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What is Self-Alignment and Why Does it Matter?

Three Kinds of Self-Alignment

The idea of self-alignment comes up in various ways in personal development circles. In my work, self-alignment plays a central role and means something specific.

Self-alignment is related to self-respect, self-knowledge, self-esteem, self-realization, self-love, and many more of the qualities that we might recognize as valuable. But in the way that I teach it, it is something distinct, primary, and of utmost importance for people wanting to create satisfying, joyful, and successful lives.

When I talk about Self-alignment, I am speaking of three things:

Aligning Your Three Operating Systems

First, there’s the alignment between your “three selves”:

  • your cognitive self (thinking)
  • your emotional self (feeling)
  • your sensational (somatic) self.

These are like three human operating systems, each with its own kind of language and functions. When all three are well understood, well maintained, and well aligned, a human being can operate at full capacity with maximum joy, effectiveness, and well-being.

These three operating systems can also be understood as three distinct aspects of self, three modes of consciousness, or three styles of engaging the self, others, and the world. I refer to them as emotion, cognition, and sensation, and I help people understand and inhabit each one according to its unique characteristics and functions.

Most people are accustomed to relying primarily on one of these three operating systems or modes, occasionally engaging a second if absolutely necessary, and ignoring the third altogether.

The nature of these three operating systems is that no single one can be used anywhere close to its full potential unless all three are finely tuned and harmonized with each other.

The possibility exists to master all three, and to learn to move comfortably and nimbly between them, using each one intentionally and to maximum benefit.

The highest benefit and best use of each of the three human operating systems is in relation to the self, first and foremost. When I engage my cognitive system maximally, I am thinking pleasing thoughts about my self. When I engage my emotional system maximally, I am feeling good about my self. When I engage my sensational system maximally, I am feeling good within my self. When I can feel the distinctness of each of these modes, and enjoy them in unison, I am in self-alignment.

From here, I have clarity about how to understand and engage my self, and from this clarity flows my clarity about how to understand and engage others, how to understand and engage the world, and how to understand and engage all of the various topics, circumstances, and experiences that arise in my life.

Aligning Desire with Feeling Good

The second kind of self-alignment that I teach is the alignment between your desire and how you feel about your desire.

Desire just means “what I want”, and most of the clarity that you experience in this life is ultimately clarity about your desire, about what you want next.

Desire is a cornerstone of human experience and is the primary evolutionary force shaping our individual and collective lives, so it’s worth understanding.

Here’s the simplest way to put it: When you want something and you feel good (eager, expectant, deserving, clear, easeful, certain, optimistic, hopeful, peaceful) about wanting it, you are in self-alignment. When you want something and feel bad (uncertain, doubtful, undeserving, guilty, ashamed, confused) about it, you are out of self-alignment.

When you know what you want, you feel clarity. When it feels good to have this clarity, you are in alignment.

There is much value in finding ways to feel good about wanting, and in cleaning up whatever doubt or ambivalence you might have inadvertently introduced along the way.

You will never extinguish your desire, and so you are wise to get into a good-feeling relationship with it. You will always want something more in this life, and so you will benefit tremendously from finding peace and exhilaration in your wanting!

Many people are struggling in their relationship to wanting, so a lot of my client work focuses on helping people develop a good-feeling, satisfying, and productive relationship with their desire. I’ve developed some very effective tools for doing this.

Aligning the Physical You and the Non-Physical You

Virtually everyone experiences their self as a physical being moving through time/space reality and interpreting their experiences via their five physical senses. From this perspective, you might seem to appear out of “nowhere” upon conception, are born, live in your physical body here on Earth for some time, and then die, disappearing again into “nowhere”.

Religion offers various ideas about an afterlife, and some bigger perspectives on our human experience. Spirituality, superstition, philosophy, and the sciences all weigh in accordingly.

But none of this is quite the same as having your own personal first-hand experience of your self as a non-physical, eternal being at the leading edge of an intelligent and ever-expanding universe. This happens sometimes through meditation or contemplative practices, sometimes through scholarship or study, sometimes through imagination, intention, and desire, and often through what might be called grace, or even just readiness.

If you have an embodied, felt sense of your self as eternal and infinite in essence, then you’ll understand what I’m talking about here. If you have a cognitive understanding of the concept I’m offering, that doesn’t go quite as deep, but it does point you in the right direction.

If you’re a hardcore skeptic and believe only in the physical reality that your five senses convey to you, that’s totally fine. You might not relate to this part of what I have to teach, but that’s OK. Skip it. Working with the first two aspects of self-alignment is valuable on its own.

