Self-actualization can - literally - be translated to mean "making the self actual." It means there is no longer any difference between what you think and what you do. There is no longer any contradiction between what you tell others to do - how you tell others they should be - and how you respond yourself. It is, quite simply, manifesting (or making real) who you are and what you believe in on a day-by-day, consistent basis.

The path to self-awareness is a long and solitary journey, a journey that many individuals fail to complete. The path is a difficult one to walk because it takes us into so many of the shadow areas of our lives that we have worked so hard - for so many years - to avoid. As we become more and more aware, we see things with a different perspective. We no longer justify our earlier choices from a self-biased emotional perspective, and it's difficult for us to accept responsibility for those choices once we begin to realize the effect we have had on other people.

It's hard for us to accept that we have been selfish, or resentful, or spiteful; it's hard for us to see where we have deliberately manipulated our lives so that we would have control over the people and the situations and events within it. It's not easy to admit that we are not the positive, smiling, loving people that we prefer to see ourselves as, and when in the course of the personal growth process it becomes necessary for us to truly, honestly evaluate how we have interacted with our fellow human beings, the "drop-out rate" skyrockets.

This is a vital turning point in the personal growth process, a point at which we must either move back to the person we used to be or move forward to the person we want to be tomorrow. The direction we move in will be defined by whether or not we're willing to see our "less than positive" choices in an objective light; neither self-awareness nor self-actualization can be accomplished without a true and open acknowledgement of who we used to be and how we used to live our lives, no matter how unpleasant watching that panorama in our minds might be.

This doesn't mean that we should spend years of our lives suffering regret and remorse for the wrong we have done to other people in the course of our lives. It does mean that we should take a reasonable amount of time to look back and honestly evaluate what was really at play in any particular situation. We must be willing to acknowledge where the two parties were really coming from, and where each conducted themselves with less than Universal Love and Acceptance.

We cannot change the past; we cannot undo the influence that we have had upon other people by our thoughts and our feelings and our reactions. We can learn from that experience, and make a personal commitment never to treat anyone with that lack of respect again. If that person is still in our life, we can have the grace to apologize, and share our learning experience by saying, "I'm sorry that I used to be like that. I want to be like this now, and I hope that you will help me be a better person than I was before."

It's only when we are willing to acknowledge our past weaknesses - and share our future aspirations - that we can hope to experience the support and encouragement of others on our journey to self-actualization. If we're not willing to admit that we have ever made a mistake, ever over-reacted, ever deliberately hurt someone, then we can't admit that we need to change, or that we need other people's help in doing so. We are defeating our soul-evolutionary objectives if we choose to remain in situations and/or relationships that we chose in our earlier, less-aware years - situations and relationships that are no longer fulfilling for us because we've grown past the needs that created those situations and/or relationships in the first place.