “slow-life” could open for alternatives. The “feeding your demons” practice (Tibetan tradition) could also help if we need to go deeper. Nevertheless, when deep blockage occurs, therapy is a way.
We draw self-sacrificing and self-unblocking by redrawing the boxes of the self with thinner, discontinuous lines, adding lightness and openness; and by writing the categories of the lifestyle box inside the pentagon, manifesting that it is we who freely chose them.
Embodiment
The last step of this movement is embodiment. This step occurs when we are able to propagate “the quality of the self” to all actions (and interactions) in which we are involved. The broader the spectrum of actions, the better. The highest quality will happen when all actions are aligned with our vision and values.
Embodiment is also about consolidating the witness perspective about ourselves and broadening it to include “to the small other” and “the big other” in such a way that we witness the self as one part of the whole. It is like moving from a perspective that is borderline of the map to a perspective that watches the map, the paper that holds the map, the hand that holds the paper, and all other hands holding their own papers. In our framework, it means to add consciousness, or awareness, to the stream of experiences we had before:
· grow from situational experience towards having a situational awareness;
· grow from mental experience towards having a mental awareness;
· grow from emotional experience towards having an emotional awareness;
· grow from physical experience towards having physical awareness;
· grow from energetic experience towards having energetic awareness;
This embodiment can be summarized in a more generic movement: growing from experiential to awareness, or from experiential to consciousness. Instead of getting identified with everything that happens to you or observing it as an experience that happens to you, you choose and practice to observe it as an experience that happen to the whole: the self, the small other and the big other.
We draw this propagation by adding the superscript letter “n” on top of the action word (like “actionn”) and by painting the lower triangle green. Also, the moving from experiential to awareness is captured by replacing the words in the 5 levels of the self.
On the hand, embodiment also manifests as a clear recognition of the purpose. Until embodiment happens, any purpose felt fragile and elusive. When embodiment happens, the purpose becomes strong and clear.
As we introduced before, vision creates intention which correlates with the why; impact correlates with the what for; and values become the attitude which correlates with the how. Now, we add the correlation between action and the what. When putting them in order, we have intention-why, attitude-how, action-what, and impact-what for. These, in our understanding, is the better way to introduce “purpose” in our conceptual framework, a full alignment of intention>attitude>action>impact which fully respond to the questions why>how>what>what for.
A strong and clear purpose has several manifestations:
· an “emotional fine-tuning” happens between the emotional self and the purpose. The basic emotions (as we introduced them: joy-sadness, rage-fear, and curiosity-disgust) respond in relation to whether our experience is contributing to our purpose (positive valence) or is walking us away from our purpose (negative valence).
· some specific actions result in a sustained and calmed positive valence of our emotional awareness (joy-rage-curiosity). We recognize those actions as “gifts” and that emotional state as “passion”.
· we feel always “welcomed” by others almost spontaneously and either they offer help, or they let us keep going. Very rarely they manifest resistance.
· we experience life as serving “the greater good” (or the wholeness).
· a strong sense of “meaning” happens.
A drawing that would capture this would pair intention, attitude, action, and impact with the questions that fully convey their meaning: why, how, what, and what for. Additionally, it would highlight the finding of the purpose happens in the aggregation of them four and the fact that it is attention that oversees them all. It would look like this:
However, for the sake of simplicity, we will draw all these by coloring green all five words of “the skeleton of the self”:
When this M2 movement consolidates and we embody all the changes that brings, from a safe distance, we know and manage with easiness the self and all its the elements. We experience “self-consciousness” as the integration of all the movement. Life becomes a flow where we “actually” serve our purpose and each step forward gets us closer to our vision with quality, creating well-being and relieving suffering in the wholeness: the self, the small other, and the big other. Somehow, this process has strong parallels with traditional religions regarding the main purpose of life. Maybe we could understand serving the wholeness with quality as serving God.
This last image summarizes graphically all the ordering, envisioning, superscripting, and painting that fully builds self-improvement and self-consciousness, setting the stage for the next movement “M3. Expand, aggregate and spread”.
Next chapter: M3: Spreading (09)