BANANACUE
REPUBLIC
Vol I, No. 11
Nov 17, 2004
attitudes by H. A. de Veyra
In Search of
My Highest Potential
I have always believed that each and everyone of us was born with our
highest potential imprinted in our DNAs, or unconscious, or souls. And
even if our potential eludes us sometimes (we don't know where it is
located, or how we can get to it), it's there, hidden behind our endless
everyday concerns. And if we can only go beyond our thoughts and emotions,
if we can only reach deep inside us, it's there waiting to be discovered.
Armed with nothing but my questions to guide me, I went on a search for my
potential. My teacher (and teachers in the past) have always told me,
"Agnes, if you can only be your soul...". When I asked her what
she meant, she would answer in exasperation, "Be your soul!" I
guess, teachers are like that, full of puzzles so we can figure out things
on our own. But taking that as the guide-map to my search, I went off on
one of my never-ending journeys.
For me, trying to be my soul has not been an easy task. There is always
the temptation to give in to laziness, to weakness, and to being 'normal'
so I'll belong. I'd come up with all sorts of excuses and lies, not
knowing I was cheating myself out of something good in the process. But
how can I be my potential when I don't even know what it is? What would
make me better than I am now aside from what society defines as
'successful' (career, wealth, family)?
And what are souls really? What part of me is the soul? Is it my mind? My
higher self? (which elicits the same question, what is the higher self?)
My unconscious? I remember when I was in kindergarten, my older sister
told me that if we can see inside our unconscious, we'd be geniuses. And I
asked her, what is an unconscious and what is a genius? She said, a genius
is someone who knows the answer to everything and the unconscious is the
part of our brain that has the answer to everything. Somehow that remark
stuck with me, I wanted to know everything and I wanted to be a genius
from then on. My goal in life (among other things), was to find a link
from my thinking mind to my unconscious. I had the clue at last. Could it
be that what we call our unconscious is our soul's memory?
Our unconscious is well-hidden however, and psychology which discovered
it, still doesn't have the answer. Occult sciences say they have the
answer, saying it's the soul. Sigh... I have searched high and low for my
soul, and believe me when I say, that I've studied comparative religion to
find out if they have the answers, and they all say the same thing.
Meaning, they don't really know the answer in the practical sense. I've
reached a certain level of despair that I can ever be my soul, and
therefore, my potential.
I was talking with my friend at Bo's Coffee Club yesterday (it's this new
coffee shop in town that serves better coffee than Starbucks) and our talk
naturally went to relationships, because that's her favorite topic over
coffee. I was telling her about my despair of ever finding my soul and she
was telling me how relationships can bring out the best in her, or the
worst. And that rang a bell. Could it be, I wondered, the map I was
seeking? Relationships point to us our best and reduce our worst,
and very simply put, we'd see our potential. It occurred to me, how true
the books I read were when they said that we need relationships to grow as
persons.
Ergo, we need relationships to point us our highest potentials.
Relationships of course can be any interaction we have outside ourselves
and our neurosis. It could be with a friend, family members, co-workers,
the bosses or the karaoke-addict neighbors we hate, lovers, spouses, the
government, other nations, other races, even with God and the devil.
But how do I reconcile looking inwards to know myself better, with finding
the answer to my highest potential in my relationships? I needed one of
those A-ha! answers. My friend (with whom I was drinking coffee and whom I almost forgot
was in front of me) continued, '...because relationships with people make
you see yourself in them.'
Hm...
Following this premise, I imagined looking at myself in the mirror. I
imagined there would be more parts of me that I'd dislike than I will
admire because I'm like everyone else who's not vain. Looking more
closely, I would see my character etched on my face, my self-worth in my
posture, and my personality in my expressions. And thinking myself silly
imagining myself looking at the mirror I stopped my imagining there.
But see here, the world around us is a bigger version of the mirror in our
homes. What we see around us would be a projection of who we are inside.
When we meet a person for the first time for example, and they rub us the
wrong way, what would that say to us? It'd say that the traits we dislike
in that person are things we dislike or used to dislike (and have not yet
come to terms with) in ourselves. We don't really dislike the person, we
just hate what they're reflecting back to us about ourselves. Personally,
I don't think I want to know I've no spine, that I'm a whiner, or a
gossip, or prejudiced, or that I'm unreliable, especially as I'm not any
of those. It'd be easier to hate someone than to look inside myself and
ask difficult questions that would demand me to change.
In the same way, if we admire another person, there would be something in
them we would want to emulate, something we would want to become. The good
trait is mirrored back to us. It'd become an ideal to work towards. This
person would be filling a lack inside us, and if we're wise, we'd try to
develop this same trait to fill our own lack. If we're misguided and lazy
or weak, then we'd try to make the person fill this lack.
So, (going back to my coffee-reality), relationships are important because
they let us see who we are, and what we need to learn and improve in
ourselves. To become more human, we need people around us, especially
those that catch our attention because they have the potential to bring
out the worst and best in us. They make us see our behaviors, our
prejudices, our reasons for being.
It's true, we are incomplete and imperfect. And everyday, we make choices
that we think will make us more complete, more whole. Unfortunately many
of us give that right to choose to someone we perceive as better than
ourselves, thinking the lack we feel will be filled by that person. We've
become lazy cowards, unwilling to take responsibility for our own lives.
As I told my friend, it's so easy to lose one's identity in a
relationship, especially if the other has a stronger personality.
Then I realized that my friend had diverted me from my search
for my potential to talks about relationships again. But then, there is a
connection between the two. When we are searching for our potential, when
we want to be our potential, our relationship with the world becomes our
point of reference. To be cliché-corny about it, no man can ever be an
island. We can only rise up to who we are as a person when we're relating
with others the best we can and the best we are. For in a sense, we're
being human only when we rise to the occasion presented to us.
Posted 11/16/04. Send
your comment to bananacue_republic@yahoo.com
"My goal
in life (among other things), was to find a link from my thinking mind to my
unconscious. I had the clue at last. Could it be that what we call our
unconscious is our soul's memory?