Assuming you have some sense of your physical, temporal (temporary) self moving about for a limited time here in physical form on planet Earth (most people do), and assuming you also have some sense of your self as an eternal, non-physical aspect of an ever-expanding universe, how do you align these two aspects of self?

Do you feel eager as you use your bio-physical apparatus to comprehend and appreciate your non-physical eternal-ness? Or do you feel confused, doubtful or uncertain?

When you can simultaneously inhabit your physical, time/space reality AND your non-physical, boundless reality, and when this feels good and in harmony, you enter an unparalleled state of expansion, satisfaction, and clarity, and this represents a profound kind of self-alignment.

Three Kinds of Self-Alignment, All in Alignment

Self-alignment as I teach it takes three primary forms as outlined above, and as each form becomes stable in you through intention and practice a powerful synthesis occurs.

To be self-aligned in your three operating systems, in your feelings about your desires, and in your relationship between your physical self and non-physical self, opens the door to a new kind of clarity that is simply unavailable otherwise.

There is no end, no bottom, no upper limit on the personal growth, and the practical applications of this growth, that come with what I am describing here. There’s no final “arrival” or absolute mastery, only endless satisfaction in the expansion, in the process. Learning to take full satisfaction on this journey is the art of living, and it makes an artist and a master out of anyone who wants it enough to point themselves in that direction and keep themselves on the path.

I have been traversing this territory for some years now personally, and I am successfully guiding those who want guidance. This has become the focus of my professional work as I have evolved my therapy and counselling background into a thriving coaching and consulting business with self-alignment at its centre.

It Isn’t Work, It Isn’t Hard

This journey of self-alignment is easeful and full of joy. It is not treacherous in any way, and it need not be grueling.

Many people come to this work after struggling on a difficult path of growth, but this is different.

Those people out there repeating the mantra of “growth is hard” (bless their hearts) are doing something else, not this, which is fine of course. There are so many ways to proceed along this path of life, so many ways to grow and expand and discover, and none are wrong… but you get to choose for you.

Self-alignment as I’ve described it might seem like an immense task or monumental achievement, but it is your essence, it is who you really are. It is who you are when you don’t put obstacles in your way, when you decide that struggle, while it may have served you or felt necessary in the past, isn’t the way you want to proceed with your life.

The self-alignment I’m describing here is the most natural thing in the world, and it is a way of being that aligns you not only with your self, but with life itself… and really, as you might discover, there is no significant difference between the two. You are part of life, an incredible expression of life, and the leading-edge of life becoming ever more conscious of itself. Doesn’t that feel good?

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Campbell River Marriage Counselling Justice Schanfarber

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People who are consistently, enthusiastically, and unconditionally kind and gentle with themselves have satisfying and successful relationships.

People who are consistently, enthusiastically, and unconditionally kind and gentle with themselves have satisfying and successful relationships.

It’s a simple equation, and it works the other way too: People who are not consistently, enthusiastically, and unconditionally kind and gentle with themselves have troubled relationships.

This has been one of my key takeaways from a decade-long career as a couples therapist and marriage counsellor.

There is no stronger correlate to determine the quality of a relationship, and so there is no better intervention to improve a relationship than being consistently, enthusiastically, and unconditionally kind and gentle with yourself.

Your reasons for being kind and gentle with yourself, or your reasons for being otherwise, do not matter whatsoever.

People who have had terrible childhoods can learn to be consistently, enthusiastically, and unconditionally kind and gentle with themselves.

People who have experienced trauma can learn to be consistently, enthusiastically, and unconditionally kind and gentle with themselves.

People who are avoidantly attached or anxiously attached can learn to be consistently, enthusiastically, and unconditionally kind and gentle with themselves.

You can have a satisfying and successful relationship without a lot of hard work if you are simply willing to become consistently, enthusiastically, and unconditionally kind and gentle with yourself.

You don’t need to heal your attachment wounds, integrate your shadow, understand your personality type, be a better communicator, or try to negotiate agreements with your partner in order to make yourself ready for a satisfying and successful relationship.

If you will become consistently, enthusiastically, and unconditionally kind and gentle with yourself, you will become ready for the relationship you want.

If it sounds basic, it is. If it sounds simple, it is. But there is one small catch, two actually…

First, you’re probably not nearly as consistently, enthusiastically, and unconditionally kind and gentle with yourself as you believe. It will take a high degree of sensitivity and honesty to recognize the vast room for improvement that almost certainly exists.

