INTEGRITY OF LIFE

A motiveless passion for understanding.

I wonder why people all over the world lack true passion? They crave power, influence, various entertainments from sex to religion; They also have other forms of lust. But, apparently, very few have this deep passion aimed at understanding the entire process of life and not allowing the fullness of their energy to be wasted only on fragmentary activities. The bank manager has a great interest in banking, and the artist or scientist is devoted to his own special interests, but what is apparently rarer is a sustained, powerful passion directed toward understanding the wholeness of life.

In exploring the question of what a holistic understanding of life, love and death is, we will need not only our intellectual abilities and strength of feeling - we will need something much more: the enormous energy that only true passion can provide. Since we are faced with a huge problem, very complex, subtle and very deep, we must devote our whole attention to it - which, after all, is passion - in order to find out for ourselves, to see whether there is a way of living completely different from the way we live now. To understand this, several questions should be considered, the process of consciousness, both the surface and deep levels of our mind should be examined, and the nature, the essence of order should be explored; not only externally, in society, but also within oneself.

One should find out the meaning of life, not just inventing a meaning for it, but finding out, considering what it means to live. We should also delve deeply into the question of what love is and what it means to die. All this must be explored both in consciousness and in the deep, secret recesses of one’s own mind. Man must ask what order means, what it means to live; we must ask whether a person can live a life of all-encompassing love, compassion and tenderness. You should also find out for yourself the meaning of that extraordinary thing that is called death.

All these are not scraps, not fragments, but a single movement, the integrity of life. We will not be able to understand anything if we divide this movement into life, love and death - it is a single flow. To understand this whole process requires energy, not only intellectual energy, but the energy of strong feeling, including the motiveless passion that constantly burns within a person. And since our minds are fragmented, it is necessary to delve into the question of conscious and unconscious, for Here All divisions begin into “I” and “not-I”, into “you” and “I”, into “we” and “they”. As long as these divisions exist - national, family or religious, with their individual possessive dependencies - the fragmentation of life is inevitable. There will be everyday life with its boredom and routine, there will be what we call love, permeated with jealousy and possessiveness, dependence and superiority, there will be fear and the inevitability of death. Can we look into this question seriously, not just theoretically, or at the level of words, but really explore it, observing it all in ourselves and asking why there is this fragmentation that creates so much suffering, confusion and contradiction?

It is easy to see in oneself the activity of the superficial mind, with its worries about daily bread, with its technological, scientific, acquisitive knowledge. We observe how we compete with each other at work, we observe the surface processes in our own minds. But there are hidden corners that we have never explored before; we don't even know how to conduct such research. If we want to illuminate them with the light of clarity and understanding, we either read books that describe these moments to us, or go to see a psychoanalyst or go to a philosopher. We ourselves do not know how to look at them; Although we are able to observe the external, superficial activity of the mind, we are clearly not able to look into that deep, that secret cave in which everything of the past is hidden. Can the conscious mind, with its positive desires and claims, penetrate into the deeper levels of its own being? I don't know if you have tried it, but if you have tried it, and done it persistently and seriously enough, you may have discovered a huge layer of the past, racial conditioning, religious indoctrination, barriers, divisions; it's all hidden there. The apparent randomness of opinions comes from these past accumulations, which are essentially based on old knowledge and experience of the past, with their various forms of inferences and opinions. Can the mind observe all this, understand it and rise above it, go beyond it, so that there is no division at all?

This is important because we are conditioned to view life in a fragmented way. And while this fragmentation continues, there is a need for self-fulfillment: the “I” longs to fulfill itself, to achieve, to compete, the “I” longs to satisfy its ambition. It is this fragmentation of life that forces us to be both individualistic and collectivist, that forces us to be self-preoccupied egoists, striving to merge with something larger, but in such a way as to remain separate. It is this deep split in consciousness, in the entire structure and nature of our being, that is responsible for the split and fragmentation in our activities, in our thoughts, in our feelings. Therefore, we separate life and what is called love and death.

Is it possible to observe the movement of the past, which is unconscious? - if you can use the word “unconscious” without giving it any special psychoanalytic meaning. The deep unconscious is the past, and we act based on it. So there is a division into past, present and future - that is, time.

