Personal fulfillment

Last updated June 20, 2019

Personal fulfillment is achievement of life goals which are important to an individual, in contrast to the goals of society, family and other collective obligations.^[1]

An individual is that which exists as a distinct entity. Individuality is the state or quality of being an individual; particularly of being a person separate from other people and possessing their own needs or goals, rights and responsibilities. The exact definition of an individual is important in the fields of biology, law, and philosophy.

A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same geographical or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Societies are characterized by patterns of relationships between individuals who share a distinctive culture and institutions; a given society may be described as the sum total of such relationships among its constituent of members. In the social sciences, a larger society often exhibits stratification or dominance patterns in subgroups.

In the context of human society, a family is a group of people related either by consanguinity, affinity, or co-residence or some combination of these. Members of the immediate family may include spouses, parents, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters. Members of the extended family may include grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces, and siblings-in-law. Sometimes these are also considered members of the immediate family, depending on an individual's specific relationship with them.

Personal fulfillment is an ongoing journey for a human individual. It commences when an individual starts becoming conscious of oneself and one's surroundings. It is then that one's exploration begins to realize what one is capable of. Like the tentative steps of a child that invariably lead to a few falls followed by seeking for some help from people around. Then the joy of achievement when one can successfully take a few steps without falling. The appreciation of people around is a key component of achieving personal fulfillment. It is invariably followed by a sense of habituality (i.e., being able to perform any act, such as walking, habitually). Then boredom. Followed by a yearning for the next horizon, whatever it may be for an individual.

Key components then of personal fulfilment are:

Consciousness - of oneself and the environment
Consciousness - of people around oneself
Exploration - of something new that one may be capable of
Initial failure - as one's initial attempts at exploration leads to stumbles and falls
Trying - again and again till such time that one does not stumble and fall
Experiencing joy - of having tried and achieved something new
Commendation and applause - of those around, especially of the ones that the individual values
Boredom - as one performs the 'not so new anymore' task as a matter of habit
Then back to step three for something new to explore
The cycle continuing throughout one's life as the individual grows and expands into newer and unexplored dimensions of personal fulfilment

Consciousness is the quality or state of being aware of an external object or something within oneself. It has been defined as sentience, awareness, subjectivity, the ability to experience or to feel wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind.

Consciousness state or quality of awareness or of being aware of an external object or something within oneself

Consciousness is the state or quality of awareness or of being aware of an external object or something within oneself. It has been defined variously in terms of sentience, awareness, qualia, subjectivity, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood or soul, the fact that there is something "that it is like" to "have" or "be" it, and the executive control system of the mind. Despite the difficulty in definition, many philosophers believe that there is a broadly shared underlying intuition about what consciousness is. As Max Velmans and Susan Schneider wrote in The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness: "Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness, making conscious experience at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives."

Consciousness of the self is a complex experience for an individual being. A prime aspect of consciousness and awareness of the self is the awakening to one's capabilities and potential.

The awakening to one's capabilities and potential is a continuous process throughout the period of existence of a being - from the birth of the physical being through the expiration of the same. Inherent to this process of being is a drive or a force that seems to be part and parcel of being in the physical being on earth. This drive manifests itself from the start of one's being - like a child crying as soon as it is born. It is the awakening of the child to its capabilities of exercising its vocal cords. The drive continues through the life of one's being (albeit in varying degrees of forcefulness and momentum at various points in time) through to death of the physical being as we know.

This drive is primal and is the single force that leads to exploration.

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Mind Combination of cognitive faculties that provide consciousness, thinking, reasoning, perception and judgement

The mind is a set of cognitive faculties including consciousness, imagination, perception, thinking, judgement, language and memory. It is usually defined as the faculty of an entity's thoughts and consciousness. It holds the power of imagination, recognition, and appreciation, and is responsible for processing feelings and emotions, resulting in attitudes and actions.

Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, sometimes published with the subtitle A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, is a 1943 book by the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. In the book, Sartre develops a philosophical account in support of his existentialism, dealing with topics such as consciousness, perception, social philosophy, self-deception, the existence of "nothingness", Freudian psychoanalysis, and the question of free will.

The Eight Consciousnesses is a classification developed in the tradition of the Yogācāra school of Mahayana Buddhism. They enumerate the five sense consciousnesses, supplemented by the mental consciousness (manovijñāna), the defiled mental consciousness (kliṣṭamanovijñāna), and finally the fundamental store-house consciousness (ālāyavijñāna), which is the basis of the other seven. This eighth consciousness is said to store the impressions (vāsanāḥ) of previous experiences, which form the seeds (bīja) of future karma in this life and in the next after rebirth.

The psychology of self is the study of either the cognitive, conative or affective representation of one's identity or the subject of experience. The earliest formulation of the self in modern psychology derived from the distinction between the self as I, the subjective knower, and the self as Me, the object that is known.

