I've just had one of those moments that Carl Jung calls a synchronicity.

Here I am, picked up my DIRT RAG magazine to look for the beautiful Ellsworth Epiphany frame.

Heroes is on telly, and right when I am reading the copy for the ad, one of the actors starts talking about Abraham Maslow's definition of a peak experience, which he called an epiphany.

How you like them peaches?



Dream bike... epiphany... synchronicity... James Joyce, where are you?

Here's more on what Maslow calls self-actualisers, at the top of his hiearachy of needs:

"The question becomes, of course, what exactly does Maslow mean by self-actualization. To answer that, we need to look at the kind of people he called
self-actualizers. Fortunately, he did this for us, using a qualitative method called biographical analysis.

He began by picking out a group of people, some historical figures,
some people he knew, whom he felt clearly met the standard of
self-actualization. Included in this august group were Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Adams, William
James, Albert Schweitzer, Benedict Spinoza, and Alduous Huxley, plus 12
unnamed people who were alive at the time Maslow did his
research. He then looked at their biographies, writings, the acts and words of those he knew personally, and so
on. From these sources, he developed a list of qualities that seemed
characteristic of these people, as opposed to the great mass of us.

These people were reality-centered, which means they could
differentiate what is fake and dishonest from what is real and genuine. They
were problem-centered, meaning they treated life's difficulties as problems demanding
solutions, not as personal troubles to be railed at or surrendered to. And
they had a different perception of means and ends.They felt
that the ends don't necessarily justify the means, that the means could be
ends themselves, and that the means -- the journey -- was often more
important than the ends.

The self-actualizers also had a different way of relating to
others.
First, they enjoyed solitude, and were comfortable being
alone. And they enjoyed deeper personal relations
with a few close friends and family members, rather than more shallow
relationships with many people.

They enjoyed autonomy, a relative independence from physical
and social needs.And they resisted enculturation, that is, they were not susceptible to social
pressure to be "well adjusted" or to "fit in" -- they were, in fact, nonconformists in the best sense.

They had an unhostile sense of humor -- preferring to joke
at their own expense, or at the human condition, and never directing their
humor at others. They had a quality he called acceptance of
self and others, by which he meant that these people would be more
likely to take you as you are than try to change you into what they thought
you should be. This same acceptance applied to their attitudes
towards themselves. If some quality of theirs wasn't harmful, they let it
be, even enjoying it as a personal quirk. On the other hand, they
were often strongly motivated to change negative qualities in
themselves that could be changed. Along with this comes spontaneity
and simplicity. They preferred being themselves rather than
being pretentious or artificial. In fact, for all their nonconformity,
he found that they tended to be conventional on the surface, just where
less self-actualizing nonconformists tend to be the most dramatic.

Further, they had a sense of humility and respect towards
others -- something Maslow also called democratic values -- meaning
that they were open to ethnic and individual variety, even treasuring
it.

They had a quality Maslow called human kinship or Gemeinschaftsgefühl
-- social interest, compassion, humanity. And this was accompanied by a strong
ethics, which was spiritual but seldom conventionally religious
in nature.

And these people had a certain freshness of appreciation, an
ability to see things, even ordinary things, with wonder. Along
with this comes their ability to be creative, inventive, and
original.
And, finally, these people tended to have more peak experiences
than the average person. A peak experience is one that takes you
out of yourself, that makes you feel very tiny, or very large, to some
extent one with life or nature or God. It gives you a feeling of
being a part of the infinite and the eternal. These experiences
tend to leave their mark on a person, change them for the better, and many
people actively seek them out. They are also called mystical
experiences,
and are an important part of many religious and philosophical
traditions.

Maslow doesn't think that self-actualizers are perfect, of
course.
There were several flaws or imperfections he discovered along
the way as
well: First, they often suffered considerable anxiety and guilt
--
but realistic anxiety and guilt, rather than misplaced or neurotic
versions.
Some of them were absentminded and overly kind. And finally, some
of them had unexpected moments of ruthlessness, surgical coldness, and
loss of humor.

Two other points he makes about these self-actualizers: Their
values were "natural" and seemed to flow effortlessly from their
personalities. And they appeared to transcend many of the
dichotomies others accept as being undeniable, such as the differences
between the spiritual and the physical, the selfish and the unselfish,
and the masculine and the feminine.

Metaneeds and metapathologies

Another way in which Maslow approach the problem of what is
self-actualization
is to talk about the special, driving needs (B-needs, of course) of the
self-actualizers. They need the following in their lives in order
to be happy:

Truth, rather than dishonesty.


Goodness, rather than evil.


Beauty, not ugliness or vulgarity.


Unity, wholeness, and transcendence of opposites, not
arbitrariness
or forced choices.


Aliveness, not deadness or the mechanization of life.


Uniqueness, not bland uniformity.


Perfection and necessity, not sloppiness, inconsistency, or
accident.


Completion, rather than incompleteness.


Justice and order, not injustice and lawlessness.


Simplicity, not unnecessary complexity.


Richness, not environmental impoverishment.


Effortlessness, not strain.


Playfulness, not grim, humorless, drudgery.


Self-sufficiency, not dependency.


Meaningfulness, rather than senselessness."

~ Source

Stupid formatting errors. Ah well, life is too short to mess with html.