All this may sound quite complicated, but it is not; everything becomes clearer if you look inside yourself, watch yourself in action, watch the work of your opinions, your thoughts, your conclusions. When you look at yourself critically, you can see that your actions are based on some past conclusion, formula or stereotype that projects itself into the future as an ideal, and you act in accordance with that ideal. So the past always acts together with its motives, conclusions, formulas and recipes; the mind and heart are overloaded with memories that shape our lives, introducing fragmentation into it.

One may ask, is the conscious mind capable of looking into the subconscious so completely that all its contents, which are past, become clear? It requires a capacity for criticism, not self-righteous criticism, it requires one to observe. If a person is truly alert, this division, this split in the integrity of consciousness ceases. Such an awakened state is only possible when there is critical self-awareness, free of judgment.

To observe is to be critical; to be critical not in the sense of using criticism based on assessments and opinions, but to be critically vigilant. But if this criticality is personal, weighed down by fear or some form of prejudice, it ceases to be truly critical and becomes simply fragmentation.

What interests us now is understanding the entire process, the entire integrity of life, not just its individual fragment. We do not ask what we should do with some particular problem, say, with social activity, regardless of the unified process of life; we are trying to find out what the understanding of reality includes, whether this reality, immensity, eternity exists. It is this holistic, total perception - not fragmented perception - that is the subject of our interest. Such an understanding of the entire movement of life as a single integral action is possible only when our own concepts, principles, ideas and such splits and divisions as the division into “I” and “not-I” disappear from our entire consciousness. If this is clear - and I hope it is - then we can move on to find out what it means to live.

We are accustomed to consider life a positive act: doing, thinking, trouble, conflict, fear, sadness, sin and feel guilty, making ambitious plans, fighting, competing with others, craving pleasure and success. This is all we call life. This is our life, with its rare moments of joy, compassion without any motive and generosity without any conditions. There are, of course, individual moments of ecstasy and bliss that have no past or future. But going to work, irritation, hatred, contempt, hostility - this is what we call everyday life, and we consider it an unusually positive phenomenon.

The negation of the positive is the truly positive. To reject this so-called life, which is characterized by ugliness, loneliness, fear, the cruelty of violence, to reject it, without imagining that you know any other life, this is the most positive action. We understand each other? Look, the highest morality is a complete negation of traditional morality, because what we call public, respectable morality is extremely immoral - we compete with each other, we are greedy, we are envious, everyone strives to act in their own way and only for themselves - you yourself know how we behave. We call this public morality, and religious people talk about a different kind of morality - but their whole life, their position in life, the hierarchical structure of the religious organization and faith are immoral. Rejecting does not mean reacting, because when you react, it is just another form of splitting through your own resistance. But when you reject it because you have understood it, that is the highest form of morality.

And in the same way, rejecting the morality of society, rejecting the way we live - our small, petty lives, our empty and superficial thinking and existence, the satisfaction on a superficial level that accumulated things give us - rejecting everything not as a reaction , but simply seeing the extreme stupidity and destructive nature of this way of life - rejecting all this means living. Seeing the false as false is seeing the truth.

Then what is love? Is love a pleasure? Is love a desire? Is it attachment, dependence, possession and dominion over the object of love? Are these words of love: “This is mine, not yours, my property, my sexual rights,” based on jealousy, hatred, irritation, violence? Moreover, love was divided into higher and lower according to religious conditioning; so is all this love? Can you love and be ambitious at the same time? Can you love your husband and can he say he loves you if he is ambitious? Can there be love where there is competition and the race for success?

To reject all this, and not only intellectually or verbally, but to really destroy it in yourself and in your life, to never feel jealousy or envy, never to compete with anyone, not to harbor ambitious plans - to reject all this - this is undoubtedly and there is love. These two modes of behavior cannot be combined with each other. A man who is jealous, like a woman who dominates, suppresses, both do not know what love is; they can talk about love, they can sleep with each other, possess each other, rely and count on each other for their comfort, security, in dealing with the fear of loneliness - but all this is definitely not love. If people who say they love their children really loved them, would there be wars? Would there be a division into nationalities, these divisions and separations? What we call love is torture, a source of despair, a feeling of guilt. Such love is usually identified with sexual pleasure. We are not puritans, we are not bigots, we are not saying that there should be no pleasure. When you look at a cloud, at the sky, at a beautiful face, you experience pleasure. When you look at a flower, there is a beauty of it - we don't deny the beauty. Beauty is not the pleasure of thought, but it is thought that binds pleasure to beauty.

