Waking up in the world continued….
Pyramids
One of the many realizations that seem to sink deeper than our cognitive knowing during our awakening process or journey is that of our being connected to both those to come and those who came before us, our ancestors. At some level and to a certain extent or other, we are aware of our ancestors, but often in contemporary and western societies this sense of connection and continuity, as well as potential baggage, is often unexplored and unacknowledged. In one of the discussions in this series between Jamia Wilson and Kristie Peoples, the latter uses a metaphor to more or less describe how in some sense it feels like we are standing on the shoulders of our ancestors or the top of a pyramid. Once we are there we need to acknowledge and feel gratitude for their resilience, values and qualities that allowed them to come this far and the gift of life given to us through them, but then also let go of the dysfunctional or what may have served them and not be serving us in our life today.
Speaking of pyramids and waking up brings Maslow’s hierarchy of biologically rooted motivational needs pyramid into the foreground. It seems that to reach the top of the pyramid some sort of awakening or opening of awareness and knowing needs to take place. One needs to transcend a more limiting self and wake up to one’s more expansive nature and deeper values. On the fifth level of the pyramid lies self actualization, which basically, refers to our desire to become the most we can become. Vitality, creativity, authenticity, meaningfulness, playfulness are some of the features of being in this state and qualities required to get us here. While exploring what motivates someone once they have self actualized Maslow came up with intrinsic values such as goodness, truth, beauty, simplicity, justice, and so on, that transcend one’s personal self interests. If my memory serves me well, for it’s quite some time since I explored Maslow’s work and influence, this led to the emergence of concepts like ego-transcendence and peak-experiences. He believed that ‘the fully developed (and very fortunate) human being, working under the best conditions tends to be motivated by values which transcend his self. They are not selfish anymore in the old sense of that term. Beauty is not within one’s skin nor is justice or order. One can hardly class these desires as selfish in the sense that my desire for food might be. My satisfaction with achieving or allowing justice is not within my own skin; it does not lie along my arteries. It is equally outside and inside: therefore, it has transcended the geographical limitations of the self’ (Maslow, 1969). He also believed that only some people will become motivated at this level and he came up with the terms ‘metaneeds’. Often graphs of Maslow’s pyramid contain morality, lack of prejudice and clarity of facts, meaningfulness on the fifth level of self actualization. However, Maslow felt that intrinsic values are not always evident in self-actualized people. He also believed that the full definition or potential of our human nature includes these intrinsic values and that what we call spiritual life is rooted in the biological nature of our species. So, the lesser used hierarchy pyramid includes the need to cultivate values that transcend self-interest, which are biologically rooted in our species similarly to the other five needs, as a sixth distinct level beyond our need to self-actualize.
Finally, another pyramid I have interacted with more recently and that comes to mind is the Pyramid of Gender Discrimination at: https://www.google.com/search?q=strathclyde+gender+discrimination+pyramid with Homicide and Suicide at the top and Attitudes & beliefs (Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, Transphobia, Disablism, Ageism) at the bottom, Then from the bottom up there are Cultural macroaggressions: (Subtle, intentional or unintentional); Cultural invisibility, Social exclusion, Misrepresentation, Violent porn. Then there is the level of Physical expression: Physical/Sexual assault, and finally, Verbal expression: Sexual harassment and Making sexual jokes. The graph not only brings the bigger picture into view, but one also realises how prevalent many forms of this type of discrimination is in our societies today and how much is not even perceived as such and has been normalized or is denied.
On the island where I live there’s a country road several meters above sea level that joins two beaches. Unless it is exceptionally windy, blustery as Winnie the Pooh might say, I like to take short walks there, especially, since my dogs died for they gave me both the excuse and the motivation to go on much longer hikes. I like the fact that the road is on a hill and very close to the sea at the same time, which offers a beautiful view and stunning sunsets. So, yesterday as I was walking I saw a couple in the distance walking towards me. I didn’t really pay much attention until I realised that the man, who was big and substantially heavy, was walking in a somewhat frenzied zig zag way pulling off leaves from the trees flanking the road. Narratives started taking shape in my mind about him and his intentions as I wandered on which side of the road to walk on and if he would crash into me. I momentarily paused but then intuitively took the middle path and just kept walking. When I passed by them I said ‘hello’. My greeting was returned and I decided to abstain from making him wrong or judging his behaviour or intentions. It might have helped that I remembered a somewhat relevant quote 
by Pema Chodron about the middle way. ‘Instead of making others right or wrong, or bottling up right and wrong in ourselves, there’s a middle way, a very powerful middle way…… Could we have no agenda when we walk into a room with another person, not know what to say, not make that person wrong or right? Could we see, hear, feel other people as they really are? It is powerful to practice this way….. true communication can happen only in that open space’.