Personal Autonomy (Intellectual, Combined)

Personal Autonomy is the ability to be clear and consistent in our Truth even though others may not agree with us. It is about learning to speak our Truth while being responsible for the effects it creates with others. Personal Autonomy reflects that we can find creative ways to say the truth that would not adversely impact others. What occurs when people speak their truth without hurting others is that everyone trusts them. This is why we tend to admire individuals who speak their Truth and chart their own path. Politicians tend not to operate in this mode because they define themselves by what others want them to be. This is the opposite of true Personal Autonomy, which focuses on honoring what we know as our experience, even though it does not agree with others’. Politicians are masters about taking Positions that distinguish them from other politicians. The problem with compromising our Truth is that we do not grow in our ability to know what our Truth is. When we step into our Personal Autonomy others may not wish to work with us because we are not willing to compromise ourselves in the ways they need us to be.

The more we can distinguish our internal strengths and weaknesses and tell the Truth to others around us, the less we are a burden to them. This is because we are inherently responsible for solving our own problems and no longer become enmeshed in the problems of others. When we cannot distinguish our stuff from others’ it creates a circumstance when being in relationship is a burden to anyone who is conscious. Unconscious individuals my just accept this confusion as what is natural because they have always been in enmeshed or disengaged relationships. When we have not honored our Personal Autonomy, we are suggestible and want to be agreeable for fear that others will not accept us if they knew our Truth. Our confusion can easily become co-dependence when we need others to be there for us in ways we cannot honor in ourselves. This is why the first step in having more Personal Autonomy is not defining ourselves in terms of our fears, but in terms of our heroic nature to address the world around us in a fair and clean manner.

If our parents were confused about their problems, particularly strengths versus weaknesses, they probably continued to undermine our Autonomy by making it appear that we were always the problem. This reflects how they projected their problems on us because they were unwilling to deal with their problems within themselves. This indicates another quality of Personal Autonomy—the ability to take responsibility for our Truth by both admitting when we are wrong, or when there could be distortions that lead to misinterpretations of our experience. In such situations, we either ignored Personal Autonomy or tended to over do it by taking on opposite roles, beliefs and behaviors to differentiate our selves from our parents. This is the only way that we could isolate and insulate our selves from our parents. This is not true Autonomy, but a reactive response to our conclusion that we are defining ourselves in terms of our parents. This judgment is probably true if it is about trying to superficially create a sense of independence and distance. When we build our Personal Autonomy, instead of taking extreme views, we tend to find the middle ground where we are not reactive as an indication that we are on the right tract. True Autonomy builds us creatively from the ground up, based on who we are and not reflecting how our parents trained us to be.

Until we manifest Personal Autonomy it is hard to trust our selves and others. This is because when we are confused about our boundaries, we are also likely confused about the outcomes we seek. This generates a poor sense of responsibility because we cannot identify what we are risking, not anticipate the consequences of our behavior long term. With Personal Autonomy we distinguish ourselves from others with clarity, and we know and can see the likely consequences to our behavior. This allows us to grow and adapt to the Universe around us so we become more proficient at taking appropriate risk. Risk-taking is also one of the qualities that others admire in us because they are so entranced by their safety and security needs. It is not that we do not have these needs, it is just that these needs to be counter-balanced by our ability to express our Life, Light, and Love energies.

Personal Autonomy reflects an understanding of both Innocence and Strength on both real and repressed levels. When the differences are clearly seen and accepted within us, then everything is above board and clear in our attractions. When we have repression, it creates repulsions between Innocence and Strength that are not recognized or above board. On the intellectual level there is a major duality to deal with. We ask, “Can we be in our authentic Creative Power rather than our defensive power. If we are in our defensive power we use fear or desire to manipulate them. Being true to ourselves, and not coercing others to agree with us builds our Personal Autonomy. Giving up our ability to fix, change, blame or shame others is how we come into authentic ownership of our Creative Nature. Otherwise, our inner dualities become defensive rationales, making others the source of all the problems in our lives.

What we want to reassess is how our fears and desires have made us self-serving to the point that others cannot really trust us. It is only by confronting our defensive identity and shifting into an inclusive way of seeing our own truth that we become able to be trusted. Becoming more open to the larger truth around us allows us to be more courageous in how we speak to others. This is what makes us admirable to others and to ourselves. It is the capacity to tell our Truth beyond conventional Beliefs, seeing that Creative Differences and Uncomfortable Similarities can actually be a blessing in disguise. It is Personal Autonomy that supports us in resolving conflicts within ourselves and with others. Personal Autonomy reflects a degree of quality or integrity where we do not need to prove ourselves or conform to others to feel okay. The gift of Personal Autonomy is that others come to count on us for unusual insights because we do not compromise ourselves to make things look better. What others see in us is the capacity to get things done without being wishy-washy.