In the same way, when we love and have sexual relations, thought attaches pleasure to sex, an image of what was experienced, a repetition of it in the future. In this repetition there is a pleasure that is not beauty. Beauty, tenderness and love do not exclude sex. But now that everything is permissible and society seems to have discovered sex for the first time, sex has become overly important. Apparently, nowadays it is sex that seems to be the only salvation, the only freedom; In all other respects, a person is pushed around, intimidated, he is subjected to intellectual and emotional violence, he is everywhere a slave, ruined, destroyed, and the only time when he can be free is during sex. In such freedom he finds a certain joy, and a person wants a repetition of this joy. We watch all this - and where is the love? Only a mind and heart full of love are able to see the whole movement of life. Then a person with such love, no matter what he does, is moral, kind, and what he does is beautiful.

And how order will come into all this - realizing that our lives are so confused, so disorderly. We all want order, not only in our home, where we give every thing its proper place, but also outside it, in a society where monstrous social injustice reigns. We also want order inside, there must be order - deep, mathematical order. Is it possible to bring such order by fitting everything into a template that we consider order? Then, comparing reality with such a model, we inevitably come to conflict. Isn't this conflict the same disorder that cannot be a virtue? When the mind tries hard to be virtuous, moral and ethical, it resists - and in that very conflict there is disorder. Virtue is the very basis of order, although this word sounds old-fashioned in the modern world. This virtue is not generated by the conflict of thought, it comes only when you observe this disorder critically, with an awakened mind, understanding yourself. Then there is complete order, order in its highest form - in the form of virtue. All this is possible only when love is present.

There is also the question of death, which we carefully push aside, as connected with something that should happen in the future, in fifty years or tomorrow. We are afraid of the coming of the end, the physical completion, which takes away from us all the savings we have earned, what we have experienced, our wife, husband, house, furniture, kindergarten, books, poems that we have written or those that we hope to write. We are afraid to let it all go, because we ourselves are this furniture, these pictures - all that we have; if we have the ability to play the violin, we are also a violin. Because of our self-identification with all these things, we ourselves are them and nothing but them. Have you looked at it from this angle? You are the house with its shutters, bedroom, furniture, which you have taken care of over the years - you are all of this. If you take all this away, you are nothing.

And that's what you fear most: being nothing. Isn't it strange that you devote forty years of your life to going to work every day - and when you stop, your heart begins to hurt and you die? You are this service, all these folders, you are the manager, the clerk or whatever, you are all this and nothing else. And you also have many ideas about God, about virtue, about truth, about what society should be like - and that's all. It `s so sad. It is very sad to realize that you are exactly this, but what is even sadder is that you do not realize it. To see all this, to understand the meaning of it, means to die.

Death is inevitable, all organisms must come to an end. But we are afraid to let the past go. We are the past, we are time, sorrow, suffering, with rare glimpses of beauty, the flowering of virtue or deep tenderness - and all these glimpses are fleeting, there is no permanence in them. And fearing death, we ask: “Will I live again?”, that is, will there be a continuation of the battle, the conflict, the suffering, the possession of things, the accumulation of experience? The entire East believes in reincarnation, the reincarnation of souls. What you are - confusion, chaos and confusion - you want to see born again. Reincarnation also implies that we will be reborn in another life; What matters is what you do now, today, not how you are going to live when you are born in the next life - if there is one. If you are to be born again, it is how you live today that matters, for it is today that either the seeds of beauty or the seeds of sorrow are sown. But those who believe so fervently in reincarnation do not know how to behave; if they cared about behavior, they would not be concerned about what will happen, for virtue is attention to the present.

Death is part of life. You cannot love unless you die, die to everything that is not love, die to all the ideals that are a projection of your own needs, die to everything past, everything experienced; Only in such death will you learn the meaning of love, you will learn the meaning of life. Living, loving and dying are the same thing, this is a holistic, complete life, life in the present. Then there is a non-contradictory action that does not give rise to pain and suffering, and then life, love and death are action. This action is order. If a person lives exactly like this - and he should live like this, and not in rare moments, but every day, every minute - then we will have social order and the unity of people, and in the place of politicians with their personal ambitions and their conditioning in Governments will be run by computers. So, to live means to love and die.

