PERSONAL GROWTH

By Bill Bruzy

For New Texas Magazine

11-27-98

all rights reserved„ 1998 Bill Bruzy

The term personal growth may change but what it represents is part of human nature. "Personal growth" is just a phrase -a piece of language- that stands for something. Some day soon, if it hasn't happened already, the phrase will fall out of favor, become old and archaic. Kids will think of "personal growth" as something that lived alongside dinosaurs and people will look at their collection of memorabilia; the book collection, pictures, and the journals, and maybe even be a little embarrassed. "I was into that? Well, humph … I'm smarter now. See you honey. Have to go to my artists support group. Be home after my kick-boxing lesson."

The term "personal growth" emerged in the self-actualization decades of the 60' and 70's with Maslow, The Esalin Institute in Big Sur and other growth teachers. A lot of that work, and its' language, is now part of our culture. Look at the ads for the Army; "Be All You Can Be." If that isn't cultural absorption I don't know what is.

The impulse to grow is a basic human tendency and it takes on different colorings in different periods of our history. The way we go about it may change but going about it is an essential and persistent human trait. Instead of the guru's picture we may change and haul a laptop around to write poetry; stop at the gym for a session with our personal trainer. The impulse is the same. We may work for years to be well integrated into the goals of our society and then we may turn around and spend years trying to rid ourselves of them. The impulse is the same. It can all be growth. Growth is change. And, if you don't know this already I'll say it: growth is a complicated, often troublesome and painful process. And yet, we love growth and as a species aspire to excellence and depth.

Practices like Mesmerism and Spiritualism flourished in the 19th century, "The Power of Positive Thinking" in the 50's, Eastern philosophies in the 60's and dysfunctional family dynamics and management training in the 80's. It seems there is always something catching the culture, some wave to ride, in searching for relief of our pain and a glimpse of our extraordinary capacities as human beings. Slowly the waves become integrated into society and become part of our new definition of normal.

We now live in a time and in a country where we are blessed with enough prosperity and a modicum of social sanity. We live in a rare time where we have the resources to pursue growth, not just survival. We can afford to sign up for a class, get into counseling, buy a tool, build a skill, or attend a weekend seminar.

On the hierarchy of human needs we live in a very privileged and unique time in history, we have wealth. Even our poverty is wealth by the standards of most of human history. We have global access to information and can explore alternatives from a computer at the library, a bookstore or at home on our computer desk modemed to the world. We also have physical mobility. We can go to another town to attend a workshop without undue hardship or cost. It doesn't take three months on a horse to get somewhere.

But even with these favorable conditions how do we begin personal growth? We know, in an unspoken way, we have more capacity than we manifest but some catalyst is usually required for us to change our comfortable monotony and shake up our lives. Often we just ignore growth if life is adequate, or bearable.

Maybe dissatisfaction with a career, or some other disquieting inkling stirs and agitates us. There is a gift in our dissatisfaction or even our trauma. We reach for more in ourselves when we're in trouble or hungry for something. I know. I hated it when people told me that. Please, take the gift back. I'll live without it! Yet human experience has shown over and over that in the worst kind of dissatisfaction, crisis and extreme circumstance, we often find we can operate with abilities that in our more ordinary times are inaccessible. Those powers lay hidden under the comforting hum of our daily routines. Profound intuition, creative insight, athletic skill, stamina, transformative compassion, total clarity in goals, these are all states we hopefully can access in extreme moments in our lives.

So we usually begin growth because we just want to get out of some form of pain. That's what draws us to work on ourselves. To be honest I don't often see people wanting personal growth for its own sake -not in the beginning. We want our toothache to go away, our grief to subside, our fear to abate. Being out of pain is not a crazy motivation. It's rather sane in my opinion.

But when we're wandering through the jungle of personal growth options we need to be clear on what we want to do. A good question is: do we want to get out of pain or do we want to grow for the sake of growth, challenge, enlightenment and adventure? Those motivations have a different emphasis. Getting them mixed up can lead us into even more trouble than the trouble we started out to fix.

For example, being in good physical shape is a wonderful thing. It does not, however, compensate for the damage of trauma in ones life. Serious losses, tragedies, witnessing or experiencing violence need to be dealt with. Often we try to deal with those pains indirectly. We may pursue physical fitness and want to be beautiful so we will be loved or love ourselves in the hope that love heals the pain. But we don't find love and that work ultimately doesn't heal the pain. Repainting the car doesn't make the engine run better. A wellness program is no substitute for an emergency room when we have a heart attack.

