The Feel of Self-Actualization

• What does self-actualization feel like?
• Is there a feel to self-actualization?
• Is there more than one feel to self-actualization?

In 1967 one of the key leaders in the Human Potential Movement broke onto the national scene in the United States (and perhaps around the world) with his book on the third force in psychology movement. In that year the book Joy: Expanding Human Awareness by William C. Schultz was published. It immediately caught the public’s eye and Schultz was interviewed on a great many television and radio programs about this vision that Maslow and Rogers had initiated.

I bring this up because the theme highlighted in the book Joy focuses on what self-actualization feels like. Schutz wrote on the first page of the book, “Joy is the feeling that comes from the fulfillment of one’s potential.” Later in the book he added this,

“Since our assumption is that the chief source of joy is the realization and use of one’s resources, it follows that failure to use these resources leads to a lack of joy. A good skier enjoys skiing more than he would if he couldn’t ski well. The more of his abilities an individual has developed and can use, the more pleasure he feels within himself.”

What does self-actualization feel like? Joy. Pleasure. It has the feel of exhilaration, vitality, being fully alive, being fully present, the feeling of strength, extension of one’s capacities as one stretches to newpossibilities, fun, etc.

Interesting enough, when Mihayli Csikszentmihayli began his studies in “happiness” for his doctorate, he ended up developing a model about “flow” states, the states wherein people experience the highest and best kind of human happiness, expression of one’s competency in response to a challenge. And as so many have noted, that kind of happiness isn’t achieved by pursuing it directly. It is achieved more indirectly as a consequence of finding some activity, adventure, or challenge that fully captivates one’s attention and demands all of one’s skills and capabilities.

What then does the self-actualizing process feel like? Maslow used the term peak experiences to describe those occasions of great joy, of intense happiness and satisfaction when one is so fully present to something and so completely engaged that it seems that he or she is “one with that experience.” He spoke about such peak experiences occurring by knowing one is loved or by loving someone unconditionally, by experiencing a sexual climax, completing a long and difficult project, by eating a simple meal after a long privation, expending all of one’s energy after an intensely contested game of golf, tennis or any other game.

The event that triggers the “peak experience” is not as important as the state of one’s consciousness in it— namely, being completely present and engaging all of one’s capabilities and treating it as significant, important, and meaningful. Mihayli Csikszentmihayli discovered the same thing. It isn’t the specific activity that creates the flow state, it is the synergy of challenge and competency—or as we say in Neuro-Semantics, meaning and performance.

Synthesize meaning into your everyday performances or begin performing your highest meanings and, presto! —you enter the flow state. You step into the genius state whereby you lose your meta-mind and come fully to your senses, so fully into your senses that everything else disappears. And as the world vanishes, as others vanishes, as time, self, and a thousand other meta-awarenesses all vanish, we experience that almost mystical sense of being so present that we merge with and become one with the engagement.

Now imagine that as a way to read a book. What a way to be with a client, a lover, a child! What a way to move through your day, stepping in and out of various “genius” states! What a way to make love, to watch a movie, to share a meal! And who was wondering about the practicality of Neuro-Semantics? Get your neuro-semantics to do that and life itself becomes a mystical experience of pure joy. Would you like that?

What is the feeling of self-actualization? It is the feeling of being able to multi-track, store things at all levels of your mind and to be able to turn that off and slide into a one-ness with the world state of flow and focus and total presence at any moment that you choose. What would you pay for that skill? How much would that joy or meta-pleasure be worth to you?

In Neuro-Semantics we end day one of APG with the Pleasure Pattern. It’s a pattern about discerning how we humans can and do add pleasure to anything. And I mean everything. Starting with the primary state of the sensory pleasures and noticing how we are so absolutely wired for a thousand pleasures, ten-thousand pleasures of sight, sound, sensation, smell, taste, touch, movement, etc., we can take any such sensory pleasure and add layer upon layer of meta- pleasure to it. [See Meta-State Magic for a full description of that pattern.]

What’s a meta-pleasure? It is the higher pleasure that we get from the first pleasure. It’s a meaning or belief or value or significance that we attach to the first pleasure. The meta- pleasures refer to the semantic and conceptual pleasures of the mind that we texture into the body. It’s the pleasures of meaning by which we can enrich something (actually, anything!) with such significance that it now multiplies the intensity of the pleasure. And that’s what self- actualization feels like.

Flow arises from the gestalting of the meta-pleasures of your mind. All you have to do is add rich and robust meaning to whatever you’re doing. All you have to do is to see and perceive that activity as a fascinating and inviting challenge. And the magic is that once you have done that, your body begins to activate resources and capabilities to actualize the challenge, to rise up to meet and satisfy the challenge and when that happens, you take your performance to the next level and when you reflect on all of that you experience joy. Meta-Pleasure! A Peak Experience. And that’s the feeling of self-actualization.