Recently I decided to reflect on some of my older blog posts as part of my journey into discovering new beginnings. Part of my process has been discovering things from past experiences as a means of fostering new avenues of growth. Through this deliberate work I have gained insights that are helping to guide me as I continue along my path forward.
I believe the work of reflection, of reviewing the steps that have led us to a particular moment is invaluable to growth. At the same time, I do not believe this reflective work should be a means of relying on past experiences as a security blanket to calm us in those times of not knowing. Rather, it is a strengthening and revealing of tools for us to carry along while we search for new horizons.
Original post here
The beginning of the work, “The Celebration of Life,” by Norman Cousins, provides a stirring definition of how we are able to gain and clarify our understanding of an idea. Each individual approaches an idea with a different, unique perspective. I believe hearing and listening to everyone’s individual story and perspective is fundamental to our lives and our growth. As an aside, this would also be the basic premise behind much of analytical philosophy as well, namely the idea that word usage is subjective to the individual using that particular word.
Cousins writes (p. 1-2):
One grows into one’s philosophy. Year by year an individual is shaped by the sights, the sounds, the ideas around him. Consciously or not, he is forever adding to or subtracting from the sum total of his beliefs or attitudes or responses, or whatever it is we mean when we say that a person has a certain outlook on life. I do not mean to say that clearly defined truths of religions and philosophies are inevitably subject to the interpretation of an individual according to his or her experience. But I would like to suggest that one of the prime glories of the human mind is that the same idea or occurrence is never absorbed in precisely the same way by any two individuals who may be exposed to it. Each of us views a sunset, reads a book, or participates in a conversation in a different way from another, and each will take from these experiences a different meaning and memory, which will enrich the common human experience.
In this first paragraph, Cousins presents a beautiful description that we experience life through our own eyes. Even formal situations, education, religion, sports, are communal moments of a group of individuals experiencing different things in the same place. I think we need constant reminders of this first point.
In this sense, each human being is a process – a filtering process of retention or rejection, absorption or loss. This process gives each person individuality. It determines whether a human being justifies the gift of human life, or whether he or she lives and dies without having been affected by the beauty of wonder, and the wonder of beauty, without having had any real awareness of kinship or human fulfillment.
Can any individual recognize and define the essence of his own individuality? Can a camera photograph itself? It can in a mirror, but even the mirror sees only the outside of the camera. A mind that attempts to perceive itself can use the tools of language and logic. But the material with which it deals is beyond mere words or reason. The marrow of human thought or personality eludes its own product – human analysis – even with the most advanced scientific instrumentation.
At the same time, as growth and developing the self is a process, we can never even truly see everything about ourselves as well. At best, as Cousins implies, we see ourselves in a mirror, which would imply we experience ourselves less from the inside and more from how we reflect back into our minds eye. Part of how we do this is working with others to help us bring out areas of ourselves we aren’t able to completely see in ourselves. My love of what I do includes exploring with people the deeper person that the person is and can be through fostering this exploration and growth.
So, if we are to pursue our essential philosophical quest in the world – our search for integration – we need to bring together rational philosophy, spiritual belief, scientific knowledge, personal experience, and direct observation into an organic whole.
In pursuing this integration, we turn to a device worked out more than 2,300 years ago: the Socratic dialogue. The dialogue as a literary device goes back to Socrates. Its function is to provide a path for the systematic exploration of ideas. As used by the Greeks, the dialogue seemed uniquely suited to philosophical thought. The relationship of human beings not just to each other but to the universe, the ability of people to take command of historical experience, the importance attached to abstract ideas and the need to define values and to put them to work, the reach of human beings when confronted with great challenge, the contemplation of the connection between cause and effect – all these aspects of the human situation were central to the dialogue.
To me, these last two paragraphs bring us to the core. To grow as a person, we cannot do it alone. We must work with others to grow, to journey, to keep becoming the person we wish to be. This dialogue for the sake of growth is an underlying perspective on the rabbinic adage from Pirkei Avot (1:7):
יְהוֹשֻׁעַ בֶּן פְּרַחְיָה וְנִתַּאי הָאַרְבֵּלִי קִבְּלוּ מֵהֶם. יְהוֹשֻׁעַ בֶּן פְּרַחְיָה אוֹמֵר, עֲשֵׂה לְךָ רַב, וּקְנֵה לְךָ חָבֵר, וֶהֱוֵי דָן אֶת כָּל הָאָדָם לְכַף זְכוּת:
Joshua ben Perahiah and Nittai the Arbelite received [the oral tradition] from them. Joshua ben Perahiah used to say: appoint for thyself a teacher, and acquire for thyself a companion and judge all men with the scale weighted in his favor.
Through appointing a rabbi/spiritual guide/therapist, connect to a companion/a confidante, one will be able to find growth both intrapersonally and interpersonally. This comes about from the conversations, the listening, reflecting and exploration we do with this person.
May each of us find growth through our individualism as members of a group.
If you are looking to explore and see yourself in a new way, Contact New Beginnings Spiritual Coaching and Consulting LLC at 732-314-6758 ext. 100 or via email at newbeginningsspiritualcoach@gmail.com.
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