The Key to Real Choices

To begin with, it means accepting who we are, including what we don’t like about ourselves. However, this kind of acceptance isn’t real until we’ve constructed a good idea of who can be at our best and at our worst. Getting to know ourselves also brings the startling realization that while we may think we are adults living a unique life, we are really living scripts written jointly by our society, families, churches, traditions, and friends. My previous book, Sacred Selfishness, shows the pathway out of these impersonal roles. Experience teaches us that building self-knowledge leads to authentic living, self-love and the awareness that something within us—whether we prefer to call it our true self, the Self or the Divine—cares about us and wants to guide our lives toward their highest potentials.

The process of self-discovery builds inner strength, integrity, and compassion. It increases our capacity to love, and these characteristics combine to create a person of substance. Paradoxically, the journey into ourselves soon leads us back into life with new energy and sensitivity. Then it takes us a step further into the dynamics that frame our relationships to other people and the Divine aspects of existence.

The most compelling energies in these dynamics are sexual and spiritual desire. As I’ve mentioned, passion means more than a sexual urge or religious suffering. It also means to be filled with a great desire for another person, an idea, the Divine or a full life. Both sexual and spiritual desire strongly influence the way we view ourselves as well as how we perceive other people—our outer relationships depend upon how well we have learned to understand ourselves. We may have learned to fear our passion, to deaden it or channel it into things that do not add to our lives—or expect our partners or someone else to kindle the flames of our vitality. At the same time, difficulties in our relationships challenge us to learn to know ourselves better. No matter how we look at our growth, whether from a spiritual or psychological perspective, self-awareness is the key to freedom from our past and gives us real choices. Through growing consciousness, sexuality and spirituality can support our efforts to live more passionately and to understand love in all of its forms.