Written by Meghan Roekle, Fulfillment Coach
Dr. Meg Roekle is an ex-clinical psychologist, now fulfillment coach, meditation guide, & spiritual educator. She helps people awaken to Oneness, heal, and lead embodied, purposeful and fulfilling lives. She’s led 100,000+ people in meditation and hundreds of clients into fulfillment.
In a world obsessed with self-improvement, we often forget that the quest for a "better self" can trap us in a never-ending cycle of perfectionism. Instead of constantly striving for self-development, it’s time to embrace self-actualization by letting go of who we think we should be and connecting with who we truly are.
The self-development problem
Self-development fields are rich with information on how to develop ourselves. There are more tips, hacks, meditations and affirmations than one could utilize in a lifetime. But what self, exactly, are we developing? Who are we talking about when we say self-development?
When I refer to the self-development fields I include therapy, healing, wellness, yoga, meditation, biohacking, neurohacking and wisdom hacking (wisdom from science, philosophy, psychology & art/literature). We also have the fields of spiritual healing and awakening/ nonduality in the mix—fields that challenge the underlying assumption of self-development, including that there’s such a thing as a separate self to develop.
I’m here to affirm that the nondual & spiritual fields, along with the mystics from every religious tradition, have discovered that there isn’t a separate self to develop. There’s no captain inside the brain, deciding to turn right or left as you go about your day. Brain researchers have never found the ‘seat of the soul,’ as its often called, since it simply doesn’t exist. Moreover, they’ve not found the part of the brain that consciousness emerges from (as materialists have forever hypothesized), since consciousness doesn’t emerge from matter. Matter emerges from it.
Self with a capital S
What scientists have found is a vast network of interlocking biological and energetic systems in our body, as well as vast interlocking systems outside the body, all of which are connected. Nothing is outside this network; there is no cut-off between it and us. There are semi-permeable boundaries and smaller fields inside of larger ones, but there is no actual separation in life. Everything is connected in the energetic web, with energy and information constantly flowing through it. And I’m here to affirm the ‘internal’ experience of this, available for all of us to discover.
Consequently, there is no place in this flow of energy where we can objectively say, ‘Here is myself.’ There’s no driver’s seat we can point to. There is, however, an alive possibility at all times and in all humans—to realize no-self, Oneness, or the capital-S Self. This Self is inside and all around us. It’s everywhere, in everything, and It is driving the bus. It’s the consciousness behind everything, sensing everything. It’s the whole universe, and you can take your seat there.
This ‘awakening’ to the Self is occurring for ever-increasing numbers of people. It seems the ‘100th monkey’ has learned the new thing, and therefore all monkeys, all humans, are increasingly primed to discover this. We have a ripe opportunity to realize our true nature as Self, both individually and collectively, and to be deeply liberated as a result. It’s time to move from self-development to Self-development.
The self-image
Though we are the Self, and our wholeness can never truly be divided, we have a kind-of separate self to contend with. The self we imagine ourselves to be in our story isn’t real, but it affects us like a movie character affects us: We experience what the movie character is experiencing as the film of our self rolls through our mind. These mental film images are of a self we inherited in our relationships and cultural milieu growing up in our family, school, and larger communities. We learned whether we were good or bad, right or wrong, sick or healthy, belonged or didn’t belong, were safe or unsafe with every move we made.
We then uphold these ‘introjects,’ as analytic psychologists call them, as who we are. We see ourselves as someone who is smart, stupid, healthy, capable, dysfunctional, weird, brilliant, traumatized, sick, nice, bad, beautiful, ugly, on and on. We believe ourselves to be this story—this movie character of a self, a flimsy, imagined character who may or may not have anything to do with our actual body. We may have no idea what our flesh & bone truly wants or how we really feel as we enact the behavior of the movie character instead of the desire of the person in the theater seat.
The mental story of who we are is nothing but an idea, but the self-development fields, along with most of the larger culture, still cater to these self-images to our idea of ourselves. Therefore, our utilization of self-development tools may have nothing to do with what is good for our physical body, for our Being (subtle energy body + physical body). We may just be pursuing an idea of development for an idea of a self, with no reality to any of it.
We pursue a concept of what the self needs or wants, versus listening to our actual, on-the-ground body. And we don’t develop. And we can’t move toward real fulfillment, as we are meant to, since all our attention goes to this conceptual self.
What we really are
We are more like receivers instead of doers, in reality. Our body, including our energy body, acts like an incredible radio with multiple channels, or antennae, and energy and information constantly flowing through them. Each of us uniquely processes and expresses that information, and the antennae of our energetic channels are relatively open or closed. Thus, our Being is more or less ‘online,’ or connected to our larger Self, to Oneness.
Our general disconnectedness to our larger Self, due to engaging with the self-image / false self instead, is what causes all the problems. But this disconnection does not actually make us sick, mentally ill, or even traumatized. Those ideas are still in the mental landscape. It’s the reason I left clinical psychology. Our trouble doesn’t exist in a separate self; the trouble is that our Being’s antennae are bent, and our fields are temporarily blocked. Certainly, these channels are sometimes incredibly blocked with real trauma, abuse, shock, deprivation, and neglect injuring our fields, but these aren’t permanent states, as there isn’t a separate self in there who was permanently damaged. She/he/they just has knots in the channels, all of which can be unwound.
The connectedness between our Self and our Being is something we can develop because it is real; our physical body and our energetic channels exist. We all have some static in our receiver stories of self and limiting beliefs, resulting in noise and static instead of clear signals coming through. But if we bring our pure awareness of our Self into the Being, we can clear those channels and feel the relief and fulfillment of living as we were meant to. We can be in flow again like we were as little children; before, we were given a script and followed it.
Actualizing the self
To ‘self actualize,’ as they say in psychology, we need to heal/clear that static, including releasing our limiting beliefs. This awakening and healing process is very simple; it is to fully show up in your physical and energetic body—your Being—as your larger Self, or pure consciousness. This process isn’t self-development. We’re not developing anything. Instead, we are getting out of the driver’s seat to let the Self develop us.
We can practice seeing and sensing from this larger Self (which again is pure consciousness or Oneness)—a simple and intrinsic process. In taking our seat as the Self, we can fully inhabit our bodies and hear our natural proclivities, versus dragging our bodies behind the self-image we were attempting to develop. We can therefore be truly fulfilled—as a unique body, fully connected with its ‘higher’ Self.
It’s a much easier ride when we do this. I see it as a Self-actualizing process. We aren’t pursuing the movie image of a future-perfect self; rather, we are renewing our antenna—to fully receive the life-giving signals from our larger Self.
There’s no separate self to develop. Rather, there are connection lines to renew & rewire by the Self—which has always been at-the-ready to fulfill the beautiful, unique, and brilliant Being that you are, have been, and will always be.
Read more from Meghan Roekle
Meghan Roekle, Fulfillment Coach
Dr. Meghan Roekle is an educator & coach, helping people move beyond self development into real fulfillment. A lifelong curiosity regarding the big questions: Who are we? How do I live? brought her into clinical psychology, academia, integrative health, energy healing, wellness & nonduality/awakening. Dr. Roekle realized that recovery, health/healing, & awakening are intrinsic to us, and sees herself as a self development & spiritual populist, wanting everyone to know that fulfillment, which she’s redefined, is our birthright. Her definition: The relaxing & joyful realization of our true, everlasting nature as Oneness or God/dess itself, alongside the embodiment & expression of our unique interests, pleasures, & social purpose/s.
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