When we are repulsed with those with Personal Autonomy it is because we believe we cannot live up to others’ expectations. This is usually the result of being put down, made wrong, or scapegoated in childhood. When our parents were not willing to listen to us, or our ideas, we were frequently made the problem instead of the solution. This led us to identify with our problems and not to trust positive ways of engaging solutions. As a result, we naturally become fearful and unable to process experiences when individuals present us with something that seems too good to be true. What comes up is to believe that these individuals are over-optimistic seducers who do not see life realistically. We further want to avoid all change because it is seen as hiding deeper issues, which will trap us in suboptimal solutions. We are particularly repulsed by individuals who seem to have greater consistency, confidence, and the gift of gab, for they are sirens of disaster.

In this diagram we can see there are four ways to develop Personal Autonomy as an attraction. When we are initially growing it is because we no longer want to deny our personal Truth. Usually, it is the result of going along and getting along and being lost in the “herd” with others. As a result, we have no experience of being seen for being who we creatively are, nor do we feel a sense of personal power to distinguish ourselves from others. As a result, we feel trapped by what others believe about us that does not feel resonant with who we are. We would explain this as being overwhelmed by our internal creative dissonance because we have no capacity to distinguish the differences of who we are vs. the differences we see in others. Others would call this being enmeshed in our image, conditioning, and imprinted beliefs and are not truly who we are. Both Innocence and Strength are ways we can reach out and explore what is true within ourselves. This is why they are precursors to our accepting that we need to declare ourselves on our own terms.

Intellectual Truth is where we define ourselves in terms of our Thoughts. This is further enhanced by our focus on time as a measure of results. The more we anchor our experience based on the accuracy of Content, the more individuals who have masculine Creative Expressions, particularly Scholar, excel. In the United States, our intellect is unrealistically seen as the measure of our character. This is because character is really a combination of our Emotions integrated with our Thoughts. The downside of Intellectual Truth is that we can become pundits, theoreticians, and lose our flexibility at integrating intellectual options, rather than Thoughts being measured for their effectiveness through competition. This intellectual Darwinism produces defensive differences without providing any true meaning. Intellectual Truth is built when our internal experience leads to external understanding. Without alignment between these two we have no way to transcend our knowledge framework, which means we never become wise.

Emotional Truth is when we define ourselves in terms of our Feelings and Emotions. In this situation, we believe Truth is based on the inclusiveness of our Context. The problem is that most individuals do not even know the difference between their Feelings and Emotions. Feelings are reflections of our Sensations and tell us about our physical well being, and Emotions are reflections of our Thoughts and tell us about how well we have integrated our Knowing. When Feelings and Emotions are in alignment, Passion is produced. When they are out of alignment, Anxiety is born and becomes an ongoing obstacle that confuses us. When we are out of balance between our Emotions and Thoughts, we are also dramatic because we are trying to experience this inner conflict that we cannot get our hands around. Individuals who are identified with their Emotional Truth are usually attracted to individuals identified with their Intellectual Truth.

Transpersonal Truth only occurs when we fully integrate our internal truth on every level (Sensations, Feelings, Emotions, Thoughts and Intuition). This means that we can separate our internal experience of the Truth from the Truth of others around us. The benefit of doing this is that then we can compare and contrast our Truth with others’ to be able to find where there is natural alignment. This can only occur when we are no longer afraid that our Truth can be denied, discounted, or made wrong. This is the result of taking ownership for our own thinking, realizing that we have to operate with a sense of personal integrity to be effectively seen as a person that deserves the integrity of others’ truths. Personal Autonomy becomes heroic to others when they have not yet achieved this level of integration and embodiment. It is, of course, irritating for people with this skill to be around those who do not have this skill.  This is why individuals frequently make relationship choices based on whether they can trust the Truth of their partners in the moment, or not.

Lessons of Personal Autonomy

When we speak our truth without embellishment or fear, it clarifies our experience enormously. We begin to feel like an important participant in our lives. Our ability to speak up allows us to provide input into situations around us. In short, our Creative Nature can be seen and appreciated by others. On the other hand, if we are used to speaking completely from our safety and security fears, the truth does not set us free but rather traps us in issues that are never resolved. This is because when we believe in our fears over our Creative Nature, we frequently create tragedies as a way of discovering we can survive them. This occurs because fear becomes a magnet that tells the universe we need to learn how great we are. Individuals who shift into Personal Autonomy no longer need to define themselves in terms of their fears or displaced desires. They are able to attract individuals who can tell their truth and grow. It is important to note that individuals without Personal Autonomy feel safer when they are with others who deny Personal Autonomy. The choice, therefore, is ours.

Personal Autonomy is also a tool to question codependent and defensive patterns. The more we can own our own Attachments, Positions and Projections, the more clarity we can have with our partners, and the less demanding we are about changing them to meet our needs. Many individuals do not understand or appreciate how their fears and desires get transferred onto their partners. Psychically this happens in a very natural but devious manner by having opposite attractions. The more we define ourselves in terms of the attractions that our partner needs to respond to in order to make us feel better, the less truth is shared or acknowledged. The goal, therefore, is to be able to speak to our own ongoing changes in the attractions we experience over time. This indicates our ability to grow and evolve into a major co-creative contributor. As we balance out Innocence with Strength with a desire to become more heroic, it supports us in speaking our truth in a harmless and powerful way. The beauty of this process is that we discover that our truth can invoke greater truths from others, and can catalyze new thinking in others that allows them to go beyond their personality frameworks.