Self-awareness is the capacity for introspection and the ability to recognize oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals. It is not to be confused with consciousness in the sense of qualia. While consciousness is being aware of one's environment and body and lifestyle, self-awareness is the recognition of that awareness. Self-awareness is how an individual consciously knows and understands their own character, feelings, motives, and desires. There are two broad categories of self-awareness: internal self-awareness and external self-awareness.

Awareness is the ability to directly know and perceive, to feel, or to be cognizant of events. More broadly, it is the state of being conscious of something. Another definition describes it as a state wherein a subject is aware of some information when that information is directly available to bring to bear in the direction of a wide range of behavioral processes. The concept is often synonymous to consciousness and is also understood as being consciousness itself.

Ecstasy is a subjective experience of total involvement of the subject, with an object of their awareness. In classical Greek literature it refers to removal of the mind or body "from its normal place of function."

A false awakening is a vivid and convincing dream about awakening from sleep, while the dreamer in reality continues to sleep. After a false awakening, subjects often dream they are performing daily morning rituals such as showering, cooking, cleaning, eating, and using the bathroom. False awakenings, mainly those in which one dreams that they have awoken from a sleep that featured dreams, take on aspects of a double dream or a dream within a dream. A classic example is the double false awakening of the protagonist in Gogol's Portrait (1835).

The subjective character of experience is a term in psychology and the philosophy of mind denoting that all subjective phenomena are associated with a single point of view ("ego"). The term was coined and illuminated by Thomas Nagel in his famous paper "What Is it Like to Be a Bat?"

Consciousness-Raising is a form of activism, popularized by United States feminists in the late 1960s. It often takes the form of a group of people attempting to focus the attention of a wider group on some cause or condition. Common issues include diseases, conflicts, movements, and political parties or politicians. Since informing the populace of a public concern is often regarded as the first step to changing how the institutions handle it, raising awareness is often the first activity in which any advocacy group engages.

Integral yoga, also called supramental yoga, is the yoga-based philosophy and practice of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. Integral yoga finds all life conscious or subconscious a yoga, defines the term yoga as a methodised effort towards self-perfection by the expression of the secret potentialities latent in the being and highest condition of victory in that effort - a union of the human individual with the universal and transcendent existence which is seen partially as expressions in humans and in the cosmos. As a yoga idea, that Spirit manifests itself in a process of involution. The reverse process of evolution is driven toward a complete manifestation of spirit.

Bad faith is a philosophical concept utilized by existentialist philosophers Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre to describe the phenomenon in which human beings, under pressure from social forces, adopt false values and disown their innate freedom, hence acting inauthentically. It is closely related to the concepts of self-deception and ressentiment.

Latihan is a form of spiritual practice. It is the principal practice of the Subud organization.

Self-consciousness is a heightened sense of self-awareness. It is a preoccupation with oneself, as opposed to the philosophical state of self-awareness, which is the awareness that one exists as an individual being, though the two terms are commonly used interchangeably or synonymously. An unpleasant feeling of self-consciousness may occur when one realizes that one is being watched or observed, the feeling that "everyone is looking" at oneself. Some people are habitually more self-conscious than others. Unpleasant feelings of self-consciousness are sometimes associated with shyness or paranoia.

Self-actualization is a term that has been used in various psychology theories, often in different ways. The term was originally introduced by the organismic theorist Kurt Goldstein for the motive to realize one's full potential: "the tendency to actualize itself as fully as possible is the basic drive ... the drive of self-actualization." Carl Rogers similarly wrote of "the curative force in psychotherapy – man's tendency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities ... to express and activate all the capacities of the organism."

The Art of Dreaming is a 1993 book by the anthropologist Carlos Castaneda. It details events and techniques during a period of the author's apprenticeship with the “Yaqui“ Indian Sorcerer, don Juan Matus, between 1960 and 1973.

Higher consciousness is the consciousness of a higher Self, transcendental reality, or God. It is "the part of the human being that is capable of transcending animal instincts". The concept was significantly developed in German Idealism, and is a central notion in contemporary popular spirituality. However, it has ancient roots, dating back to the Bhagavad Gita and Indian Vedas.

Arthur J. Deikman was a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology and Human Givens. He was also a contributor to The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease.

Animal consciousness, or animal awareness, is the quality or state of self-awareness within an animal, or of being aware of an external object or something within itself. In humans, consciousness has been defined as: sentience, awareness, subjectivity, qualia, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of self, and the executive control system of the mind. Despite the difficulty in definition, many philosophers believe there is a broadly shared underlying intuition about what consciousness is.

Self-realization is an expression used in Western psychology, philosophy, and spirituality; and in Indian religions. In the Western understanding it is the "fulfillment by oneself of the possibilities of one's character or personality." In the Indian understanding, self-realization is liberating knowledge of the true Self, either as the permanent undying Atman, or as the absence (sunyata) of such a permanent Self.

References

↑ Gary B. Melton (1995), The individual, the family, and social good: personal fulfillment in times of change, ISBN 978-0-8032-8221-6

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[1] Gary B. Melton (1995), The individual, the family, and social good: personal fulfillment in times of change, ISBN 978-0-8032-8221-6