How do you become whole?

Pursue what makes you happy.Life is too short not to. :)

For me, becoming whole has been a journey of discovering that I have been whole all along. I am going to think about how to say more, but for now, I want to say it seems you are well on your journey’s way.

Don’t know if we ever do. Life always changing around us and all.

Stop worrying about what other people think works best for me.

Religion has a lot to offer with the ‘wholeness’ problem. I know a lot of people don’t have much faith in religion anymore. But my experience with religion is there are sincere people out there who have found something worth while. And getting involved with a religion, whatever it is, does not require a leap of faith, or abdication of power, or giving up critical thinking. Like any new interest, rational though combined with a suspension of disbelief is the right approach. A large number of sincere, caring, and intelligent people have dedicated their lives to various religions. It is worth some time to investigate.

I’m working on it..

Divide by the denominator (which should be smaller than the numerator) and discard the decimal part of the answer.

There you go.

For me,being whole,is peace of mind. My journey has been one of doing what I needed to do with good intentions and a sincere heart. Also forgiving myself when I fell short. I’m merely human,but I have sincere intentions and I know that of myself. I accept it.

One becomes whole when His duality become One- Since we are a mixture of negatives and positives in random alignment, we are incapable of being that truly positive One for we of ourselves undermine our own good purpose. we must first go through the period of separating the positive from the negatives. When they are fully seperated, they both will be recombined but in perfect aligned as One and each serving it’s own Good Purpose. Jesus said it like this, when the eye be single the whole body is full of As long as we see somethings as good and some as evil, we are have a duality of vision. Wholeness is having a single vision for good in all things.

Looking inwards will show you the Truth in all things you allow, this is where you begin,

And as you persevere you will know all things within and without.

You’re asking the right question. It’s a big step and I hope you feel some pride for asking it.

This is going to be long- because I have a lot to say about this. So apologies for those who can’t stand words.

I’m whole from years of therapy (four kinds), workbooks (two years) and constant dedication to my emotional health. I started from a very low place so another person’s journey may be much, much shorter. Plus, they might not be as pig-headed as I am.

I learned to own my own emotions; to be more than a reflection of those around me. I gave up making others happy because that’s their job- not mine. I started to live by the motto ‘do the next right thing’. I allow myself the right to be angry. I don’t allow harmful people in my inner circle. I admit to myself why I want to drink, smoke or hide. I am aware of my limitations and am working to accept them.

I had to learn that I was born innocent. I am not inherently bad, to blame or unlovable. I had to learn that love isn’t an emotion- but an action instead. I feel passion, joy and safety. I do the work of love- even with myself.

I had to learn to treat myself as something more than myself. I don’t exist in the world only in one dimension. I am not just me- I am a friend, a daughter, a wife. I would never let anyone treat my daughter the way I treated myself- so I had to change my behavior. I would never tell my Hubbs to ‘get over it’ or that his feelings were invalid- so I could no longer continue treating his wife that way. Just so happens his wife and I happen to reside in the same person.

One more thing that I use is my list of Basic Human Rights. I didn’t know that I had these. Perhaps I knew- but I didn’t accept it as truth.

They are:
The Right to be treated with respect.
The Right to have and express your own feelings.
The Right to say NO and not feel guilty.
The Right to change your mind.
The Right to say ‘I don’t know’.
The Right to feel and express anger.
The Right to feel and express healthy competitiveness and drive.
The Right to be treated as a capable human being and not be patronized.
The Right to make decisions.
The Right to have your own needs and wants be just as important as others needs.
The Right to do less than you are humanly capable of doing.
The Right to ask for help if you need it.
The Right to ask why.

I want to emphasize again, you have relative, not absolute degrees of wholeness. anyway… it helps to not divide yourself into conflicting wants and desires. if you feel on some level uncertain of something and you can live without doing it, then don’t do it. (you must learn to do distinguish between this and first time jitters. this applies more to things you have done before.) pare away the conflicting desires and go with your instinct. there, I’ve said it. could probably do with some more explanation, though I think you understand what I mean without a lot of blah-blah-blah.

@liminal Other people have said similar things to me, and it makes me feel good. But then I think about how long they have been saying that and it feels like I haven’t gotten anywhere. Then again, I haven’t really been trying to get anywhere. I’m just trying to live and cope and maybe feel a little good some of the time, and at the same time not harming anyone and hopefully helping many.

