Imperishable Inheritance

I used to be influ­enced tremen­dously by the human­is­tic psy­chol­o­gist and philoso­pher Abra­ham Maslow. I thought his insight into the essen­tial needs of a per­son was incred­i­bly insight­ful. His famous hier­ar­chy is called “Maslow’s Hier­ar­chy of Needs.” Today, I not only heard about this in my psy­chol­ogy class, but I talked about it in my phi­los­o­phy class and my man­age­ment class. Quite obvi­ously, many think highly of Abraham’s insights, but there is some­thing that I’ve come to learn about the hier­ar­chy . Now, any­one can expe­ri­ence a “peak expe­ri­ence,” but only self-actualizers con­tin­u­ally return to this state. What makes this inter­est­ing is that the hier­ar­chy did not end at self-actualization.

The hier­ar­chy is human­is­tic in nature, that is, it has the pre­sup­po­si­tion that man is inher­ently capa­ble of “self-actualization” or the high­est state of being a per­son. This state is only “actu­al­ized” when other lower needs such as food, shel­ter, sex, emo­tional and men­tal, and social skills are met. Maslow cen­tered self-actualization around what he termed “peak experiences.”

In other words, any per­son in any of the peak expe­ri­ences takes on tem­porar­ily many of the char­ac­ter­is­tics which I found in self-actualizing indi­vid­u­als. That is, for the time they become self-actualizers. We may think of it as a pass­ing char­ac­tero­log­i­cal change if we wish, and not just as an emotional-cognitive-expressive state. Not only are these his hap­pi­est and most thrilling moments, but they are also moments of great­est matu­rity, indi­vid­u­a­tion, ful­fil­ment — in a word, his health­i­est moments. {Source}

I later learned that Maslow put a spir­i­tual state called “self-transcendence.” Here is a famous quote from author Vic­tor Frankl:

“The true mean­ing of life is to be found in the world rather than within man or his own psy­che, as though it were a closed system.…Human expe­ri­ence is essen­tially self-transcendence rather than self-actualization. Self-actualization is not a pos­si­ble aim at all, for the sim­ple rea­son that the more a man would strive for it, the more he would miss it.… In other words, self-actualization can­not be attained if it is made an end in itself, but only as a side effect of self-transcendence.“
Vic­tor Frankl, Man’s Search for Mean­ing (pg. 175)

From the thick influ­ence of Maslow, I came up with a the­ory which I labeled, “The Four Char­ac­ter­is­tics of Per­son­hood.” To the right is a graphic into how I depicted a per­son. I believed that a per­son had the states: spir­i­tual, men­tal, emo­tional, and phys­i­cal. I saw each of these as being impor­tant to under­stand how a per­son does actu­ally develop along Maslow’s hier­achy. The inter­est­ing thing is that I saw no one as more impor­tant than the other. In other words, sat­is­fy­ing the phys­i­cal aspect of a per­son is just as impor­tant as sat­is­fy­ing one’s spir­i­tual needs. I thought rec­og­niz­ing and work­ing on these four states were the only way one could come to a point of self-actualization. More­over, this bled over into my view on rela­tion­ships, and I came to the con­clu­sion that for a cou­ple to be suc­cess­ful they must each be work­ing on each of the four states indi­vid­u­ally and together. A “peak rela­tion­ship” (if you will) is one where they are devel­op­ing at sim­i­lar rates in each of their four states of per­son hood. Let me explain the four states.

Spir­i­tual

This is obvi­ously the com­po­nent of a per­son that is inclined towards a spir­i­tual ful­fill­ment. I believed strongly that every­one on some level need to sati­ate this part of one­self (which fit in well with my rel­a­tivis­tic world­view). Before con­ver­sion to Chris­tian­ity, one could ful­fill this part of one­self with any reli­gious or philo­soph­i­cal prac­tice. Even athe­ism (which does take a lot of faith) could ful­fill this requirement.

Emo­tional

I saw this as the most volatile. One can be extremely phys­i­cal with another, and even though you can leave each and it hurts, it doesn’t hurt nearly as much when you give of your­self emo­tion­ally. If there was a part of a per­son I focused on heav­ily it would be the emo­tional aspect. I held it in high regard espe­cially because my focus for for­mu­lat­ing these four states was for rela­tion­ships, and this is often a cor­ner­stone to a healthy relationship.

Men­tal

This is where I focused on the intel­lect. How well one under­stands another was through this aspect; it was the medium to which we were intel­lec­tu­ally stim­u­lated. Intel­lec­tual con­nec­tions have always been volatile for me, and I saw what a pow­er­ful effect it can have over a rela­tion­ship and ones own per­sonal devel­op­ment. I, for a long time, thought the men­tal aspect is what sus­tains relationships/people.

Phys­i­cal

This is our sex­ual impulse, and it is more than just desir­ing an orgasm. The phys­i­cal aspect of a per­son was that which sought to be close to another in a way that is often exclu­sive. I can share the other three states with many peo­ple, but the phys­i­cal is exclu­sive. It is what draws the line in the sand of who is with whom. It is a very impor­tant aspect, and it was one that I could not deny for its incred­i­ble power.

Turn­ing It Upside Down

I have recently repented of my thoughts of what made up a per­son. I now see it as the inverse of Maslow’s hier­ar­chy. He had the right idea, but he had the wrong foun­da­tion. I learned later that the most impor­tant foun­da­tion is spiritual.

It wasn’t just enough to say that the spir­i­tual com­po­nent is as impor­tant as the other three. While, I still believe that we can look at a per­son in the four states men­tioned, with­out a con­cen­tra­tion upon the spir­i­tual you can­not have a truly com­plete life and enjoy com­plete rela­tion­ships. Make no mis­take, some­one who is with­out faith can have a seem­ingly good rela­tion­ship; but with­out the spir­i­tual aspect as the most impor­tant we can­not reach the high­est pos­si­bil­ity. This is what true “self-actualization” is. True self-actualization is real­iz­ing that it’s not about oneself.

I’ve also learned, through my con­ver­sion of Chris­tian­ity, that only Christ can pro­vide the foun­da­tion nec­es­sary for a joy­ous life and rela­tion­ships. I have since repented of my rel­a­tivis­tic world­view that any cho­sen means of spir­i­tu­al­ity can ful­fill this com­po­nent. It is exclu­sive. It is par­tic­u­lar. It is Jesus Christ.

With this foun­da­tion one can truly man­i­fest the other three. Notice that my hier­ar­chy does have lev­els, because I believe, in terms of rela­tion­ships, that they have vary­ing degrees of impor­tance now. The emo­tional fol­lows the spir­i­tual, then men­tal, and finally phys­i­cal. Phys­i­cal and men­tal states are never enough to make a rela­tion­ship sus­tain. It is now impor­tant for me to prac­tice the truth that only gen­uine spir­i­tu­al­ity can help me achieve the other states. I kept try­ing to look for the other three in rela­tion­ships, and they have all crashed and burned. I’m start­ing to learn that when I look for the spir­i­tual first every­thing else (for some rea­son) falls into place.

Well, that is the end of my extremely ana­lyt­i­cal arti­cle. If you skipped from the first sen­tence to this one then just remem­ber that spir­i­tu­al­ity is the foun­da­tion to healthy per­sonal devel­op­ment and relationships.