Global Citizenship - Taking the I out of Personal Development

[mtrimpe]

This is my first post here so I will introduce myself briefly along with the key concept I'm struggling with right now, which I believe concerns the very heart of the personal development movement.

I've been heavily involved in personal development ever since I broke through a self-destructing spiral about five years ago. Since that break I've taken an immense amount of time to immerse myself in hundreds of books and thousands of hours of tapes on personal development. As my mind always works, I passively assimilated these vast amounts of information until my subconscious developed a plan so thorough and beautiful I could implement it in one fluid, inspired motion.

A little over a year and a half ago this resulted in what I would call "a mudslide of enlightenment". It was an incredible state in which I followed my intuition blindly and with an unwavering faith for over half a year. Progress went so quickly, fluidly and effortlessly that all the obstacles in my path melted away like snow under the sun. It was as though my actions were guided by the souls of the great minds whose materials I had studied... as it turned out over the last year however, this advance was to be stopped by one assumption, one state of mind, one piece of advice from these great minds that I was not willing to accept.

It was a single person that brought this development to a standstill. It was a person that I met at the height of my mudslide towards personal enlightenment. I connected to that person on a level so deep that it felt like our souls were dancing and embracing each other, no wonder that against all odds our paths crossed again less than two days later and that our love easily bridged a distance of a 1000km. This same person is now my partner and it is through encountering him that I found what I believe to be the greatest fallacy of the personal development movement.

If I judge this relationship according to the terms I've learned in the personal development movement this relationship is harmful to me, it's holding me back, limiting my progress, disrupting my balance. However, despite all of this, I still have a love for this person that I believe is almost as profound as the love that Jesus or Buddha would have felt for every human being; a remnant of this true connection I made at the height of my enlightenment. For a long time now I've intensively contemplated the cause of this incongruity between my mind and my heart and it has taken me over a year to be able to formulate the problem. It were the words of George Orwell that finally made everything clear to me.

I believe that in the personal development movement there is an implicit assumption that goes as follows:

• You should focus on improving yourself
• Through improving yourself you will act as a role model for others
• Through acting as a role model you will improve the world as a whole.

However reading the following paragraph from Chapter 21 in George Orwell's 1984 revealed to me the fallacy of this train of thought:

'Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?'

Now if the object of power is power, if the object of persecution is persecution and the object of torture is torture then it follows that the object of personal development is personal development. Therefore, the entire personal development is focussed on improving and optimizing one tiny aspect of this universe of time and space: your life, instead of the greatest thing we have control over: this world.

It is this error in focus that lead my mind to believe my relationship was bad while my intuition told me it was good; the truth is that this relationship is indeed bad for my development but also that this relationship is indeed good for the development of this world as a whole. The consequences of this shift of focus are great and in applying this shift to the lessons of personal development I have already learned many lessons.

I most profoundly realized the consequences of this shift in focus when I shifted the focus of the exercise in which you visualize yourself as you dream of being 10, 20 or 50 years from now and then visualize the path you will take towards achieving this dream. I invite you to try this variation: visualize this world as you want it to be 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, 1000, 2000 and 5000 years from now and visualize the path mankind will take towards achieving this dream. I hope that in doing this exercise you will see, as I have seen, the inherent limitations and ineffectiveness of trying to improve this world through improving yourself.

Now where does this leave us? I don't know. All I know right now is that I am working hard on thoroughly implementing this shift of focus in my life, that I am active contemplating what would be needed to support this effort if it were to be adopted by a larger group of people and that I've given this project the name mondiality: on global citizenship which, ironically enough, is the name under which I originally intended to become insanely rich by conquering the worldwide real estate industry.

[The Probabilist]

Very nicely written, thank you for this thread.

Firstly, what makes you think you are / you are not all there is to this world, this reality?
Secondly, what makes you think personal development is / isn't just about you, separate from this other person you mentioned?
Thirdly, what makes you think you are / aren't separate from this world, this reality and (not) part of it, carrying your own load of experiences to the universe which purpose is to collect all experiences that exist?

I've noticed that the definition personal development is starting to vibrate at a lower frequency due to people associating it with things it is not and things still hidden from being part of it. Note that I'm not implying what it should or shouldn't consist of. That's for you to decide.

For me, personal development is both personal development and impersonal development. I just haven't constructed or associated this view into a seprate definition yet.

[Michael Chui]

First: Excellent post and thread.

Originally Posted by mtrimpe

I believe that in the personal development movement there is an implicit assumption that goes as follows:

• You should focus on improving yourself
• Through improving yourself you will act as a role model for others
• Through acting as a role model you will improve the world as a whole.

This is your primary assertion, and I disagree with it. While I do not claim to have any knowledge of the personal development movement, I have found no major problems with it. This is why:

• The world as a whole is composed of people (as well as other things).
• You are one of these people.
• Improving yourself therefore improves the world as a whole.
• Through improving yourself, you will act as a role model for others.
• Through acting as a role model, you will give inspiration and/or motivation to others to improve themselves.