Conversation participant: Is it possible to become free immediately and live without conflict? - or does it take time to release?

Krishnamurti: Is it possible to live without the past immediately, instantly - or will it take time to get rid of the past? Does it take time to get rid of the past, and does time prevent you from starting to live immediately? This is exactly the question. The past is like a secret cave - or a wine cellar, where you store your wine, if you have any. So does it take time to free yourself from this past? What does the need to spend time to which we are accustomed imply? I tell myself, “It will take time for me to become virtuous through daily practice. I will get rid of my hatred, my tendency to violence, gradually, slowly”; This is what we are used to, our conditioning, upbringing. So we ask ourselves, is it possible to drop time gradually? - which includes time. That is, being prone to violence, I say: “I will gradually get rid of this.” What does this mean - “gradually”, “step by step”? In the meantime, I continue to be prone to violence. The idea of ​​gradually eliminating violent tendencies is a form of hypocrisy. Obviously, if I'm violent, I can't get rid of it gradually, I have to end it immediately. Can I get rid of the psychological burden immediately? I can’t if I accept the idea of ​​gradually freeing myself from the past. What is important is to see the fact as it is now, without any distortion. If I am jealous and envious, I should see it completely, with a holistic observation, not a partial one. I look at my jealousy - why am I jealous? Because I am alone - the person I depended on and relied on so much abandoned me, and suddenly I found myself face to face with my emptiness, with my isolation, I am afraid of this and therefore I am counting on you. And if you turn away from me, I get angry, I get jealous. The real fact is my loneliness and my need for communication and close relationships, the need for someone who will not only cook dinner for me, create comfort for me, provide me with sexual and other pleasures, but also, most importantly, save me from loneliness. That's why I'm jealous. Can I understand this loneliness instantly? I can understand it only if I observe it, do not run away from it, if I am able to look at it, observe it critically, with an awakened mind, without looking for excuses and without trying to fill the void or find a new companion. To observe and consider this requires freedom, and when there is such freedom to observe, I am free from jealousy. So perception, total observation of jealousy and freedom from jealousy is not a matter of time, but something that is given by full attention, critical awareness, choiceless and instantaneous observation of everything that happens as it arises. Then there is freedom - not in the future, but now - freedom from what we call jealousy.

This applies equally to violence, to anger, and to any other habit, be it smoking, drinking or sexual habits. If we watch our habits carefully and do so with all our minds and all our hearts, we become consciously aware of their entire content; then there is freedom. Once such awareness is in effect, it becomes possible to instantly and completely observe whatever arises in the mind - anger, jealousy, aggressiveness, cruelty, ambiguity, hostility. In this there is freedom, and what was, ceases to be. So the past cannot disappear gradually. Time is not the path to freedom. Isn't the idea of ​​gradualism a form of laziness, an inability to deal with the past immediately, at the very moment of its occurrence? When you have this amazing ability to observe clearly what appears, and when you give your mind and your heart completely to observing it, the past disappears.

So, time and thought do not stop the past, since time and thought are the past.

Conversation participant: Is thought a movement of the mind? Is awareness an action of the silent mind?

Krishnamurti: As we have already said, thought is the response of memory, which, like a computer, absorbs any type of information. When you ask the computer, it responds only with what is stored in its memory. In the same way, the mind, the brain are the storehouse of the past, memory. When the mind is challenged, it responds with a thought according to its knowledge, its experience, its conditioning and so on. So thought is movement, or rather part of the movement of the mind and brain. The questioner wants to know whether awareness is silence, silence of the mind. Can you observe anything: a tree, your wife, your neighbor, a politician, a priest or a beautiful face without any movement of the mind? The image of your wife, your husband, your neighbor, the memory of grief, of pleasure - all this interferes with observation, doesn’t it? And when there is an intervention of some kind of image, subtle or obvious, there is no longer observation, there is no real full awareness, there is only partial awareness. For clear observation there should be no images between the observer and the observed. When you look at a tree, can you look at it in such a way that there is no knowledge of the tree in botany terms, no knowledge of your own pleasure, no desire for the tree? Can you see a tree so completely that the space between you, the observer, and the thing being observed disappears? This does not mean that you become a tree! But when space disappears, the observer also disappears - only what is observed remains. In such observation there is a perception with an unusually vivid and vivid vision of the color, shape and beauty of foliage and trunk; when there is no center of self that observes, you come into intimate contact with what you observe.

