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“My old self died. The person who was desensitized, numb, dead.” He looked upward. “And from that death… it’s like I became someone new. I’m becoming someone new.” Lisa countered, “You’re becoming who you really are. You’re discovering your true nature.”
The journey forward isn’t linear but cyclical, and it’s hard. I learned something else that was even more profound: that the process and goal are different from what many of us expect. Instead of working to change our true nature, we must find it. Instead of running from suffering, we must embrace it.
To quote Maslow again regarding his self-actualizing individuals: “One does not complain about water because it is wet, nor about rocks because they are hard. . . . As the child looks out upon the world with wide, uncritical and innocent eyes, simply noting and observing what is the case, without either arguing the matter or demanding that it be otherwise, so does the self-actualizing person look upon human nature both in himself and in others.”