'If there were a spiritual journey, it would be a 1/4 inch long, though many miles deep. It would
be a swerve into rhythm with your deeper nature and presence.'
John O’Donohue
The journey of becoming is a little like the gradual opening out of a lotus flower bud. Protected by the sepal that encases it, the bud remains dormant for some time and when it finally begins to flower, its opening out is a slow and steady process of unfolding. As each layer of petals unfurls, more of the flower's inner landscape becomes visible. The deep down beauty of it is revealed. It becomes. And so it is with us. The process of becoming is a long and infinitely slow unfolding of our inner being. As with the lotus flower, it requires us to shed the protective casing that we have built around it that we might give it space to breathe, room to emerge, freedom to become the glorious self that it is meant to be.
I was in my early twenties when I was introduced to the writings of the person-centred therapist, Carl Rogers. A particular lightbulb moment came when I began to read his book, ‘On Becoming a Person’. Some fifty years later, I can still remember the impact that coming across this book had on me. The words ’becoming a person’ seemed somehow to speak to a deeper part of me. They generated so many questions. What does it mean to become a person? How would I be different if I were to be fully engaged in that process of becoming? How would my life change if I were to find my way to the person I truly am?
At its deepest level, the journey of becoming is one of embracing our full personhood and for most if not all of us, it begins with learning to accept and love ourselves as we are. For paradoxically, self-acceptance is the beginning of change. What I have noticed in myself and my clients is that as we have journeyed together, we have moved towards a more deeply loving, unconditional acceptance and prizing of ourselves – not just of our strong, beautiful and gifted self, but also our vulnerable, wounded and broken self. When we look in the mirror and see that self reflected there, we have learnt to gaze at ourselves not with disapproval, judgment or hatred but with kindness, tenderness and compassion. John O’Donohue described this as ‘the beautiful, but difficult, spiritual work of learning to love your self.’
Contrary to what we are often taught, this love that we come to bear for ourselves is not self-centred or selfish. Indeed as O'Donohue recognised, the more fully we are able to love ourselves, the more freely we are able to draw on this ‘enriching fountain of love’ within us as we relate to others. It is not pride or arrogance. It is not a belief in our own superiority or perfection and it does not preclude a keen awareness of our limitations and growing edges and a willingness to be honest about them. For it is rooted in a depth of self-acceptance which enables us both to recognise and appreciate our positive qualities, strengths and gifts and at the same time, to face with equanimity our woundedness.
And it is this loving acceptance of all of who we are that also enables us to become more self-aware for we no longer fear what we might find if we look too deeply. We become less defensive, more accepting of and in touch with our own inner world. Our perceptions of ourselves are clearer and less distorted. We feel more deeply rooted in our own sense of self, more at peace with ourselves, more at home in our own skin. And as we do so, we become more real, more authentic, more natural and spontaneous.
It is not only that we begin to live more of the truth of who we are, however, for our way of seeing and relating to each other and the world also changes. We come to see each other in a different light, to respond to each other with the same acceptance, kindness and compassion that we offer ourselves. We learn to sense what lies behind each other’s masks, to look beneath each other’s brokenness, to search for the deeper truth of each other. Our longing and capacity for real intimacy deepens as our fear of it lessens. We become keenly aware of our kinship and inter-connectedness with others. We come to know that at a deeper level, we are all one with each other. And so we become more able to open our hearts and souls to each other freely and openly.
Finally, what matters to us changes. Our wants and needs change. Our desires and longings change. Our values and ethics change. We experience a growing indifference to material things. The acquisition of wealth, status and power no longer drives us as it gives way to a much stronger concern for the wellbeing of others and of the natural world we inhabit. We move towards embracing what the psychologist, Abraham Maslow called the 'being values', values such as aliveness, authenticity, compassion, goodness, honesty, justice, truth and wholeness. And in time, we develop what Rogers called 'a yearning for the spiritual'. We become preoccupied with the search for a deeper meaning and purpose in life. We long to find the inner peace that eludes us. We become drawn to mystical experience and what it reveals to us.
My own experience of living the journey of becoming and of sitting alongside others as they have lived theirs has convinced me that Kierkegaard and Rogers were right. There is nothing more important than embarking on this journey. It has also taught me that when we speak of the process of becoming, we are also speaking of the soul journey. For essentially, they are both ways of describing the same lived experience. To become a person is to come home to soul. It is to give birth to our deeper self, the seed of which, like the lotus flower bud, lies dormant within us awaiting its release.
Bibliography
John O’Donohue (1997) Anam Cara: Spiritual wisdom from the Celtic world. Bantam Books
Carl Rogers (1967) On Becoming a Person: A therapist's view of psychotherapy. Constable
©Copyright Kaitlyn Steele 2025
Kaitlyn Steele
This is so beautiful Kaitlyn, thank you from the depths of my soul x