Second, the improved relationship that you make yourself ready for through this approach might not be with your current partner. It might be, but it might not be. That’s up to them, not you. When you reach a certain level of being consistently, enthusiastically, and unconditionally kind and gentle with yourself, there will be a tipping point. Either your partner will be inspired by the change in you and will follow suit for themselves, and you will live happily ever after, or you will make yourself a match for a relationship that your partner is not a match for, and it will become clear that the relationship is no longer a good fit.

I’ve understood for a long time that personal growth, not partner negotiation, is the key to satisfying and successful relationships. This understanding sets me apart from most others in my field. The part of this that is becoming so clear now, the discovery that I love so much, is that personal growth is first and foremost a matter of being consistently, enthusiastically, and unconditionally kind and gentle with yourself. It isn’t work. It’s ease.

My R3 Relationship Masterclass is a three-hour deep dive into this fascinating, liberating, and enlightening topic. You are unlikely to hear these perspectives described like this anywhere else. Listen to a free sample here.

Distance sessions worldwide. Email justice@justiceschanfarber.com to request a client info package. www.JusticeSchanfarber.com

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Beyond Healing is Desire (“Do you want to do this the hard way or the easy way?”)

We can do this the hard way or the easy way

I remember, a number of years ago, spontaneously telling a new client “We can do this the hard way or the easy way.” I meant it most earnestly and graciously, and they heard it as a genuine invitation and choice.

The hard way, I explained, would be to trace your personal history in order to create a cohesive narrative that explains why you are having the kind of life experience that you are having. We would work to unearth memories and suppressed emotions, bringing whatever buried material we could find to the surface, at each step validating the unconscious choices you made in order to secure some physical or emotional need. All of this would hopefully bring a sense of integration and satisfaction, and would pave the way for greater choice in moving forward with your life and relationship.

Or, I said, we could do it the easy way. The easy way would be to begin from the premise that every twist and turn of your life has been purposeful and legitimate, and has brought you to this moment, and in this moment there is only one pertinent question: What do you want next?

An awareness of choice

Therapy, I believe, must always hold personal choice and freedom as the ultimate goal. We do therapy in many ways, for many particular reasons, but the overarching reason is to bring choice where there was not choice; more accurately, to bring an awareness of choice where there was not an awareness of choice.

It’s critically important to keep this vision, or else the therapeutic process can veer into the weeds, becoming an endless churning of past events, emotional murkiness, sociological phenomena, and the kinds of dilemma that psychology has been fascinated with for as long as it has existed.

I like to be clear about this from the onset with any new client, and I do not assume that prolonged difficulty or hard work is necessary to illuminate personal choice.

Much of the value of therapy is found within the fabric of the relationship between client and therapist. Much emphasis has been placed upon the trust bond, and the safety this creates. I use this trust to quickly model the choice that I want my clients to experience for themselves, from within, regardless of outer conditions, including other people.

Some people, many people, are almost ready to move into a more expansive experience of personal choice and freedom, but they come to therapy with an expectation that they will have to do a lot of hard work first. I do what I can to dispel this myth, and I begin by modeling the fundamental point that I am making here: I present a choice.

How do you want to do this? Are you seeking the satisfaction of excavating the past, or of creating your future? Either is fine. You choose. But each has a different energetic signature, and you can’t embody both equally at once.

Beyond healing is desire

To heal means to “make whole”. I know that you are already whole. I see your wholeness so clearly. Would you like to skip to the next step?

Beyond healing is desire. We can go right to the part where we talk about what you want. This is where the fun begins. None of the unwanted experiences from the past need any more attention beyond what you choose to give them. All of the unwanted experiences from the past have served to sharpen your clarity about what you want for yourself now. Are you ready to move into that place?

If you accept your unconditional wholeness, then “healing” becomes irrelevant, a thing of the past. It is desire that defines your present, and your future. What kind of experience do you want to create for yourself now, as you move forward? That is the question that any therapy should be leading to, and many people who seek therapy are ready to get into that question very quickly, if given the opportunity.

The question of desire – What do you want now? What kind of life experience do you want to be creating for yourself moving forward? – leads into a joyful process of discovery, if you allow it.

Discovering your relationship to desire (to wanting… desire and wanting are synonymous) is incredibly illuminating and empowering. It might be distressing at first, to see how cut off from your own desires you have been, but this distress need not lead down the old path of lament. You can learn to pivot quickly. Rather than attending to regret or sadness or shame, you can decide to move in the direction of wanted experience.

