Who Were You Created To Be?
Psychosynthesis, like other forms of soul work, involves finding our way back to the True Self. Roberto Assagioli’s “egg diagram” is a model of the individual, and in it, there are two dots that represent the True Self (I like to capitalize it). The first dot is in the center of the egg and stands for the personal self (small “s”): who you are at your core, your true essence minus the beliefs, opinions, judgments, body, conscious and unconscious thoughts, emotions. The second dot sits at the top of the egg and represents your transpersonal Self (big “S”): who you are when you are “plugged in” to the Divine. Work in this modality has two aims: synthesis of the personal self and synthesis of the transpersonal Self. Sometimes we focus on one; sometimes, the other. I, personally, find the term “True Self” a bit less confusing, so that’s what you’ll find in what follows.
Life would be easy if we could be our True Selves. In fact, that’s how some define happiness. Unfortunately, though, as soon as we enter this world (perhaps even before that), we begin to adjust to those around us, and depending upon how much adjustment is needed, we may spend our lives being just about anybody but our True Selves.
These notions came to me as I contemplated typing up and sharing some of this morning’s thoughts on the subject of purpose. I struggled with “should I?” or “shouldn’t I?”—nothing new for me, but change doesn’t happen if we don’t attempt it.
Purpose is an important topic in my Psychosynthesis coach training course, so today I asked myself: Does my purpose in life include coaching? Is this truly right for me?
Before sharing what I came up with, I’d like to make clear that, despite a lifetime of erroneously looking outside myself for answers, I now understand that they are not to be gotten from someone else. Further, what strengthens me in the task is the knowledge that I am not my training, my past, my beliefs, my opinions, my thoughts, my feelings, my judgment. My True Self is none of that and so much more than that.
I began my inquiry into purpose by looking at my past and truthfully acknowledging that most of my life included a pattern of enmeshed boundaries and dysfunctional relationships that got started in childhood and solidified through years of institutional schooling that had me approaching most relationships as if each consisted of some sort of teacher/student dynamic: sometimes I unconsciously viewed myself as the student; sometimes as the teacher. Either way, doing so usually undermined either the relationship or myself.
Given that, I felt compelled to first ask myself: is coaching teaching? After examining what I’ve learned and experienced so far in my coaching education, I can truthfully say, “No. It’s not.” Coaching is guiding. In fact, the image I recently chose to symbolize such a vocation for myself is a lantern. It reminds me that I am to guide my clients. Using the techniques and knowledge I’ve acquired in my training—and in my life; specifically, in my own healing—I shine a light upon parts of themselves and their lives that my clients may be struggling to see. Then, clear that answers are to be found within themselves, I offer guidance and tools that help them work with what has been illuminated.
Being satisfied with this definition of coaching, I asked the next question: does it fit into my purpose? In order to answer this, I looked back at the trauma responses that kept me safe in childhood and that sabotaged me in adulthood. Then I looked beyond them and found a genuine desire to help others remember who they were created to be.
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