The Unfinished Self: Embrace Your Lifelong Project
Have you ever noticed how our world encourages constant acquiring, equating “more” with “better”? This belief shapes how we approach personal transformation as we often think it’s about gaining something new.
In reality, transformation is about letting go and discovering what is already within us. Rather than accumulating, transformation is the process of moving from doing to being, of uncovering our true nature.
The Lifelong Project: From Doing to Being
This lifelong project, moving from doing to being, reveals that transformation is not about adding or fixing but about recognizing our inherent wholeness. Recognizing this wholeness is a movement from doing to being.
Many wise voices echo the truth of moving from doing to being:
Meister Eckhart urges us to shift from a surface understanding of ourselves to a deep, imperative experience of life.
Jim Finley, in Turning to the Mystics, and Christine Valters Paintner remind us that we “realize union, [we] don’t acquire it.”
In my own experience, true connection with Love (God) arises through ordinary life. It gently, naturally and organically moves us from doing into being if we let it.
While self-help approaches are a starting point, at some point a crucial realization occurs within us, which is that the “project of self” is not about fixing flaws or adding personality upgrades but about discovering our True Self.
The journey is about surrender. In Meister Eckhart’s language, this surrender is named as detachment. Jim Finley might say it’s about not letting our limited self-views, traumas, or wounds have the final say on who we are.
When we slow down and really listen, which is to reflect on our thoughts and actions, we begin to see that the self has a story. Unfortunately we come to believe this story as the final truth about ourselves. These stories shape our beliefs, which shape the personality, which then becomes convinced that this story is the reality of what we are.
Yet you are much more than your story.
At your core, you are Essence—a subtle Presence that is always abiding and guiding you. You’ve likely felt this many times, even if you called it something else: the surge of love when holding a newborn, the exhilaration stirred by powerful music.
This felt sense is the core of who you are. The spiritual task is not to create it, but to uncover it.
Transformation begins at birth because you are already whole and filled with abiding Essence. The “work” is simply to allow, surrender, and notice what is present, moment by moment.
There really is nothing to do but be with what is real.
Know Thyself: Meeting Your Own Depth
In order to meet your own depth you may consider a tool such as the Enneagram. The Enneagram, as taught by Russ Hudson, emphasizes interiority. Discovering this interiority can lead to a shift from a “human doing” to a “human being.”
Johannes Metz succinctly said that “Becoming a human being involves more than conception and birth.” This becoming a human being is the real “work” and it is done by discovering the areas of life that must be loosened and let go of.
This call towards interiority is found in the ancient mandate “know thyself.” One such famous example is inscribed at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi.
When we combine “know thyself” with interiority, we embark on a journey into consciousness into what is actually real. As Paintner writes, we must let go of “everything that keeps us from seeing this reality,” which I would simply name Love.
For me, the Enneagram has been a reliable and insightful compass for this journey. It maps the specific mechanisms by which we lose sight of ourselves.
As someone who sits at Point Nine, the forgetting is of Love and true engagement. This leads me to believe I must make myself small and unseen. Interiority involves becoming aware of these inner movements and taking responsibility for them.
Metz’s Poverty of Spirit explores this beautifully through the idea of radical self-emptying and vulnerability, which allow us to encounter the inner landscape without egoic defenses. Dropping these defenses challenges old beliefs that something is “wrong” with us if life isn’t perfect.
Our culture neither applauds nor teaches us the strength of humility required to tend and care for ourselves in this way.
Curiosity and Play: Engines of Uncovering
Uncovering our interior is where things get real and healthy doses of curiosity and play can support this uncovering. Curiosity and play help us abandon the ego’s high-stakes seriousness and approach the work with a spirit of exploration.
This spiritual attitude curiosity and play is an adjustment that aligns us with reality. It also helps us see that the Divine emerges from ordinary life; there is no boundary between sacred and secular. This no-boundary reality is, in itself curious, and the natural environment for play.
Curiosity: A Kinder Way of Looking at Yourself
Our personality, as mapped by the Enneagram, is a rigid structure built on unconscious strategies to recapture a lost sense of Essence. To loosen this structure we need a non-judgmental lens.
Curiosity provides that lens. It transforms the self-critical “Why am I doing this again?” into the gentle inquiry of “That’s interesting. What need am I actually trying to fulfill?” or “What happens if I try something different?”
This shift mirrors the Enneagram’s aim to move beyond fixation (the personality’s distorted belief) and reconnect with a larger, more spacious sense of Self. Curiosity becomes the bridge between the fixated personality and Essence.
For example, as a Point Nine who forgets Holy Love and tends to shrink, curiosity might sound like “What happens if I experiment with asserting my space today? What sensations arise when I don’t merge?”
Curiosity opens the necessary space for a new reality to emerge.
Play: Giving Yourself Permission to Be Imperfect
If curiosity is the tool for non-judgmental observation, play is the environment that gives us permission to fail.
Transformation is often messy. We may cling to the old belief that if something needs tending then something is “wrong.” This type of rigid self-judgment is what our culture reinforces.
The very act of play loosens this grip. Just as traditional Navajo weavers intentionally include a flaw in their design, play invites us to weave “imperfection” into our carefully constructed egoic lives.
Play dismantles the pressure to perform, allowing genuine change. Instead of fighting our flaws we should see our rigid and distorted thoughts and feelings as opportunities for discovery, which are opportunities for transformation.
Conclusion: Embrace Yourself
To truly live from Essence is to live the imperative experience. As we embrace the work of observing our stories we move from a “doing” human to a “being” human. With curiosity and play, transformation unfolds gently, allowing a natural surrender and softness towards our being.
We might say that curiosity and play illuminate our way, opening us to the subtle Presence always abiding within and around us.