I don’t feel like I am going anywhere or getting anywhere. I feel like I’m circling round and round, like an OCD Dalmation trying to lie down. I feel like I’m back where I was two years ago. I’ve learned a lot, but haven’t changed a thing.

I know this is an impossible question, but I respect people for trying. If anyone knew how to do this, the line to learn at their feet would be hundreds of miles long. It’s probably different for everyone, which is fine. Forgiving yourself, as @YoH mentions, is not something I do easily. I don’t forgive myself. I just make out that I didn’t do anything wrong.

I think I build myself up and tear myself down at the same time. I like doing things but I don’t often like what I do. I am pleased when other people like it, but I would never like it on my own. But liking what I do is wonderful because I find out so much about what is inside me, and I find out things that help others, but when I feel like a judgment is required—this is good or this is bad—I always select bad. Not always, for there are times when I make something and I love it so much, others simply have to like it, too. Then we can all agree that this is one of the best cheesecakes we’ve ever eaten.

It made my son happy. It was for his birthday. Others liked it too. I like it. I learned new skills making it (I never worked with a whole vanilla bean before). But it’s just a cheesecake. It’s not significant to anyone but me—a thought that makes me feel insignificant, for in part, I am that cheesecake.

Should I feel this need to be significant? I don’t know, but I do feel it. Maybe that’s stupid and keeps me from getting anywhere. Maybe it’s leftover from my childhood. To matter. To matter. I don’t suppose anyone else cares but me, and I probably shouldn’t, either. But I do.

@gemiwing Your list.

For me it’s not feeling guilty about saying no, but terrified that if I say no I will be abandoned. That fear affects many of the other questions, especially believing that my needs are just as important as anyone else’s. It is easier to create that abandonment than to live with it hanging above my head like a sword on a thread.

I totally understand what you’re saying. I wonder if I could share some my experience that I’m still working on to this day with you, and tweek the wording just a bit.

For me, something really big shifted when I finally saw this thing we are calling “EMPTY HOLE” as not necessarily being somewhere or something in my physical body that needed filling up. Rather, when I saw it as an unhealed-scabbed over MENTAL-EMOTIONAL wound which was caused by continued years of my holding onto resentments, guilts, shames, hurts, angers, rages etc…over the events of peoples behaviors from my earlier years that set in the wounds that never healed. My attitudes (program I was running on) that I had developed unconsciously, was the very acid that burned the “HOLE” in myself. The wound would scab over, and I would just find people throughout my life who could play the the drama game “Pick the Scab” with me. But the wound only got to the scab stage. Like your round and round OCD Dalmation, it was a continuous cycle with no end or beginning.Yet it seemed effortless to find someone to play this game with me.

Then I learned how to Release. Now I’m not talking about Forgiveness-I could never honestly really get that key to unlock the lock for me, because I kept saying, those people screwed ME over, and I was just a child! I’m not going to forgive them! (see more of my acid burning the Hole bigger?) That’s like saying what they did was ok. Then some religious person tried to tell me that Forgiveness is for Me, and not the other person, it will FREE ME. That key didn’t fit either. So I accepted what happenned in my life and aked myself in a meditation, “What do you need me to do for Me to heal this and become whole again?” And this is what I finally understood that I needed to do for myself.

I needed to heal a “Scab of corroded acidic memories,” not “fill a hole.” So first, I stopped picking at it. Then I started Releasing. And this is what I released…

I released the need to be a victim of my upbringing.
I released the need to be right by recognizing how wrong “they” were to me.
I released the “I didn’t get all my needs met” rant and replaced it with, nobody else did either-it’s a crap shoot, yet I always had food, shelter, clothes, toys, clean, and became grateful for those things that I did have-because there were people in this world that didn’t.
I released the need to punish my parents back for being bad parents. (Loise Hays says it’s easier if you see them as lost little children just like me)
I released my shame and blame games of not measuring up and accepted my crazy-ass-annoying ways and renamed them as gifts and talents.
I released the ghosts of pain and loss. blah…blah.. blah…you get the idea.