There is a movement of thought as part of the brain and mind necessary when responding verbally to a challenge. But to discover something new, unknown, this intense attention without any movement is necessary. There is nothing mystical or occult about this, something that you have to practice year after year - it is all pure nonsense. This kind of attention occurs when - between two thoughts - you observe.

Do you know how man discovered jet propulsion? How did this happen? He knew everything there was to know about internal combustion engines - but he was looking for some other way. To look you must be silent; if you carry around with you all the knowledge about the internal combustion engine, you will only find what you already know. The known must sleep in peace - then you will discover something new. In the same way, to see your wife, your husband, a tree, your neighbor, the whole social order, which is a complete disorder, you must silently find a new way of looking, and therefore a new way of living and acting,

Conversation participant: How can we find the strength to live without theories and ideals?

Krishnamurti: Where do you get the strength to live with them? Where do you get this extraordinary energy to live according to recipes, to live with formulas, with ideals, with theories? You live according to recipes - where do you get the strength to do this? These forces are wasted in conflict. The ideal is there, you are here, and you are trying to live up to that ideal. Therefore, there is discord and conflict, and therefore a loss of energy. So when you see how energy is lost, when you see the absurdity of ideals, formulas, concepts responsible for constant conflict, when you see all this, you have the strength to live without all this. Then there is an abundance of energy because the loss of energy through conflict has stopped. But look, we are afraid to live like this because of our conditioning. And we, along with others, agree with this set of recipes and ideas. We live by them - and we accept conflict as a way of life. But when we see all this not at the level of words, not theoretically, not intellectually, but feel with our whole being the absurdity of this way of life, then we have an excess of energy that appears in the absence of any conflict. Then there is only the fact - and nothing but the fact itself. There is a fact that you are greedy - not the ideal that you should not be greedy, that would be a waste of energy, but the fact that you are greedy, acquisitive, possessive and dominating. This alone is a fact, and when you give your full attention to this fact, you have the energy to get rid of it, and therefore you can live freely, without any ideals, without any principles, without any beliefs. And this is love and death for the entire past.

From the book Thresholds of Dreaming author Ksendzyuk Alexey Petrovich

From the book The Phenomenon of Man author de Chardin Pierre Teilhard

From the book Monism as a principle of dialectical logic author Naumenko L K

2. MATTER AS INTEGRITY Until now, we have considered matter “in itself,” that is, in its qualities at any volume, as if we could separate one fragment from it and study this sample apart from everything else. The time has come to notice that this technique is completely

From the book Phenomenology of Spirit author Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich

4. Form as integrity. Interpretation Aristotle also considers Form from the angle of teleology - as an internal goal, “entelechy”. There can be no two opinions in assessing this concept of Aristotle: here we have before us an objective idealist, replacing natural

From the book Think About It author Jiddu Krishnamurti

3. The moral world as infinity or integrity Thus, universal moral essences are substance as universal and substance as individual consciousness; their universal reality is the people and the family, and their natural selfhood and active individuality

From the book Nostalgia for the Origins by Eliade Mircea

6. Integrity of life Most of the time we become attached to one part of life and think that thanks to this part we will discover the whole. Without leaving the room, we hope to explore the entire length and breadth of the river and see the wealth of green pastures along its banks. We live in

From the book Myths, Dreams, Mysteries by Eliade Mircea

Primordiality and integrity In conclusion, we should touch very briefly on the role of cosmogonic myth in an archaic society not yet affected by cultural influences. The myth reveals the religious thought of the Dayaks in all its depth and complexity. As we have seen,

From the book Open to the Source by Harding Douglas

Androgyny and Integrity We can put forward another hypothesis to explain the absence of hierogamy in archaic religions, which is that the highest Beings were hermaphrodites, both male and female, both heavenly and earthly. In this case