To summarize: the individual is not removed from the population simply because he has improved himself.

Originally Posted by mtrimpe

It was a single person that brought this development to a standstill. It was a person that I met at the height of my mudslide towards personal enlightenment. I connected to that person on a level so deep that it felt like our souls were dancing and embracing each other, no wonder that against all odds our paths crossed again less than two days later and that our love easily bridged a distance of a 1000km. This same person is now my partner and it is through encountering him that I found what I believe to be the greatest fallacy of the personal development movement.

There is something extraordinarily beautiful about this. I invite you to read my definition of love: Aqualgidus.org > The Definition of Love
And my definition of economics: raccaldin36: The Science of Choice

And I'll explain how they relate to you. But read those links first.

Personal Development, in my opinion, is first the dictum of "Love thyself", and then the dictum of "Love the universe and everything in it." It is said that you cannot love another without first loving yourself. Love, as I explain in the definition, has to do with knowledge. Not merely textbook knowledge, but all that which your brain can receive, internalize, process, memorize, recall. The touch of their skin, the smell of their hair; the look on their face as they screamed down the snowboard run for the first time; the curve of their body while you're watching TV together: this, too, is knowledge.

But that's love for one other person. Self-love is knowledge about yourself, and acceptance of yourself. Personal Development is a way in which you may achieve this. To go further, expand beyond one person to recognize that you can love many people, to different degrees, that you can love many things: the earth, the trees, the sky; the skyscrapers and highways and arching ceilings; the tradition, the possibilities, the hope of the future. And if you expand and expand far enough, you can love all that is in the universe.

Perhaps that's a bit out of our reach. Or perhaps not; far be it from me to impose limits on our potential.

What does economics have to do with it, though? Personal Development is, as are other things, about decisions. PD asks you to take responsibility for them. And you can make better decisions the more you love, because the more you love, the more you know and the more your selfishness is indeed a benefit to more people, and the more people and the more things, the closer you get to loving the world as a whole, the universe indeed.

I'd be happy to discuss any of this, if my explanation was a bit foggy.

[joshbickford]

The best thing you can do for others is to make more of yourself. You can offer more to others if you have more to give.

I've never understood why that is so foreign to people.

[mtrimpe]

Originally Posted by The Probabilist

Firstly, what makes you think you are / you are not all there is to this world, this reality?
Secondly, what makes you think personal development is / isn't just about you, separate from this other person you mentioned?
Thirdly, what makes you think you are / aren't separate from this world, this reality and (not) part of it, carrying your own load of experiences to the universe which purpose is to collect all experiences that exist?

Thank you for your remarks. Although I couldn't formulate any answer to your questions, trying to answer them did intensify my understanding of my own statement.

Originally Posted by The Probabilist

I've noticed that the definition personal development is starting to vibrate at a lower frequency due to people associating it with things it is not and things still hidden from being part of it.

Exactly, and I am playing my part in associating it with one of the things still hidden from it for many.

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

You can make better decisions the more you love, because the more you love, the more you know and the more your selfishness is indeed a benefit to more people, and the more people and the more things, the closer you get to loving the world as a whole, the universe indeed.

Here, Michael, you beautifully expressed the lesson I am learning and a lesson that I believe many in the Personal Development movement are placing too little emphasis on, are forgetting to learn.

In my case, the Personal Development movement has taught me that you should manifest what you dream of, right now. However when I started applying the lessons I learned, I found out that what I dreamed of wasn't always in the best interest of the world and that what wasn't in the best interest of the world in reality wasn't in my best interest either.

I could make myself happy, I could make the people around me happy, but it always meant that I had to ignore some aspect of the 'rest of the world' in order to stay happy. As long as I didn't truly love the universe, as you've defined love, I found that all my actions were misguided. I only optimized a tiny little part of the whole and after having optimized that part, sometimes the whole had even suffered.
I felt like Alladin, wishing for a million dollars, being happy for a while only to find that the Genie had taken the million dollars from the savings accounts of elderly couples and single mothers on the edge of bankruptcy.

Therefore I say, reverse your perspective. Do not start manifesting from your desires for yourself, but start manifesting from your desires for the whole.

Do not desire to live in a big house so that you may inspire others to achieve the same. Desire for everyone in this world to live in a big house and then a possible first step could be making sure you live in a big house. However if I had to choose between living in a big house myself, and living in a small house and by doing so give 100 others the opportunity to live in a big house, I surely hope that I would choose the latter.

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

I invite you to read my definition of love and my definition of economics.

I love the articles! I strongly recommend you read 'What is Property?'. It's a tough read but it is also a beautiful synthesis of your two articles and will certainly add another profound level of love (or knowledge) to the matter.[/quote]

[MartialDev]

Originally Posted by mtrimpe

In my case, the Personal Development movement has taught me that you should manifest what you dream of, right now. However when I started applying the lessons I learned, I found out that what I dreamed of wasn't always in the best interest of the world and that what wasn't in the best interest of the world in reality wasn't in my best interest either.

Now you know why people cannot be trusted to "change the world".