In some magical way all this releasing work fills me up. Like I let go, and I don’t have to do anything to do, become or be…w h o l e.
What were these things I was releasing? They were Emotions. And these Emotions I was carrying round with me, bringing into every relationship, taking them to work with me etc…were KILLING ME. And suffocating me. And sucking my life force. And stealing my energy. But I was the One doing it. I was giving ALL OF POWER TO THE PAST VIA EMOTIONS. So to me, Emotions are the past. As opposed to Feelings and senses are the present time indicators. Get rid of those Silent Killers, guilt (anger in the past), anxiety (anger in the future).

In an odd “Alice in Wonderland goes through a Looking Glass down the Rabbit Whole” kind of way, today I think that is what is truly meant by Forgiving Oneself.
I just never understood it before. Who knew I was already Whole, it’s what was underneath that scab the whole time. :-)

Thanks for letting me share…it makes me feel clearer!

Life is a selfish experience and must be regarded as such. You have to live it on your terms, and not someone else’s (although you might choose to be mindful of someone else’s terms) If you measure your life by a standard other than your own self earned happiness, then there is a risk that you will feel empty as you wait for something or someone to provide you with happiness. If this is what you have been doing, it can become habit that is tough to break. You might be able to break it yourself, or you might need professional help.

@OneMoreMinute I hear what you’re saying but I would have to argue that you were probably ready to let it go when you did… not all of us are there yet… and sometimes the pain needs to be experienced and understood before it dissipates.

I’d say that becoming whole is through self-acceptance and that encompasses your past and emotions of the past and I don’t think it’s contingent that you have to blame and punish your parents (or whoever wronged you) in order to experience and acknowledge those feelings fully.

Philosophy Guide to Happiness:http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/philosophy-guide-to-happiness/

@wundayatta be sure to watch the 5th episode. :)
watch them all though

@OneMoreMinute I hear too often people talk about their parents, so I must comment-if not to you then to them. Unless you still live with your parents, then they are a part of history if you so choose. In my case, my parents are both dead. The point being, whatever good or bad I can say about my parents, they can not do anything to me. And if they were still alive, and if I had some objection to them and how they raised me, I could always move away, or at least only visit on Christmas or something. Blaming parents for anything that you have in your conscious memory is a waste of time. At the instant that you believe that you can “blame” parents for something, you can also start to get over it. Like I said, not directed at you personally, (your parents were probably just fine) but I get a little worn out with people blaming others for their unhappiness. Unless you have been physically crippled or wrongfully imprisoned by them, you can usually get over it.

I became whole through the process of working the 12 steps of A.A. after hitting an emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual bottom, then also through years of therapy, and through the use of meds.

@ninjacolin What? No happiness for us? Just reproduction? That’s much too difficult for me. I’d rather seek happiness. Although I wonder if wholeness is necessary. Perhaps I should stop worrying about my animal nature? Eh?

well, according to him happiness isn’t the point rather it’s a rung on the ladder to reproductive success. I’m not certain i agree with it 100% either but it’s an interesting perspective to consider. It’s not that you won’t have happiness again and again through life, you will, however it’s understanding how simple a thing your happiness is compared to the larger picture. For example, imagine how many direct descendants you will have in 500 years when you are dead and gone who may not even know your name, know what you were like, and who will be re-asking all the questions you’ve asked in your lifetime. You’re a very small part of something much larger and everlasting.
—

anyway, i was wrong it was Episode 4 I wanted you to watch. lol. i’m such an idiot. Sorry.
—

“I’d rather seek happiness.”

Some caution is important when saying things like this. You don’t know what you would rather. You know you would enjoy happiness, but you don’t know how to acquire it. So, you want to spend some time exploring other ideas that don’t seem as comfortable for you since the comfortable ideas are the ones that have lead you to the current set of questions. That’s the caution you want to have: You want to be able to recognize when it’s time to stop dwelling on your own ideas of how to live your life, and start really exploring other people’s ideas. Like a vacation from your own mind.

Of course, ultimately there’s no way to stop being yourself. So it’s not really giving up control, but it does help to give other ideas a fair chance to affect your thinking and increase your experience and wisdom.

You have to cut the negativities out of your life (that includes people) and you have to cut the negativity you bring to life and others out of yourself. You have to open your eyes and see the impact you’re making on yourself, others, your community and nature – you have to figure out what you’re fine with and what you’re not fine with accepting or being implicitly involved in. After that, fight with all your might to make things better given some causes you believe in.