The client I mentioned at the beginning of this writing made their choice quickly and clearly. They wanted the easy way, and we have been having a wonderful time of discovery together ever since. We sometimes reflect upon that early choice-point, upon the question I put to them, and upon the clarity of their answer. We both find great satisfaction in this story and we occasionally tell it to each other in our sessions today, appreciating the shared knowledge of having laid a path in that moment that we continue to enjoy today.

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Campbell River Marriage Counselling Justice Schanfarber

Distance sessions worldwide. Email justice@justiceschanfarber.com to request a client info package. Learn more: www.JusticeSchanfarber.com

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The Selfish Secret to My Relationship Success

We got an awesome view of the moon on our second trip home!
Locked out and (potentially) hangry…

The other night my partner Vanessa and I pulled up to her front door only to realize that neither of us had brought a housekey. (You had the pleasure of getting to know Vanessa if you’ve listened to my R3 Relationship Masterclass).

It was a sinking feeling. We searched my van, we searched pockets and purses, and we dug through the luggage that we had brought from my house.

But I knew it was in vain. I knew the key we needed was back at my house, a full hour’s drive one way.

We each knew how the mistake had happened, and we each had our own role to play in it. A good case could have been made for blaming either or both of us.

It was nearly 9pm and now we were faced with the reality of turning around and driving for two more hours, back and forth, hungry, without dinner, to get this key that we had forgotten.

A recipe for blame and fighting

It was a perfect recipe for feelings of disappointment, or worse. It was the sort of situation that often precipitates a fight between partners, and this had certainly been the case in my own relationship history.

But not anymore, not for me.

I don’t ever turn against my partner and I don’t ever turn against myself. It doesn’t take discipline or hard work. It’s not because I’m especially empathetic or caring, or because I’m such a good communicator, or because Vanessa and I have negotiated an agreement about how we will behave with one another or speak to one another.

It’s not a product of ultimatums or understanding attachment types or love languages. It’s not complicated in any way, and I know that the essence of this ability has always been there within me waiting for my discovery and my embrace.

Purely selfish, really simple

The reason that I never turn against her or against myself is purely selfish, and really simple –

I care about how I feel. I like to feel good, and blaming myself or anyone else feels less than good. So I don’t do it.

It really is that simple.

Feeling good is my primary life objective, and I let very little get in the way of that.

When I talk about this people sometimes view me skeptically or even suspiciously. It turns out that many people are not comfortable with prioritizing feeling good, and they can sure offer a lot of justification and explanation for this!

I’ve discovered that a desire to feel good is the very best medicine for strengthening a relationship, as long I understand where my good-feeling experience actually originates. That understanding is an ongoing and endlessly satisfying process.

We want to feel good

At core, I believe that everyone wants to feel good. But a lot of people are getting the whole thing backwards. If you believe that feeling good is a product of conditions or circumstances (including other people, like your partner), you’re going to be in for a lot of trouble and a lot of hard work.

I have come to know that feeling good is a natural outcome of befriending myself completely, of never being unkind or impatient with myself, of always holding myself in nothing but positive regard, and of treating myself only with affection, care, and unconditional love.

This is the easiest and most natural thing to do, and yet it’s actually pretty rare. The idea of befriending myself fully is easy to grasp, but it took me nearly fifty years to embody the idea in a real and stable way, and it’s the actual embodiment of the idea, the day to day living of it, that makes a difference.

I’ve been working with couples as a counsellor and therapist for over a decade, and I’ve been fascinated with relationship dynamics for even longer.

I’ve explored every type of relationship theory and intervention imaginable. And all of this has brought me to a rather astounding, somewhat humorous, incredibly satisfying, and perfectly practical discovery –

My relationship is primarily defined by how I feel about myself and how I treat myself on a day to day, moment to moment basis.

I know, it seems too basic, too simple, and maybe too self-centered to be very relevant to relationships. When people want complicated explanations and interventions and “we” solutions to what seems like “we” problems in relationships, this idea of unconditional positive self-regard as the key to relationship success might seem a little far fetched.

So don’t take my word for it. Put it to the test. Treat yourself with nothing but kindness. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt always. I’m talking about your behavior and your thinking. I’m talking about the words that come out of your mouth, the stories and monologues that fill your head, the memories you choose to focus upon, and how you feel about yourself in each moment. You, like everyone, have developed some habits in these regards, but these habits can be changed, and it’s not that hard.

