The Elevated State of Self
By Esther Seibt
Often, I get complimented on my serenity and calm, about being a light and sunshine in the darkest of hours and about guiding the way even when no path is in sight - when in fact, often enough, I am inches away from bursting into flames or drowning in tears.
But, as I know today, this is my personality. This is who I am.
By the teachings of Human Design, which I had the luck to discover lately through Inès Kelly and Maike Gabriela, I understood that I am emotionally driven, and my strategy is reaction, rather than action. I withdraw from people, and I bunch up with equal intensity. I need process time as a hermit, as well as collaborative gatherings in which I can share my thoughts, ideas, creativity, and wisdom with as many people as possible. I need both states to flourish and live my life’s path to the max.
– and yet, people experience me as this floating, peaceful, steady rock.
How come, that one can seem quite and complete when they are actually living life on an emotional rollercoaster? It is possible, when allowing and embracing all aspects of the self - the good, the bad, the ugly. As humans we tend to judge personality streaks on their likability, based of what we have experienced as children and in our young adult lives. Curiosity is erratic, excitement is irrational, being fun is uncool.
Most of us know the feeling, when we do not like ourselves for being this or that person. What we mean, is we don’t like streaks about ourselves, that we consider not being likable. We fear that we might get judged for them and disliked. So, as a strategy and coping mechanism we lock them up.
We fracture our soul into pieces and build a life sourcing only from some parts of the self – but not from all we are.
And then something peculiar happens. We get to meet people, who live out freely that exact personality streak we just locked away and we go ‘ugh, that person is terrible. So nosy. Or: always on. Or: pretentiously in a good mood’ What we mean to say is, ‘Why can’t I?’.
And we start to feel terrible for A) not being able to overlook it and B) for knowing that we are the same, in some ways. But since we locked it away, we linger in a state of being ‘better’ than them and that’s a nasty one, that’s guilt and guilt follows shame and shame is the end of all development.
Let’s look at the streak arrogance for example. When we meet someone who is arrogant, we often feel undermined or repelled. But don’t we all have this little arrogant side?
Arrogance is a common and simple coping strategy to beat insecurity – aka not being whole. When we are insecure it is easy to meet that insecurity with making ourselves a little bigger to cover it up. It’s exhausting, but good enough for a first impression.
Let’s say, at some point in our life we decided we do NOT like being arrogant and pretend we do not have that streak at all. We lock that part away and create a fraction in personality and our soul. A) Something must take over, which is often phoniness – very unlikable. And B) we are a little LESS WHOLE again and our insecurity grows, bringing us to a place of frustration and anger. But what if instead, we investigated our arrogance? What happens then is extraordinary! When we surrender to this personality streak, it directs us to this part of ourselves, that feels insecure. It feels not big enough, or good enough, beautiful enough or skinny enough.
Not enough!
Our job here is to be brave and surrender to this size, to this scary mediocreness and start meeting people from here!
We become authentic, likeable and we show a hell lot of courage, stepping up this small.
Finally, we really get to expand, learn, and grow out of our insecurities into a new elevated version of the self – and suddenly we are bigger, than we could ever imagine. And more whole again.
All, thanks to investigating our arrogance, asking: what are you telling me?
Instead of locking it away and fracturing our wholeness, living on half capacity.
All streaks we have, are there for a reason and complement who we are - when we let them. I still burst in to flames and tears from time to time, but I don’t judge it, I know, what it’s telling me, I listen, I read myself, I learn, and I try to surrender to the pain before it becomes suffering – which is living a life of not being whole.