@lynneblundell @josie @wundayatta I actually would say with out a doubt that I was running my life on many false assumptions. A victimhood program that was nothing short of delusional beliefs. Popular in that so were many other people. So I made another monkey brained assumption; I must be right, because they are just like me too.

Blaming our parents was the cutting edge rage in self-help in the 90’s, it was quite popular. But I eventually found out the hard way it’s a crutch at first, then it’s a train wreck. I finally realized it doesn’t serve me anymore to blame them, it’s prolonging my agony. I’d rather be Happy than Right. And both of my parents have transitioned, so I’m doing this inner-clearing-work without them.

I learned that I am my own Key to unlocking and releasing. My reality was based on false perceptions. Remove false perceptions and there is the truth of my wholeness already there.

And I am still watching the ripple down effects from this inner work play out in my world. This one step was the biggest step of all my steps. True Lynn, I never saw it until I was ready to see it. Here’s the new hundred dollar quest: What is that magic trigger that inspires that magic silver bullet to pop open that bubble and chain?

Be happy. If something makes you feel happy and/or it is probable that such will do so consistently in the future then pursue and embrace it. If something stunts or negates your happiness and possesses no function which has a significant potential of increasing your future happiness then disregard it. Happiness, from my perspective, is the accumulative result of the stability and harmony of all the elements within ones life even including that which causes you suffering. This would be my initial hypothesis, but there are undoubtedly a number of equally valid possibilities dependant upon such specifics as the semantic definition of being “whole”.

I guess some people find it in religion. Have you tried that? I didn’t find it until I left religion behind and chose personal responsibility instead.

Have you read anything by Dan Millman? Start with “Way of the Peaceful Warror”.

@OneMoreMinute I understand what you saying again.. but you miss my point. I’m currently going through counselling and doing inner child work, which inevitably involves considering my parents actions. I don’t blame them though. I see what they did and concentrate on how it made me feel. It isn’t about blaming them and point the finger and having a childhood tantrum screaming “IT WAS ALL YOUR FAULT!!!”. Not at all.

I’m actually incredibly close to my mum and dad and I see them through the eyes of a forgiving adult. But I have to acknowledge the inner child’s pain in me. Once the pain is acknowledged and felt I can ask myself what I need – what I can do for myself to move on. It’s not as simple a 1,2,3 or simply <groan> ‘letting go’ in my opinion anyway. I actually think it’s a little like the first link Wundayatta posted… more than anything

@lynneblundell I’m Sorry that I missed it and caused some confusion. I hope you didn’t take it personally when i said “Blame the Parents” in my previous post…it wasn’t pointed at you at all. I was speaking in general terms. And I probably should have used a better description, but I find myself spending more time than planned on these thought provoking, yet healing posts that Mr Wundy offers. Most of the time, I am writing for myself anyways. It’s sort of like a term paper after I’ve been through it.
I am glad that you’re still close with your folks.

@OneMoreMinute no worries at all xx

@wundayatta While I am trying to be encouraging, I am also pointing at what I understand wholeness to be.

When you write such things as this:

But it’s all me. It’s the honest me and the slithery me. It’s the powerful me and the insanely insecure me. And maybe I am totally missing the point (yet again), but I just don’t believe that lurve affects anyone in a way that they stop being themselves.

and this

I think my whole body is scared and there’s a part of me that is sad, and a very tiny brave part who seems to be standing up to all that shit.

I think to myself “now there is a man who is engaging with wholeness as I see it to be.” Of course, this doesn’t mean I am right in my understanding of wholeness, let alone about you :)

To the question at hand:
The responses on this thread and your own words point out that wholeness is particular and unique to each individual.

For me, wholeness is about a process of awakening, integrating, and accepting what is. At once I am something and I am nothing, I am sane and I am insane, I am compassionate and I am uncaring, I am awake and I am asleep, etc… Being whole means I’ve accept this, becoming is my process of that acceptance. Part of my process is rooted in disengaging from a constant categorizing and evaluating of self, which I have already talked about here: http://www.fluther.com/disc/75602/do-you-have-a-healthy-self-esteem/ All of this, is tied to together by my bias of thinking I am a spiritual being.