Give yourself the ultimate gift that you deserve

Give it a try. If you’re struggling in relationship, take a break from focusing on your partner or on the dynamic between the two of you, and give yourself the gift of unconditional love. See how it goes. See what kind of difference it makes.

Try it for a day. A week. A year. Maybe you’re ready for this.

In the moment that I became ready, I felt a clarity like nothing I’d felt before, and I never went back to self-doubt, to shame, to blame, or to feeding frustrations of any sort ever again.

I want this for you. I want it for you unconditionally. I know it is your true nature and your heart’s deepest desire. I know you are on your way to unconditional self-love, and that all roads lead to this particular Homecoming.

If you want support and encouragement from someone who knows this territory from the inside-out, listen to a free sample of my R3 Relationship Masterclass or email me and request a client package.

[Update – Vanessa has generously and skillfully shared her own telling of this story. Read on below…]

The instant I realized that Justice and I had both somehow forgotten to bring keys to my house when we left his home earlier that evening, I felt a wave of surreal disbelief. My buoyant happiness for having arrived at my home, my sense of delicious anticipation to cook dinner together, crumbled into shocked regret. There was my front door, only steps away, but we’d have to spend another two hours driving back and forth to his house to retrieve the keys before we could get inside. 

The question welled up in my mind: How could I have been so dumb? And then, almost immediately, I felt acceptance. There was no changing the situation with negative emotion. So I decided to go easy on myself. I still wanted to have a good time that night, and I felt more committed to feeling joyful than plunging into aggravation or distress. Choosing to feel good, no matter what, has become a habit for me. 

And so this silly key-less scenario, which could have blown up into stronger emotions like blame, anger, self-recrimination, shame, accusation, impatience, just mellowed out as I exhaled stunned laughter, and then let myself feel genuine amusement at the predicament. 

How bizarre! For over a year now, we’ve divided our time between our two homes, and usually we both carry copies of each other’s key. We’re smart and attentive people. But by some ridiculous and actually unfathomable turn of events, we’d locked ourselves out without realizing it. 

We laughed at ourselves on the drive back. We made jokes, told stories we hadn’t shared before, listened to music, and appreciated how much better it was to feel good than getting upset with ourselves or each other. 

Before this turn of events, I had been looking forward to watching the full moonrise that night over the ocean from my beach house. We had spread my parents’ ashes there less than a year before, under a full moon rise, following my mother’s final wishes, and so watching the moonrise there is always special for me. Now, instead of beholding this May Flower Moon from the deck together, we were on the road again. But after we’d picked up the keys and turned the car back towards my house, we gasped with delight when we saw the glorious full moon rise above the treeline over the highway. For most of our return journey, the full moon hung magically in our field of vision, right above the road, like a beautiful peaceful beacon guiding us back to our destination. Everything is always working out.

I was reminded of a previous key-error episode in my life, with a former partner, which had gone so differently. In that experience, 12 years earlier, my ex-partner and I were visiting a small community on a remote island when he locked my car keys in my car, at the far end of a dirt road, in a wilderness park. It was Sunday. No cell service. I was furious. I stormed ahead of him, raging and complaining, as we had to walk for over an hour to the other side of the island to ask for help at the only place that was open, a First Nations museum and cultural centre. We’d been there earlier in the day to see sacred Potlatch regalia, which had been confiscated by the Canadian government in 1921, when our country still outlawed these dances and ceremonies. (In fact, my great grandfather was the Christian missionary involved in this notorious colonial raid, so my emotions that day were already very strong.) When we finally arrived, I swallowed my righteous anger at my ex, pushed down my humiliated sense of stupidity and guilt, and asked the kind woman at the front desk for help breaking into my locked car. It was closing time, so she phoned her friends, then drove us back to my car, where the three locals used a bent coat hanger to quickly jimmy open my driver’s side door. I thanked them profusely. They refused money but offered us salmon. The woman told me, “Now you will never forget the beauty and generosity of our island.”

That experience has always stayed with me as a reminder that there is never any point in getting angry at myself, or anyone else, because I’d regret it later, and I don’t ever want to blind myself to the beauty and generosity of life. 

And so, when Justice and I finally got back to my house that night after our drive under the full moon, we had a wonderful fun time preparing our long awaited meal, played cards, and ate dinner at midnight with moonlight bathing the beach out front in a gentle glow, appreciating the beauty and generosity of life.  

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