From the book The Russian Idea: A Different Vision of Man by Thomas Shpidlik

41 WHOLENESS This vast self-aware emptiness that I find here is not just empty. It is empty to be filled. In an absolute sense, there is no one and nothing outside it. In fact, I am not healthy..., not quite normal, not fully “here”, not whole until I become Whole. Saying

From the book Philosophy. Book three. Metaphysics author Jaspers Karl Theodor

From the book Understanding Processes author Tevosyan Mikhail

5. I myself as a process and as an integrity - Since falling away and ascent as a process resides in temporary existence, then I, if I deviate from the process into the peace of existence and remain, however, in temporary existence, thereby I already find myself, however,

From the book Philosophical Dictionary author Comte-Sponville Andre

Chapter 37 Integrity of social space. Lifestyle as a reflection of harmony A horse is unhappy when it cannot run fast, and not when it cannot crow, a dog is unhappy when it loses its sense of smell, and not when it cannot fly. A person must be unhappy when

From the book Quantum Mind [The line between physics and psychology] author Mindell Arnold

Wholeness (Totalit?) All elements of any set, considered as a kind of unity. For Kant, integrity is one of three categories of quantity, defined through the other two, which are also united by it: integrity is the unity of plurality. In that

From the book Philosophy of Law [Lecture Course] author Moiseev Sergey Vadimovich

Bohm's Unbroken Integrity If signals cannot travel faster than light, then how are quantum objects connected? This question gave rise to many hypotheses, including the interpretation of quantum mechanics proposed by Everett and DeWitt in terms of

From the author's book

Wholeness and Symmetry Jung used symmetrical figures called mandalas to describe human wholeness. He envisioned psychological wholeness in a three-dimensional sense, without time or process, as equanimity or unity at any given moment

From the author's book

R. Dworkin: Law as Integrity The most famous modern proponent of natural law is the American philosopher Ronald Dworkin (b. 1931), author of many books, for example, “Taking Rights Seriously” (1976) and “Empire of Law” (1986). R. Dvorkin, who had a great

When we describe a bad day, we often use the phrase “I’m a mess today.” Sometimes the disassembled state lasts too long to ignore. Personal life collapses against the backdrop of career achievements, and dreams of a perfect body lead away from connection with the real world. Life is a bright puzzle. To fold it completely means to achieve the integrity of one’s own “I”. Sometimes details have to be carefully and painstakingly turned out by hand, but this is the only way to know yourself.

What is Personal Integrity?

Personal integrity is an internal balance, which is manifested by the fact that a person says, thinks, does and feels in the same direction. Integrity is not a result, but a process. It includes upbringing, personal life, professional growth, social circle, dreams and goals. All these components are the blades on an airplane propeller.

As soon as one breaks down, life begins to take strange turns. An accident does not happen, but the plane loses altitude, goes into standby mode, or even goes to an alternate airfield. It is important to track the moment of the fall and understand how to fix your life. Don't start another one, don't break yourself, don't look for the mythical missing half. Become one with yourself.

When you think about self, the eyes, against their will, begin to snatch out the names of useful articles. Many begin with the words “how to get rid of” or “how to avoid.” Yeah, the reader thinks, that means I have something extra and it needs to be cut off as unnecessary. But you immediately come across those that begin with the words: “how to find your soul mate” or “how to get it.” The reader is perplexed: So, am I already missing something there? So sculpt or cut? It’s worth doing both, but with a sense of awareness.

Mindfulness today has become not just a popular topic, but also a meeting place. Why does it affect our personality so much? Awareness helps answer the question at every moment of life: who am I? where am I going? how and why am I going? It is especially useful to seek answers in moments when you feel an internal imbalance. After all, it is precisely this that leads to the loss of integrity. Practices help to achieve awareness.

Listen to your body to love yourself

Thin hair, short legs, small eyes - we relish the list of shortcomings of our body, forgetting how much we owe to it. The degree of dissatisfaction with one's own body is directly related to feelings of happiness and self-esteem. The call to “love yourself” primarily concerns physicality. Maybe stop criticizing your body and start taking care of it. Here are a few tricks:

• Stand in front of the mirror, say out loud what you accept about yourself. Speak words of gratitude to every feature of your body.
• Think about what in your body upsets you. It's hard to say out loud, and sometimes it's just unbearable. Then write yourself a letter. In the letter, express your dissatisfaction with the imperfect parts of the body, then thank them for their service and give them a compliment.
• Listen to the signals your body sends you. Runny nose, aching joints - often emotional problems manifest themselves as painful sensations in the body. By tracking your headaches, you can get to the bottom of hidden feelings. Even permanent injuries do not just happen, they require a thorough internal investigation.