@liminal That’s interesting and encouraging. I do consider myself a spiritual person, and I do experience connection with other people and the world around me, and I understand how we are all inter-dependent. I know several spiritual “technologies” and I know how to help other people connect. I work hard to give of myself to others—especially my wife and children, and other very special people in my life.

For all that, there is something missing. I am not satisfied with any of this. It doesn’t really make me feel good. Sometimes I work hard to tear myself down to others. This is a reflection of this…. missing thing. I never fully believe that I’m any good. Intellectually, I can look at myself and point out lots of decent, maybe even good things.

Emotionally it is quite different. It makes me sad to think about myself. It makes me feel lost and inadequate. It makes me want people to prop me up and compliment me and tell me how what I do makes a difference to them. But when they do that, I try to deny it. I won’t let myself feel good or proud. I won’t let myself speak the truth about myself—except for things I don’t like. I can’t do it.

I can trace this back to things that happened in my childhood, but that doesn’t really help anything. Sometimes I think I want to be unhappy. But what I want is for people to love me. If enough people loved me, I think, I might believe I am ok. But that is impossible, and even if it were possible it would be immoral.

So it’s a place that doesn’t truly believe I am lovable. It’s a greedy place that wants more and more love. It’s a sad, lost place. It makes my back hurt when I think about it. I get all tense. I try to imagine what it would feel like to be all right, but this is one of the few places where my imagination fails.

I want….. so much. More than I deserve. I know deserving has nothing to do with it. I want what I want. Other people’s judgments are just judgments. They don’t really change the reality. But that’s how I feel. I don’t deserve it, whatever it is. And that thought makes me so sad, that if I can’t let go of it, I’ll try to find a way to destroy myself. But strangely, I think I want that sadness. It grounds me somehow. It reminds me of the pain in the world—a pain that I have been lucky enough to escape.

It gets me angry that I don’t know what is missing. I just know that I couldn’t feel like this…. well, I believe I wouldn’t feel like this… oh I don’t know.

I know that people get sick of my “over analyzing.” But I’ve learned that that’s who I am and that’s how I interact with the world. I need to understand. Everything. There are, I’m sure, people who believe I whine too much. Maybe they think I’m too self-indulgent. I’m not going to apologize for that kind of stuff. I know what I am trying to do and who I am trying to be, and how I am trying to be that.

But this sadness. It happens when I think about myself. It stops me. Keeps me from connecting as much as I could. It leads me to do stupid things—things that could hurt the people I care most about. So I don’t feel at all whole. And I can’t forgive myself for that.

@wundayatta Thank you for your transparency. I hope you don’t take my responding as a form of commentary on your life. I have spent much time thinking about wholeness because I have spent the majority of my life feeling incomplete, like a multitude of shattered pieces with no center.

But now, I am going to be bold and try :P

I want to say to you that I believe you.

I have come across your words several times on fluther and this is my summary of what I have heard you say about yourself: you have something missing, you are unsatisfied, unstable, selfish, sad, refusing to feel good or proud, self-destructive, restless, discontent, dissatisfied, needy, starving for love, yet unlovable, undeserving, incomplete, self-loathing, and unable to forgive yourself. There is more: you work hard to give of yourself to others, you are passionate, imaginative, forgiving of others, reflective, helpful, generous, inquisitive, understanding, you desire, you want, you try and you forgive. I believe you.

I believe that being you is intensely painful and lonely sometimes, and I believe there is so much more, more than I could ever guess at, than you have shown on fluther, and you have yet discovered.

I will boldly say that I think wholeness is different than being done or being perfect. It has room for absence, for glaring and huge missing pieces, ugly nasty pieces, and beautiful honorable ones.

Sometimes, it seems that I am hearing you spend exhaustive energy trying to eradicate (or as you say tear down) what you hate. (Of course, this probably has a lot to do with my only seeing a concentrated piece of you on fluther.) My hope for you is that you find ways to give even more energy towards being gentle with the tensions of being you.

While you may be missing some vital piece, surely, you are not purely a black hole: always consuming and never giving. I only need to read about your family meal times to know this is true.

