The Crucible of Self-Actualization

What is a crucible? The dictionary describes it as

“A pot of a very refractory or heat-resisting non-metallic ceramic material used for melting and calcining a substance that requires a high degree of heat.”

It is into a crucible that we pour steaming hot metals, metals at the boiling point so that in that space we can form and mold new products. Yet most crucibles are themselves made of fragile materials, from either clay graphite or silicon carbides. If you were to drop a crucible on a concrete floor, it would crack or shatter. So while a crucible is fragile yet we pour into it molten bronze! There it swirls, burbles, hisses, and steams. We use these strong and resilient vessels as crucibles in order to profoundly change a substance as we create castings of various sort.

What then is the job of a crucible? It’s simply to hold whatever is poured into it. So, is there a crucible for holding human needs and emotions? What would serve as a crucible that would assist us in unleashing our potentials?

In the last Reflection I mentioned the kind of interpersonal space that Carl Rogers described from his research that creates the safety and openness so that we allow what’s deep inside to emerge. Rogers’ research led him to specify empathetic understanding, unconditional positive regard, and authentic realness.

“My aim has been to provide a climate which contains as much of safety, of warmth, empathetic understanding, as I can genuinely find in myself to give.” (pp. 167-168).

If we need a working space for potentialities to emerge and a space where we can work with our drives, needs, aversions, emotions, passions, wants, fears, dreams, etc., having a safe place is first and foremost. How do we do this? What enables us to create this kind of space?

We begin by distinguishing person and behavior so that we know at the feeling level that people are more than their actions. We know this about ourselves; we are more than our behaviors. We are more than our thoughts, our emotions, our responses. This then empowers us to unconditionally value and esteem ourselves as “somebodies” so that we do not put our value or worth on the line based on some fallible aspect of human nature, like our thinking, feeling, acting, understanding, etc. And when we can do that, we can recognize the same about others.

It is precisely when we stop confusing what people do with who they are as human beings that we are able to rise above judging them. Judgment is what prevents the creation of a safe space, a transformational crucible. What we need to create is a real or authentic space where we can allow what is to just be without judgment or evaluation. This speaks about the critical role of acceptance. As we access an acceptance of people as real live human beings, fully fallible, we can step into the state of just witnessing what is.

And when we can simply witness what is, we can then face reality, deal with the cards dealt us, and make choices with clarity about what to change and what to let go. As a clay crucible doesn’t judge or fight with the hot boiling metals poured into it, so we don’t judge the intensity of a person’s emotions, needs, or drives. There’s no need to. This is just the human stuff from which our potentials emerge. Maslow liked to describe this as the ability to be a good animal, accepting our needs and drives as such, appreciating them for what they offer, and then handling them effectively.

“See human nature as it is, not as they would prefer it to be. See what is before them without being strained through spectacles of various sorts to distort, shape, or color the reality. Self- actualizing people tend to be good animals, hearty in their appetites, and enjoying themselves without regret or shame or apology. They are able to accept themselves not only on those low levels, but at all levels as well; love, safety, belongingness, honor, self-respect.” (Farther Reaches, p. 127)

While these are the things that begin to create a Crucible, Rogers missed something. He missed one of the most important and critical facets of a Crucible. He missed what to do with the safety, warmth, empathetic understanding space that he discovered was so important. He missed using that space for engaging in a direct conversation that gets to the heart of the client’s difficulties. Because he presupposed that change would just organically occur, he failed to see the importance of the direct fierce conversation.

That’s why next comes the fierce conversation as we begin to explore and discuss the brutal facts of the case. A fierce conversation doesn’t mean that we are aggressive, ugly, mean, cruel, or uncaring, it simply speaks about the skill of “getting to the heart of things” without cover-ups, roles, personas, masks, defenses, etc. In a fierce conversation we can speak the truth regarding what is without needing all of the conventional correctness and politeness that more often than not prevents us from getting to the heart of things.

There’s a verse in the Bible that describes this crucible quality, a verse that says we need to set aside cunning, crafty deceitfulness, and “speak the truth in love” so that we can grow up and mature (Ephesians 4:15). And that’s the idea here. We speak truth with a frank honesty as we confront whatever brutal facts that need to be faced without caving in or reacting in defensiveness. After all, we don’t need to be afraid of reality or to make ourselves an enemy to it.

This describes what we mean by the term “ego-strength,” the ability to look reality in the face without falling apart. No wonder it takes a strong sense of self (ego, “I”) to fearlessly face reality with a solution-focus orientation. Now we can hold a fierce conversation that can use the power of acceptance to honesty face and deal with reality as we find it rather than how we wish it would be. A fierce conversation is not a debate, the confrontation is with truth—finding it and facing it for whatever it is.

Because self-actualization is a function of synthesizing rich and robust meanings with effective performances, the fiercely honest conversation gets to the heart of things, the heart of meaning. And with that we discover the driving influences and the leverage factors for change. Yet to do that we have to cut through the roles, personas, excuses, “reasons,” “explanations,” justifications, defenses, and all forms of the bullshit. This is where speaking our truth and facilitating the emergence of another’s truth comes in.

How do we do that? How does the fierce conversation occur within the Crucible. That will be the subject of the next Reflection.