1st PART
"STRUCTURING OF THE PERSONALITY"
"Presentation of how the human personality structures, focusing some of the many influences unbalancing that participate in that process."
CHAPTER I
"REFLECTIONS ON THE CONTROVERSIES OF OUR INTERNAL NATURE"
Have you already notice that exists inside of us a continuous game of oppositions? Let us try to understand why that happens.
When beginning an approach about personal organization, it is necessary, firstly, to accept that it is extremely difficult to understand what is processed in our interior and, more difficult still, it is to have the capacity to control and to address our reactions.
In this book, we will try to research why we don't get to stay inside of the attributes that can take us to the state of well fare, of happiness, such as safety, cheerfulness, understanding, calm etc.; and, on the other hand, why we tend to stay inside of the attributes that take us for unbalancing states, such as dissatisfaction, insecurity, anguish, anxiety, guilty conscience, fear etc.
Why will be that the moments when we are inside of the state of healthy balance are much rarer and why do they pass so fast?
To begin, reasons exist, in terms of structuring of the personality, which helps to the person to react like that.
The objective of this book is exactly of analyzing, in a general way, the influences of the environment that might have affected the formation of our personality, acting inside of our internal nature.
Knowing how the personality structures and why is structured in that certain way, becomes possible the control.
At the same time that we go trying to know our internal nature better, we will go becoming aware of fantastic techniques that help the person to maintain herself inside of a stable way of the balancing principles.
Synthesizing, then, the objective will be:
1. Causes that take the personality to structure in a way unbalancing and controverted;
2. To present techniques that take us to pass for the balance state, finding the state of well fare, in other words, the state of happiness.
So complex is that whole internal problem that a scientist, Nobel Prize, Alexis Carrell, in the decade of the 30, wrote a book whose title was: "The man, that unknown."
From that time to here, though, the scientific picture in relation to the human nature modified entirely. There was an enormous progress.
The medicine, in the area of the physiology, studying the relationship between organic reactions and psychic states and, in the glandular area, studying the effect of the hormones, brought extraordinary data. The Psychosomatic Medicine appeared. She detects the somatic repercussions of the game of the psychic reactions, in other words, of the mental and emotional reactions and display how the hormones act.
By its turn, inside of the psychology, the most recent lines like Psycho cybernetic, the Autogenous training, the analysis transactional, Jung's analytical psychology, the own psychosomatic and others, they also bring extraordinary elements to unmask the human soul, in other words, the man's emotional and mental life.
Today, final of the century XX, there is no other alternative except accomplishing what Socrates proposed there are more than two thousand years: "Man, does know yourself".
To get that, the first requirement it is to notice that there is a polarity inside of our soul - our mind is dual, our emotion is dual and our will is dual.
The pivot of our interior life is there in the soul. This internal duality was already noticed a long time ago by the philosophy that registers it in two chapters:
- One to the side of the mental, which is the dialectics.
- Other to the side of the emotional, which is the axiology.
- The dialectics came being structured through the times, since when, for the first time, Heraclitus (544-480 a.C.) affirmed that two principles existed in opposition inside of the Universe and that the same ones were the responsible for the movement and for the vibration, characteristics of the sensorial world. They are words of Heraclitus: "The Universe was not made by gods or by the men, but it always existed, it exists and it will exist. Everything moves in rhythm, amount and direction and that movement is the formal resultant of the tension, conflict or opposition of the opposites."
They are words of Hegel (1.770-1.831): "Each thing brings inside of itself its own contradiction. Each thing is taken to transform in his opposite - day and night, life and death."
Everything is product of a game of opposite forces, whose main example is the own matter that is nothing else than the dynamics among two energy poles.
Hegel affirms that, in all the formulation, in other words, whenever one want to expose a thought or an idea, it necessarily exists one "dialectical moment ", constituted by the two phases - the theory and the antithesis; impossible to undo of the contradiction. The only solution is the synthesis.
With this affirmative, he describes the objective of the initiation that is exactly of getting the androgyny, in other words, the perfect balance among the opposite values of the soul.