So, here I stop. I fear coming across as presumptive, when I am wanting to be gently encouraging, please disregard my words if they are too much and too personal. -Peace

You are already whole & complete, you just don’t recognize this as a ‘truth’ yet.
There is no ‘becoming, you are already that!

Listen to the works of Eckhart Tolle, read about non-duality, Advaita Vendanta

There are parts of myself that I feel other people don’t approve of or wouldn’t approve of if they knew those parts existed. However, for all those parts may be reprehensible, I choose them. I need them and that need is more important to me than the harm they might cause others I care about. Sometimes I just make choices. I don’t know how to balance things for others, although I try, so I just do it for myself, which makes me feel selfish.

I could beat myself up for anything. It seems necessary, but I can’t tell you why. It seems stupid, too. I do it anyway.

It helps to have a mirror. I don’t see myself very well. So it helps to have other people tell me what they say. I may try to deny it—maybe even challenge their vision to see if they will stick to their story. I am skeptical.

Perhaps that is left over from a childhood where I never did enough, and there was always room for improvement (an understatement) and nothing I did was ever good enough. Inside me, that’s the way it is. I can’t possibly be good enough. In particular, I can’t be good enough to be cuddled by my mother. I never was held until sometime in college, I guess.

But I can’t explain it really. None of it makes sense. It’s just a feeling—a feeling I can’t seem to shake. Or maybe it’s that I can’t believe that anyone really means what they say, unless they physically accept me.

Hearing nice things about me makes me acutely uncomfortable. I feel like I must be lying in some way to give people such an impression, and I need to correct that. Or maybe it’s that I am afraid people will expect me to do it again, and I won’t be able to.

I feel best when we’re all making it up as we go along. We’re all playing. It doesn’t matter so much how we do, we can always change the rules of the game on the fly. Nothing matters except creating. But we can create anything at all… even nothing. If no one judges… I’m fine. I’m complete. The instant there is judgment in the air, I fall apart. It doesn’t even matter that I will probably be judged well.

If there is judgment in the air (cloudy with a chance of judgment) then I must judge myself first, and judge myself harshly, lest someone else come along to criticize me. Round and round I go, and I can’t explain it.

Some people seem to have a confidence. They seem to know who they are and what place they play in the world and they are comfortable with that. I know who I am, but I don’t know my place and I am uncomfortable with where I am. I do it so much that I can only think I must get something out of it.

Well, there’s something here. I wouldn’t be worrying it if there weren’t. I don’t know what it is, yet. Maybe I’ll find out. Maybe I won’t. Maybe it’s just my nature to worry and put myself down. I could criticize myself for anything I want to. Anything that occurs to me. I haven’t written a book. I haven’t taught children. I haven’t made any sparkling insight.

Mush. I’m falling asleep. Boring myself.

Purpose is ever changing…very few people find just one purpose that remains the ONE forever. The old ‘reasons & seasons’ mantra.

We are constantly re-inventing ourselves dependant on the ‘season’ we find oursleves in. Our only TRUE purpose is to wake up to the truth of our beingness. Our essence as pure awareness. The rest is subjective as is everything, and…I do not know how old you are chronologically speaking….but…rest assured. that a good amount of neuroticism is ‘normal’ in one’s younger years. Purely from a developmental psychology, as we ‘mature’ we tend to relax and shed a lot the anxieties of our younger years. Psychologists note that the ‘happiest’ people tend to be in their 50’s and above. Sooo..welcome to the to the ‘journey.’ lol

One great benefits of maturity is accepting that who and what we are/do, is nobody elses business ( unless it is harmful to another ) and letting go of our people pleasing and need to be validated, supported by others. It is nice, but not mandatory to maintain our psychic equilibrium.

I suggest taking the Enneagram personality profiling and perhaps reading up on giftedness, as you display the complex thinking and existensial curiosity indicative of many gifted personalities. This is NOT about attaching some label of superiority to your ego, it IS about self knowledge, insight into your own unique way of navigating life and tools that can help you reach whatever ‘potential’ you feel you might be missing..IN THE MOMENT..NOT into infinity! hahaha

I’m 53. But I’m flattered you think I look so young ;-)

I’ve been like this since I was 15

@wundayatta Maybe you have entirely too much time on your hands, and what’s missing is you need a good hobby or this is your hobby and you’re pulling our respective legs.