“All my best kept secrets are the one’s I didn’t know I had.”
Taylor Goldsmith
I learned about the Johari window in one of my first college classes in 1976 at Wright State, just outside Dayton, Ohio. It was an Interpersonal Communications class and I can picture the professor: a young, attractive brunette; strong in spirit, confident, in command of her class. She said we were responsible for ourselves. We needed to be on time. It was up to us to make sure of that. She wasn’t interested in our excuses. She expected us to be grownups. It was what I needed to hear at that moment. I argued with her in my mind but eventually gave up. She was right. It was time to get serious.
And I loved the Johari window, which was named after the two psychologists (Joe and Harry) who invented it and can be used to help us understand our relationships with ourselves and others. Think of a window with four panes or quadrants. In the upper left pane, we find the qualities or aspects of our identity, personality or character that we know and others know about ourselves. Most people who know me, for example, know, among other things, that I am a bald, skinny workaholic. I know this too. It is obvious. It’s not all I am but it is public information and therefore belongs in the Open quadrant of my Johari window.
My upper right pane is my Blind area. This is stuff that is known to others but not to me. We can see other people’s blind spots but we cannot see our own. We are blind to our blindness. When people give us feedback about how they see us, we learn important information that is often helpful. We become a little less blind and a little more open.
My daughter recently used the term, “mansplaining” to describe a young man she knew and I instantly got it. Many men blindly believe they are smarter than women and assume women don’t know what they know. And so they can behave in a patronizing, condescending manner as they explain things to women who actually may know more than they do about the subject. I wonder how often in my life I have “mansplained” and did not know I was doing that.
The lower left quadrant is my Hidden zone. This is where we keep our secrets. For example, my mother served as a substitute teacher once for my ninth grade English class. And I acted out so badly, and rattled her so severely, that I practically forced her – my own mother – to give me detention. And then after the class, I stayed behind to apologize and convince her to take the detention back. I’m ashamed to admit this. I cringe when I think of the pain I caused my mother. Usually we keep these things hidden from others. We pretend we are perfect. But it can be healthy and liberating to be open about our flaws and imperfections and readily admit our mistakes.
Finally, the lower right pane of the window is the Unknown zone. This is the stuff that no one knows. I don’t know it and you don’t know it. What can we say about that dark room? Who knows? Some people see a therapist to find out what’s in there. The more we know and understand ourselves, the healthier we are, as long as we reside in non-judgmental awareness, acceptance and love.
We begin developing our window in our early years from about age four to six years of age, according to the Swiss clinical psychologist, Jean Piaget. This is when we begin to realize that other people have a point-of-view that is different from our own. We begin thinking about what we look like from the perspective of others. We learn the difference between you and me, here and there and now and then. These are some of the most significant and miraculous building blocks of our language-based brain. We don’t just experience the world with our senses. We conceptualize it with our minds. We recreate reality according to our perceptions. This is extremely useful.
If you tell a child, “Mommy is going to the store next week to buy you a toy,” they are dealing with deictic verbal relations (other versus self, there versus here, then versus now). Animals can’t do this. Only humans can. It is the reason we now dominate the planet and also why we get depressed and anxious and sometimes want to kill ourselves or others. The power of the mind is immense. If we take our conceptualizations too seriously, we get in trouble. We could forget these are just thoughts and stories in the mind. We can literally lose perspective as we become overly enmeshed with or attached to a particular self-conceptualization that is shaming or demeaning in some way.
When we identify our self with the contents of our mind, we sell ourselves short. One of my favorite metaphors involves throwing a large, priceless diamond in a bucket of feces. If you did not know the bucket contained a diamond, you would not appreciate someone giving it to you. If you knew the bucket contained a precious jewel, however, you would happily plunge your hand in to claim the prize.
Each of us possesses a sparkling diamond at the center of our being but too often it’s obscured by our anxious thoughts and feelings. We can identify with the feces or the diamond. We can identify with our thinking mind or our observing mind. There is an ageless, changeless essence or spirit that illuminates each of us. It is who we were at birth and who we’ll be as we draw our final breaths.
Jill Stoddard in The Big Book of ACT Metaphors refers to muntu, which in the Kikongo language means “a transcendent self that persists stably and unchanged, through prelife, life and afterlife. The Congolese speak of muntu as a self that exists inside the body but separate from it, looking out through the eyes and simply watching what occurs. This self doesn’t get attached to outcomes because it isn’t affected by them and it can’t die. It’s a self that simply transitions from spirit to body and back again.”
Like the taste of sugar or the thrill of skiing through soft powder, the best parts of life must be experienced directly, beyond the limitations of thought. If you had never seen the color blue, there are no words sufficient to explain it.
Neither can anyone show us our diamond-self. We need to get quiet and find it within. We can only know it through direct, immediate experience. Until we are aware of awareness or notice noticing, or see seeing, we are blind to this inner self. Imagine a mirror. It reflects what exists before it. This is the observing mind. It is our essence, a point of pure awareness that is beyond thought or judgment.
We operate out of this “place.” It is who we essentially are but how often do we turn around to see that which sees?
“So I turned myself to face me
But I’ve never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker
I’m much too fast to take that test.”
David Bowie
Our observing self is the chess board and our thoughts and feelings are the chess pieces. Who do we choose to be? We can identify with the war in our mind or we can identify with that which surrounds, holds or contains our thoughts and emotions.
We are more than we think we are, more than our history, more than our occupation or age or social status; we are more than what others think about us, more than our successes and failures, more than our hopes and fears.
And what if we came here to see this truth? What if we were here to identify with the more that we are, not the less that we think or feel? What if all around our fears, insecurities, regrets and shame there was a large and endless sky of essential adequacy and wholeness that whispers we are enough; that we have been and will always be enough?
What if we were here to realize we are the endless sky, boundless and pure, not the dark clouds and storms that darken our minds and hearts?
What if?
