Recently, I read an article in a political journal about self-actualization. It quickly became apparent that the author had no understanding of it. I mentioned this to friends, and they encouraged me to write this. So here we are.
I first heard the term “self-actualization” in high school. It is the peak of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. A teacher described it to me thus:
Self-actualization is when one’s rewards come internally; when external rewards are no longer sought or needed.
In truth, that is not self-actualization as envisioned by Maslow, but I took that to be the definition, so that was what I decided to pursue.
It is not surprising that I would choose such a goal. In my childhood, I was considerably brighter than almost everyone I knew. If this is not your experience, then there is something about it that you most likely do not know.
No one really likes smart people. They just say they do.
Humans need humans
As a child, I wanted and needed emotional support and approval — who doesn’t? — but I was never really to get it. Instead, I was taunted mercilessly, never allowed to play in any reindeer games.
Even my family either pushed me up onto a pedestal and bragged about me, or kicked me to the curb and shit on me. Usually in that order. There was no middle ground.
My grandmother slapped me more than once while yelling, “Don’t be precocious!” after I made some honest observation. It was a decade or more before I learned that precocious is not a derogatory term. It certainly was in her mouth.
Through most of my school years I played the fool in hopes of getting my schoolmates and others to like me. I was the class clown. It didn’t work. Oh, we got along alright, but I remained the outsider.
When I went to university, I finally found a group of peers: people as smart or smarter than I. But by then the damage was done, and I remained the outsider. Clown habits are hard to break. Worse, I was numbed up and often abrasive without realizing it.
And so it was that I learned to reward myself. I had little choice. It was that or surrender to the continual abuse and disdain of others.
To be clear: this abuse was rarely physical or even apparent. No, it was much more devious and devastating than that. It came regularly, most often when my guard was down, in the form of betrayal, often from those who I had trusted the most. It came every time I discovered that someone I loved was not really my friend, did not love me.
We all have such experiences, but for me they were continual. And unbearable.
There is no obvious moment when I first achieved self-actualization. Neither does it come all at once as a kind of satori, but fitfully, bit by bit.
One day I simply recognized that I had stopped seeking approval from others some time before. I still had friends and lovers. But I was secure: no longer driven by my needs and fears to seek their approval. I could, finally, walk away when necessary.
And if I discovered that someone I trusted was not my friend after all, well, that made me sad. But it did not make me question my own worth. Quite the reverse: it made me wonder what kind of person betrays the trust of others?
That was a wonderful experience: a sense of utter freedom. No more a slave!
Self-actualization is the visceral realization that one is complete. End of story.
Except, it is not, as it turns out, the end of the story. Rather, it is only the beginning.
Self-actualization is the end of infancy
Over time I have come to realize that self-actualization is to our emotional, psychological, intellectual, and moral selves what puberty is to our biological and physiological selves: the end of childhood.
As puberty is a time of transformation, rather than a single moment marked by menarche or one’s first ejaculation, so also is self-actualization a period of transition: a gradual dawning of understanding.
I am whole. I can meet my own needs, and those needs are far fewer than I once believed. How wonderful!
Now what?
Black belts also mark the end of infancy
I am reminded of something a martial arts expert once told me. He said, a black belt is not the mark of an expert. The black belt symbolizes mastery of the basics. It’s like completing pre-school. It is only then that true learning begins.
So it is with self-actualization. It is not the end state, but an essential first step on the road to that state.
What then is that end state? Where is this all leading?
Maslow didn’t stop at self-actualization
A few years ago I was discussing self-actualization with a friend and I realized that I’d never really gotten around to reading up on it. What exactly did Maslow mean by it?
I was shocked to discover that Maslow had based his ideas for self-actualization on men like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. He practically worshipped the idea of the “self-made” man. He was after power and wealth, not enlightenment.
What a disappointment! I’m very glad I didn’t find this out much earlier or I might have never achieved true self-actualization.
But I also learned something else quite shocking—to me, anyway. Later in life, Maslow realized that something existed beyond self-actualization. At this point I’d been thinking a similar thing for years, and had been acting on it, but had no awareness of Maslow’s views.
My goal was the emptying out of self. Or, as I often put it, Get over yourself! I called this effort the “way of emptiness”, in part because I got a kick out of saying that I was pursuing the “woe”.
In my personal experience, the realization that comes once the thrill of self-actualization wears off is this: so what? Yeah, I’m complete. Yeah, I don’t need the approval of others. Yeah, I can do whatever I want to do within my own limitations.
What do I do now?
The goal is to transcend the self
It was at this moment that I realized that I had transcended infancy and with it my obsession with self. To the infant, self is all that exists. The infant’s every effort is a desperate attempt to internalize the external: to bring the world into the self. For the infant, everything is me, me, ME.
But I was done with that now. What interested me was no longer “who am I?” After all, who cares? What I wanted to know is, “how can I help?” How can I use all these skills I’ve accumulated not to engage in some masturbatory fantasy of self-aggrandizement as I hoarded and wasted more resources than I could ever want or need, but to help others to actualize themselves, and in so doing, perhaps, to create some true connections?
How can I help to create a world of adults?
Because connections are what we all truly crave, and they can only be made between adults. One must be able to see outside oneself before one can see others.
To the infant, there is only self. Others do not exist.
To the adult, the self is irrelevant. Everything interesting is out there.
So it was with astonishment that I discovered that Maslow had, in his later years, posited a state beyond self-actualization. And in perfect keeping with my own discoveries, he called it self-transcendence.