If this is your first visit to this blog series, a bit of background might be useful for you but I hope that each post will be able to bring value on its own as well.
Previous posts:
In my previous post on Congruence I mentioned the importance of balancing Self, Other and Context in our communication. I’m planning on going more in depth on what these different parts entail in the next few posts. First out is the Self.
Being fully Congruent to oneself is extremely difficult since it involves having access to a breadth of tools while at the same time being conscious about all the different depths of the unique person that I am. It takes conscious effort to do this and we won’t have the will or energy to do it all the time so Congruence is a gift that we can offer ourselves and other people but it can not be taken for granted. Please remember that; Congruence is always a conscious effort that we can make, we may not always consider every person and every situation worthwhile our effort to be congruent but the choice that we make will always affect the quality of our interactions.
Virginia had one metaphor for describing our breadth of resources; the Self Mandala, and one metaphor for talking about the depth of our person; the Iceberg. They are not orthogonal to each other but rather affect each other on all levels but I will treat them a bit more simplistic as I describe these metaphors in this and my next post.
The Self Mandala
The Self mandala was Virginias way of talking about the breadth of tools we can access to use all aspects of ourselves. She divided the Mandala into eight different dimensions; the Spiritual, the Contextual, the Nutritional, the Interactional, the Sensual, the Emotional, the Intellectual and the Physical. Each dimension represents one of our resources in isolation, but the dimensions are also deeply interconnected with each other and affect one another in reinforcing ways both positive and negative.
Spiritual – this part of the Mandala relates to our relationships to whatever each of us identifies as bigger than ourselves. It could be a belief system, some thoughts about meaning of life or whatever life force we might acknowledge. For religious people this might be easy to fathom but for those of us having a secular worldview this part of the Mandala can seem difficult to grasp or even redundant. Personally I find it as a way for me to consider if I can have a purpose in anything ‘good’ that is larger than myself and that will hopefully survive myself. Perhaps something as simple as this quote by Elton Trueblood:
“A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.”
No matter what our view on the Spiritual side is, it will be an important part of our value system and in being Congruent to ourselves we must acknowledge these values and nurture them with our integrity. It doesn’t mean that they can’t change and that we shouldn’t stay curious to alternatives, but at any given moment, our current value system are a large part of what defines us.
Physical – our body, all parts of it, has always been one of our greatest resources. It has been intrinsic in both taking us to the communications but also as an expression for a large part of the communication. This makes it an essential part of our Congruent communication. A body that does not deliver the same message as our words and intention, is at its best only confusing but at its worst a signal that we’re not being true to ourselves or the Other. Today we are able to meet other people without being there in person as well but the wellbeing of our bodies is still on top of the list of importance. When our body is taken care of we have a much higher chance of being rewarded with it responding to our needs with good health and working abilities. The dependencies between our physical wellbeing and all other parts of the Self Mandala are strong and it’s often not obvious why the physical parts of ourselves are not working or responding in the ways we want them to, so in order to keep one of our most important tools for communication in good shape we also need to attend to all of our other resources.
Intellectual – our reasoning parts. This is the part of us that does conscious processing and planning, the part that we use for deliberate learning and reflecting. If we lack curiosity, this is the part that will be stifled in its’ growth most obviously. We need to keep feeding our intellectual dimension by asking questions and listening attentively to the answers in order for it to stay in balance and work in our favor. It is also important to remember that intellect without empathy and compassion just puts us in the same league as computers and robots. We need our thoughts and our emotions to collaborate for us to stay Congruent and when there’s a dissonance between the two, we need to acknowledge that and be able to reflect on why.
Emotional – this is everything that relates to our feelings and inner emotions. Unlike our physical body, our emotions will not be broken but our relationships with them can be more or less healthy and they may work more or less well for us. When this part of the Mandala is in imbalance, it is not the feelings themselves that are wrong but we might have to look at our acceptance of them and also why we are having them. An honesty towards why we are having certain feelings might reveal new ways of coping with them which in turn might change the feelings themselves.
Sensual – our senses that help us perceive the world around us through sound, sight, taste, smell and touch. These are often seen as ‘objective’ sensors that are reading data from our environment but their objectiveness is strongly skewed by both physical limitations as well as our past that has taught us to filter and interpret the data in ways that might have been beneficial to us at some point in time. The touch of a loved one might feel completely different from a similar but unwanted touch by someone we don’t like. To be Congruent we need to employ all our senses to understand what is going on but we also need to be aware of their imperfectness. The alliance with physical well-being is important for our senses but sometimes we have to cope with them slowly or suddenly degenerating by illness, accident, genetics or just age. This makes it even more important for our Congruence to be transparent with the limitations of our senses to Other and Self and be open to the fact that things are not always what they seem to be.
Interactional – this represents our relationships and interactions with the people we meet but also our inner dialogue. We are all dependent on healthy relationships with people around us and many of us suffer deeply when these relationships are hurting, starving or as during the Corona pandemic, being cut off to a large extent. It is often through our relationships with other people that we get both mental as well as physical input to our lives. While our needs for interactions with other people may differ from person to person, none of us grow from loneliness. We grow as individuals and as a society through interactions and Congruence without interactions is just a small broken chip out of a beautiful piece of art.
Nutritional – this part of the Mandala relates to what we feed our bodies, the food, drinks and other substances that we consume in various ways. Certain parts are vital for survival and other things might increase our enjoyment while some might be feeding an addiction. All of them together will affect our well-being strongly but the balance is difficult to strike since some indulgence might increase our physical and mental health while other is directly detrimental to it. The nutritional dimension will strongly affect our physical parts and our emotional parts often affects how we approach the nutritional dimension. The nutritional part of the Self Mandala is to a large extent about nurturing other parts.
Contextual – this is about the physical surroundings here and now. We will be talking about Context in a wider sense in later posts but for the Mandala, Context involves time, light, sound, space, color, temperature and other physical traits of our environment. The environment that we currently reside in will affect all other parts of the Mandala. Remembering history and being able to plan for the future are extremely important skills but in staying Congruent it is crucial that we are present in the Here and the Now.
Caring for Self is about caring for all of these aspects, striving for a balance within them and between them. The Mandala is like a wheel that needs to be balanced and even all around. It is a system where all parts interact and any attempt to optimize one aspect will most likely end up shaping the wheel unevenly and ensure a bumpy ride. Congruence comes from our ability to be aware of, cater to and to have access to all of these different parts.