In the mental, that polarity, those two opposed principles, they are expressed through a continuous state of doubt. We are always in the presence of two possibilities, always in a choice position, when not, of a conflict - I do, I don't do; I should, I should not; I buy, I don't buy; do I marry , I don't marry...
The incapacity of knowing the right decision for most of the situations is already one of the causes that provoke unbalanced states - insecurity, anxiety etc.
- The axiology, that studies the value of the objects in relation to the desire and to the man's needs, verified that we put ourselves always in one of the ends; or we are in favor of a certain thing or we are against; or we appreciate or we didn't appreciate and, to this reality of the human being, she gave the name of polarity property.
Never the man stays completely indifferent to the things and the events that surround him. Statistically, indifference regarding any object or situation is unbalance.
To prove the polarity of the emotion, it is enough to notice that we always have two ways to react - pulses noble, humanitarian, of understanding to the other ones and pulses that surprise, of rage, selfishness, incomprehension, revolt etc.
Emotion is the force that impels to the action, but it has two directions. The Westerner can even to classify with clearness those two beginnings - Well and Badly. We can even relate values: for instance, as Well, patience, altruism, understanding etc.; as badly, impatience, selfishness, and rage. Will it be, however, that those values are so rigid? Can they be put in a table?
A lot before the appearance of the Western philosophy that begins with Socrates (400-399 a.C.), the tradition of the Oriental people already mentioned that polarity. The Oriental philosophy affirms that everything has a beginning and an end, being the beginning always opposite to the end, although one cannot exist without the other - life and death, childhood and old age etc.
In China, Lao-Tse (century VI a.C.) presents extensive cogitations to that respect. Says Lao-Tse that there exist in the Universe two principles that are permanently forming a game inside of the phenomena of the manifestation, of the world of the phenomena and that are reflected in everything. He called those two beginnings of Yang and Yin that I will classify, provisionally - Yang as positive and Yin as negative. If we consider the focus of the Oriental medicine considering those principles, we can firm a concept that satisfies fully.
The Acupuncture affirms that diseases exist provoked by the excess of Yin, what we can understand, because Yin is classified as negative. But it happens that she also affirms that diseases exist provoked by the excess of Yang, what already begins being more difficult to understand, once Yang is considered as positive and disease is something negative. And the Acupuncture adds that, to cure a disease provoked by the excess of positive is necessary to join a so much of Yin, in other words, of the negative principle, until obtaining a balance among the energies, because, actually, the disease is an unbalance so much to the side of the positive energy, as to the side of the negative energy, and only the balance results in health.
Philosophically, we could not have put Yin and Yang classified in these two lists, with the concept that we have of Well and Badly, because they are not opposed, they are complementary and the ideal condition is the one of balance.
Then, what is disease? Unbalance, by excess or by lack, of one of the energies. We can apply the same reasoning to the moral values. What is a badly? It is the unbalance, by excess or by lack, of a certain value in relation to the demands of the moment that is being lived. Will it be, for instance, that patience is always a well? And will impatience always be a badly? It depends. There are moments when an excess of patience can become an evil.
It is impossible to do any affirmative, because they are relative values. They depend on the circumstances and of the person's point of view. It is not the value in itself, but the way as I apply. The ideal is a point that is placed among the opposites and that expresses an attitude of justice in relation to the circumstances. It is only each one that can decide before his degree of conscience.
It means that the fundamental cause for our interior life to be so controverted is of Universal nature, Cosmic. And the man had to be like this, with structuring not fixed, so that, front of the several possibilities; he had the opportunity to exercise the Free Will, basic condition to reach the Self-realization and to walk inside of the evolutionary process.
But the great difficulty of the initiation, of the Self-realization, is the person to get to recognize that he brings inside of himself the two poles that, actually, as we saw, are Universal principles. However, we fall back upon incredible subterfuges to hide our flaws, subject that will be treated in the fifth chapter. In the next, we will focus the conditioning that is the most fundamental form of the structuring of the personality. Without knowing the mechanism of the conditionings it is difficult to understand the human person.