So this is the first level of growth: getting out of pain.

The second level is growth for its own sake. Even though discomfort is the initiator of much growth we can see a basic human drive to excellence. We have an innate drive to surpass our ancestors, to grow in personal power and capacity be it capacity to love, to see, to act, to feel, to know, to be.

This second way, growth for its own sake, is often harder than just getting out of pain. The goals are less clear. Success may carry it's own challenges. Where getting out of pain is its own reward growth for its own sake may bring a complicated mix of experiences. We may outgrow people in our lives. We may become dissatisfied with what was perfectly appropriate before. We may have to take risks that could have easily been avoided, we may take on new and more challenging responsibilities. And which path to go, to find our growth, can be confusing.

For most of history the path of growth was not the jungle of options it is today. The container for personal growth, in most of human history, has been religion or some form of tribal metaphysics.

Although there are a lot of religions and metaphysical systems the basics remained pretty much the same. A higher body, a church, elders, a transdimensional entity, God, a collection of gods, ancestors or the tribe, teach a version of the structure of the universe and of humans' place within that universe. We are told what we can, indeed what we must, aspire to.

There are a lot of varieties of stories but they all, curiously, contain a similar structure. We are incomplete and need to be completed. We are born sinful and must redeem ourselves. We emerged into this world from somewhere and are here to navigate yet another emergence ahead of us. Curiously, in none of these descriptions are we just fine the way we are. We have to get somewhere from here. We have to get better, stronger, wiser, holier, enlightened, redeemed, transformed, connected, empowered, or some damn thing. In these systems the world is described to us. Then the way through that world is outlined. All we have to do is just do it. When we do it there will be a reward.

A terrorist I heard interviewed, after a botched suicide mission, was told by his leader if he just blew himself up his family would be cared for, they, and he, would get free entrance to heaven. As a special bonus he was to be greeted in the afterlife by a hundred young virgins that will become his wives. Well, the story was clear. Blow yourself, and a few innocents, into protoplasm and you'll be better off. That was the voice of external authority telling him what growth would be. I wonder, if the terrorist had the resources and the time to explore his existence, if he would have made a similar decision on his own? I doubt it.

But that's the old way. A new-world is emerging from the ashes of the old. In recent times our human tendency to grow became more individuated. Personal growth philosophies unhooked from major religions and tribal traditions.

There was a rise in secular philosophy aimed at a better life here on earth rather than the afterlife. This represented a shift in human consciousness. Individuals were recognized as having an authority in their own lives, and a potential that could be manifest without the strict domination of a social institution. We could freelance a little. We could be trusted to make our own choices. And maybe, in these new philosophies, the rewards to growth were more accessible to our current lives. Just maybe we could get to a life where we were fine the way we were.

This change naturally followed from recognition of the sovereignty of the individual. That change was reflected in the French and American Revolutions. Now, instead of being dictated to we recognized freedom to choose and speak as fundamental human rights. We have options.

When we lived in tribes there was only one group to belong to. We could have differing roles in that group but there was one group. In medieval Europe you'd better honor the church, the king and the local feudal lord. The only other options were banishment (a punishment worse than death) or death. Death was usually proceeded with some pretty miserable treatment oriented to making you change your mind, and your loyalties, before you died.

Now we find ourselves emerging into an era of internal guidance as opposed to that heavy handed external guidance. It is true that both worlds are going on simultaneously. There is a lot of the old still with us. But this new era is emerging.

This new era of internal guidance doesn't mean we don't listen to others, learn from teachers, trust someone for a time to lead us through a maze of obstacles to our growth or deliver us a new skill. We do. But we are the ultimate authority on whom we follow and for how long.

It is a much more difficult thing to have to choose. There is a comfort in subsuming ourselves to an authority. We aren't stuck with the responsibility for the decisions. Those decisions can be agonizing. And yet it is the way of the world. We are free. Even if we don't want to be.

So how do we make all these decisions? How do we choose a path of growth beyond the first goal of getting out of pain? We trust ourselves, make our choices, put one foot in front of the other and see what happens.