Today we were given the task of creating a self puzzle to help develop the accuracy of our self-awareness. I clearly interpreted it as a maze-like puzzle, rather than a jigsaw puzzle.
To start with, I took the seven virtues that I thought described me best, added love as the central core of all the virtues, and added empathy and sympathy, which I combined into compassion. I also took the seven negative traits that I felt described me best, and boiled them down to their basic attributes. I simply wrote them all down the side of a page, positive on one side, negative on the other, and I intended it to just be a rough copy, but when I started drawing it all turned out so well that I just carried on.
I feel I am usually quite a creative person, but I have never felt this way when producing a piece of art before. It was so natural, and everything fit with the least amount of planning, and I wasn’t worried about everything looking realistic either. That is one of the benefits of drawing things that don’t have a counterpart in reality – no-one has any frame of reference as to what envy looks like, so for the artist, if it feels right, it is right. I knew exactly when to move on to the next emotion or virtue, exactly which I should do next, and where it should be placed. I did it all in one sitting, in roughly two hours, and I was listening to some electro-funk at the time, which is a fusion of old school jazz with modern electronic beats. The time flew.
I will go through each aspect in turn.
Love is the biggest, most basic quality that I feel most of my other qualities emerge from, so that was placed in the middle, nice and large. Love seeps through to all other aspects in the form of tolerance and acceptance, and there are lots of little hearts randomly scattered throughout, even among the negative traits. The heart in the middle is full of love, as well as lots of little fragments of the other virtues and negative traits.
I combined empathy and sympathy to form compassion for simplicities sake. It emanates from the heart and flows outwards. It bubbles off into creativity a little, in that I love to know what emotions people are experiencing when they make art, and sometimes can feel moved by a powerful painting.
Courteousness is related to my personal motto “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. I treat people with courtesy, and expect the same basic acceptance back. I chose pink because it is a softer kind of love than the love that comes straight from the heart. Courteousness also flows up into compassion and becomes patience, because if I feel someone needs help, I will help them, and if I feel sorry for them, I will be patient with them. There is a bit of self-protection around patience – I will not wait forever if I feel someone is messing me around.
Creativity is rising out of the top of the heart, in the form of Metatron’s cube. It is a piece of “sacred” geometry in which all five basic three-dimensional shapes can be found. It is a spiritual piece of design, dating back to before records were kept, and appeared in diverse cultures and civilisations all around the world. I chose it to represent my creativity because Metatron’s cube and the ideas and theories around it are becoming increasingly influential on my creative work. Discovering this whole new world of spirituality inside of me, and the healing ability it contains, is another thing that sparked my desire to help people and train to become a counsellor.
Curiosity is rising out of my creativity, because it is my creativity that always piques my interest in things. I learn of something beautiful and I need to know more, I need to look at it close up, I need to look at it from far away, I need to understand it. I want to know more about human consciousness, how and why we do things – digging into my psyche like this is fascinating and enlightening. I want to know more so I can harness the knowledge and make good use of it in a creative way.
Diligence and prudence could have easily been combined to one aspect, so I chose to give them very similar shapes and colours. They extend out through my cowardice and are penned in by fear – not that diligence and prudence are negative attributes, but I feel it is my sense of perfection that drives my desire to explore things to excessive degrees. I don’t want to stand out by making mistakes, so I am very careful not to make mistakes. If that means being thorough and thoughtful and cautious, so be it. I have come to realise that perfection is not a realistic goal for any human endeavour, and strive for ongoing improvement rather than an end goal of a finished article.
Jealousy became envy, because envy is traditionally green, and that fit better as a colour/attribute combination. It is mainly rooted in the dark blue triangles of fear, and is usually focused on things I lack. I covet physical and mental attributes I feel I lack, as well as material possessions and skills. Envy also rears itself in creativity and curiosity – I am envious of those who produce good art, those who can draw good pictures or create amazing vistas. I am envious of those who ask good questions, and think of the appropriate solutions.
Cowardice requires an extra little bit of explanation in that it has expanded in meaning. It now covers my desire to stay anonymous, stay safe and hidden, and camouflage myself in plain sight by not attracting attention to myself. It is largest in between creativity and envy, with fear right behind it, but it also sticks out in various other directions, almost invisibly. It grips the heart, stands tall through my courteousness, my compassion, my creativity and curiosity, and it forms a strong backbone for envy. It is insidious, and barely noticeable. So often I want to do something, but am held back by my cowardice. It doesn’t necessarily strike up when I least expect it, but to be more accurate, it strikes when I most expect it, but I am powerless to do anything about it. I am getting better at being brave, and am pushing myself further every day to be less cowardly, express my opinion and do what I really want.
Fear is linked in to cowardice, and comes straight from the heart. It angrily spikes out and is visible in all the other aspects to some degree. Like I mentioned above, they form a barrier around diligence and prudence, I want people to know that I am someone who does good things, doesn’t make mistakes, because I am fearful of rejection. If I make mistakes, I believe people will reject me, and I am scared of that. Fear forms the basis of envy and the yellow streaks of cowardice that I am working so hard to eradicate from my sense of self. A little fear can be good, no-one ever feels 100% positive about every new thing they do, there is always a little bit of fear there. I just wish I wasn’t so fearful all the time. It is something to work on. Turning up to class every week is a good start. I am often trying new things, pushing myself out of my comfort zone.
Procrastination links in to self-protection, in that if I stay still in my house, I am safe. As I wrote above, if I stay hidden, I will survive, and that is the prime directive of all conscious organisms. Excess was always a self-protection mechanism as well; smoking, over-eating and excessive responsibility avoidance salved my emotional wounds. Self-protection cocoons around all of my negative attributes and hides them from view. It is like a maze with a million entrances, but no exits. All routes lead back to the start. All you do is go around and around in circles, trying to find a way out, until one day you realise that there is no real way out once you go in, so you decide to stop playing the silly, pointless game.
I have learned that I think I may have a better understanding of myself than I thought I did, considering how easy it was to draw the whole thing out and make it look and feel so coherent. I do feel now that everything is as interlinked as it looks on the page. All my emotions, virtues, aspects, behaviours, attributes, whatever you want to call them, are so intrinsically interwoven, that my self truly is a puzzle.