Recognize the right to “uncomfortable” emotions

Kindness is good. Anger is bad. Since childhood, we have been taught to divide feelings and emotions into good or bad, worthy or shameful. We cannot help but experience feelings, but we are ashamed of their manifestation, we do not admit it even to ourselves. We are afraid of losing control over ourselves, we worry about what others will say, we are afraid of the reciprocal manifestation of emotions. The partial list of feelings consists of 150 items. How many can you name offhand? How much do you allow yourself to appropriate? Write your own list without dividing into bad or good emotions. Think detachedly about each of the points to remember: it is feelings that make us alive.

Understand what really matters

We have been looking for motivation for years, waiting for inspiration or counting on a magical kick. We go to trainings in the hope that the presenter will share a revelation that will turn our lives 180 degrees. And only after that we will go to do what we dream of. We complain about the lack of talent, trying to find a real calling. In fact, we do what is important to us.

If we spend years delving into ourselves in search of childhood addictions, working at a job we don’t like, then it’s important for us to just delve into ourselves. If we set a goal for ourselves to go to the gym and don’t go there, then it’s important for us to set goals endlessly. The concept of “important” is directly related to life priorities. Before drawing a new scale of priorities, figure out how they are set now. Talk to yourself frankly. Where you are now will be the starting point in achieving a holistic personality.

Come to terms with your fears

We are accustomed to thinking that only small children are afraid. But fears grow up with us. Fear of abandonment, misunderstanding or rejection, fear of new relationships or their breakup, fear of aging and the greatest human fear is the fear of death. They constrain, interfere with life, and sometimes lead to constant anxiety or panic attacks. Fears have a clear purpose - to protect us from danger. Imaginary or real, although we often invent dangers for ourselves. There is no need to fight fear, you can negotiate with it.

One way is to imagine that the worst has already happened. Draw yourself the darkest picture of what happened with all the ensuing consequences. This picture will help you understand that you are much stronger than you think. Psychotherapists will tell you different relaxation techniques.

Deal with your own brakes

The integrity of the individual cannot be doubted. But external conditions change, which means that the components of one’s own “I” must be able to adapt to new living conditions. Without internal flexibility, a person divides the world only into white and black, calling it fate. She turns to face him - everything is fine, the world is kind, and her soul is filled with butterflies. But when fate turns out differently, everything collapses without a chance to improve the situation. Flexibility helps eliminate the main obstacle to achieving integrity - your own habits that interfere with your life.

What does it mean to find wholeness? Agree with yourself and throw away everything that is not yours. It’s like Michelangelo when creating a sculpture from a block: “discard everything unnecessary.” For some, cutting is easy, for others with great difficulty. Especially when “not mine” is in no hurry to be cut off. It’s worth doing this if only to understand: being yourself is an exciting activity.

What is self-concept

Self-concept is our idea of ​​ourselves, which is established in childhood and formed throughout life. At an early age, it depends more on external factors: assessments of parents, teachers, peers. In adult life, the concept is more based on one’s own ideas. Self-concept has nothing to do with social status, appearance, or achievements. This is a simple statement of fact: “I am, I have the right to be.”

Psychology defines the self-concept as a three-component concept:

• the person's beliefs;
• assessment and self-esteem;
• his behavior.

The self-concept is more often transmitted on a subconscious level. It rarely manifests itself only in words, but is clearly visible in actions, habits, behavior, intonation of voice and even in gait. This is a personal filter through which a person perceives the world around him. Although events and surroundings are neutral in themselves, a person finds in them everything that corresponds to his ideas.

The filter of one’s own “I” colors neutral events with emotions, gives meaning, and endows them with positive or negative characteristics. And if the difference between the idea of ​​oneself does not coincide with reality, this manifests itself in fears, anxiety, dissatisfaction with oneself or low self-esteem.

