Recognizing wholeness and beauty of what is, not only improvements of development
The Western mindset has adapted to recognize development of your” self” almost only through” improvements” and growing them up to become more whole (ego) while cursing the word itself the same time and misunderstanding wholeness. Education, leadership, coaching, therapy, and the general attitudes towards development bring out the same idea one way or the other. Even developmentally aware people in the West often prefer this approach.
😲😳 I think there is problem, that leads people to unhealthy relationship within themselves.
IF YOU ARE SEEN SMALL, YOU LEARN TO SEE YOURSELF AS SMALL.
Unfortunately true to many adults as well, not only children. The shadow behind the though might still depend on the same harmful relational context, interjected already as a child.
😃 While development does happen one step at the time, if we don’t want to cause harm, it still does not mean that helpers, regardless the role, have to give their clients experience as if they had the only right answers, responsibility, power of knowledge and as if the given objects by them, would be the only ”correct” way to move forward in their own development. Yes, I know it is hard to know who is going to take it that way, but that is where the dilemma to shift is.
😃 The inner development, 4th and 5th person still function in this context where they dissolve the shadows of the social construction while reconstructing the individual reality. It means that if you really want to be of service to the people in this context, you need to express more of relational than leadership of knowledge and power of your experience, which is more about the vertical I-me 3rd. Person way. When saying this, I don’t refer to those who have not even learned the 4th and the 5th person perspectives, but the same context is also in the helper positions.
😃 I know that you can still do this Western bottom-up approach also beautifully, but there still can still be a dilemma, which is not aligned with wholeness, humanity, and freedom of individual’s own responsibility. The” Useful help” must be taken to a deeper dialogue to really understand the meaning making both ways and this is not only for the client side to feel seen and heard, but also for the” helper” not take themselves to seriously with their skills, competences, consciousness, and experience as practitioner. The potential nihilism, narcissism and arrogance of the 4th and the 5th person stages is also a risk for dialogue.
🙏 So the dialogue of the client and helper, is like a teacher-learner relationship, which is interpenetrated, interplay between both of their insides and both of their outsides and shifting roles according to their experience so that both can play both roles…which happens naturally when participants are aware enough but can be practiced as well.
🙏 The Western mindset needs to learn to see the beauty of the whole person and work with them as they are, and are becoming as well, and where they are as people without preference for transcendence and growing towards potential, leaving behind the earlier experience showing up as fallback or shadows. What you leave behind, is faced later repeatedly, and yes that is how development goes too, but it is not intentional from your service perspective. But requires perhaps more integration and depth of learning from yourself as a helper too. Still, you also need to hear what the client has to say about this.
🙏 Everyone is whole and is becoming more whole the same time, while the interpretations of this varies at stages. I have also noticed that helper’s relationship to shadows being present in the situation, is often neglected and bypassed or left unnoticed. Maybe” the help” feels incompetent to work with them or maybe they just don’t want to interfere or maybe they just think it is not part of the process. Well…What ever there is in the now for you, is part of the process, whether in you or in clients’ mind. If you identify uncomfort-ability around this, it is also an inquiry of your own whole-part relationship.
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About the author:
Kirsi Mäkinen is the Founder of the Self-System Wholeness Approach, Creative Wholeness Life Practice and Awakening Wholeness Coaching. Read more of her here.