from self-mastery to self-unfoldment

02 Aug 2020

in the past couple of months, the terms self-unfoldment and self-disclosure have both crossed my path. i really like what they point to.

for a long time, i’ve been obsessed with self-mastery. this quote card my friend kathy designed sums up my interest:

ever since i was like 7, it has always felt like one of the most effective ways to change the world was to change myself. because, in the most mystic of ways, i am the world. and when the way i see the world and act in the world change, the world changes! anyways…

the more i dig into self-mastery (which i have done a lot), the more i see that so much of the thinking and writing in that mainstream self-mastery world is about clever self-coercion. the underlying question seems to be: how do i get myself to do the things i don’t want to do?

in a parallel path, the more i dig into healing work, the more i see that so much of what we each do today is shaped by things that happened in our past. sometimes we are responding to things that happened earlier in this lifetime; other times we are responding to things that happened in past lifetimes (ex: intergenerational stuff).

i’ve found that both approaches can create behavior change. and in some cases, one approach is better/more useful/more effective than the other.

but the terms self-unfoldment and self-disclosure feel better to me than self-mastery (especially as i continue to evolve my coaching practice) because of the metaphor. mastery implies a forced control dynamic by the limiting of freedom. self-unfoldment implies an increasing depth of awareness which leads to an increase in freedom, but also increased control via access to increased clarity about what one is committting to. the “control” comes from a deeper understanding of underlying motives and history as opposed to the clever application of tricks and hacks.

anyway, i’ve got lots more thought about this but for now, this will have to do. gotta go call katherine! <3

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• rohr - becoming who you are

words / writing / post-processing
346w / 15min / ??min