A person with a strong self-concept knows how to independently plan his life. A weak concept is also called childish, but it sometimes manifests itself throughout life. People with an immature understanding of their own “I” are too dependent on the opinions of others, they do not know how to make decisions, they are suggestible and constantly need other people’s approval. They do not know how to build their own boundaries or take into account others.

If you remove external support from their lives, their own world will collapse. After all, he has nothing else to rely on. The self-concept as a definition of a person’s personality was introduced by Sigmund Freud, but it is also popular in other variations. Nietzsche, Carl Jung and Abraham Maslow wrote about her.

A child’s idea of ​​one’s own “I” is not a death sentence. If psychologists are interested in it, it means that there are already lucky people who have coped with this problem.

How to repair your self-concept

Someone may have already found the answer to this question, but this is their own answer. Your answer is to find out from yourself and for yourself your own way of building a life. Life offers a surprising variety of self-discovery and meaning. Although, we feel less and less what happiness it is to simply live. We give joy a purely utilitarian character, investing meaning only in what brings pleasure. But you just have to experience something wonderful or create something useful in order to increase your own self-esteem or repair your self-concept.

Sometimes you want to take an ax, break everything and start putting together a new life. But it is impossible to obtain a new reality from old fragments. Integrity, self-concept, self-esteem - all this lives in the head. Instead of yearning for a life in which you are not, you should try to write your own book of life. Perhaps it will be so fascinating that it will take up a place on someone's shelf.

I often hear requests from clients in psychological sessions: “I want integrity and spontaneity..”

But what is personal integrity? And how possible is this?

Integrity is when a person is in contact with all parts of his personality, without alienating any of them. He hears them all. And gives each of its parts the right to vote.

Each quality in the human personality has its own polarity.
It's like the wave of a pendulum.

If there is a “+”, there will always be a “-”, and vice versa. And the higher the “+”, the more “-”.

For example, if you have good nature, then you can fall into rage, and in anger.
If you are capable of manifestations of sincerity generosity, then seizures greed you are also familiar.
If states are available to you euphoria and all-consuming love for the world, then in devastating depression you are capable of flying away with your head.

One cannot exist without the other. These are two poles of one wave.

We are all made up of a set of polarities. But we prefer to accept in ourselves only that which is worthy of being us.
The rest we are used to suppressing and “winning”.

A little exercise during the play :

Write down 5 qualities or parts of your personality, try to characterize yourself with five qualities.
Eat? Now find the polarity for each of them.
Get acquainted. It's you too :))

Artist: Alexi Zaitsev
The defeated part goes underground with a feeling of annihilation, and the winning part is left with a feeling of guilt. There are no winners in a war with yourself.

The repressed part likes to manifest itself in unexpected ways at the most inopportune times.

The famous psychotherapists Polsters describe the case of a guy working as a volunteer in the most difficult places on earth; he went through a lot and saw a lot. Everything would be fine, the guy is strong and incredibly brave, but... impotent. He suppressed the ability to feel fear, the ability to experience emotions, the ability to perk up. He was incredibly calm, describing everything he saw and experienced. But the calmness achieved with such difficulty and the eradicated ability to be alive played a cruel joke on him: you cannot have sex with a calm member. He had to regain his ability to experience emotions, regain his “restlessness.”

The second sign of suppression and alienation of certain qualities in oneself is the endowment of them to others.

What we alienate in ourselves, we project on other people.

If we do not see, do not distinguish our own accumulated anger, aggression and irritation, then more and more often we see this aggression in others. It seems to us that there are a lot of angry and aggressive people around.

People often project greed, envy, dishonesty, and incompetence onto others.

Little exercise number two

If you feel that someone is being hostile towards you,

Take the risk of discovering this feeling in yourself.

Wholeness is getting in touch with every part of yourself.

By alienating a part of ourselves, we also deprive ourselves of its resources, its strength. And at the same time we spend energy on keeping some of us locked up, on the need for constant control.

Each of us is full of attitudes about what is bad and what is good.

It’s bad to be sad, greedy, aggressive, intolerant.
But there is a lot of depth in sadness, greed protects us from the devastating waste of ourselves, there is strength in aggression, and in intolerance the ability to set boundaries.
Being in only one polarity, we lose a lot.
The most important thing is half of yourself.