Nurturing Nonpartisan Human Maturation

     Rigidity, expressed through blind partisanship, is seriously damaging the United States. However, every conscious individual, organization, and country is fully capable of psychological flexibility & therefore maturation. A few reasons for hope:

     “for real change to happen, a more humanistic & socially driven logic that embraces deeply rooted universal human capacities & needs for attention, awareness, relationality, & caring has to be legitimated in society at large.”
       Mette Lund Kristensen. “Mindfulness and Resonance in an Era of Acceleration: a Critical Inquiry.” Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion. 2018; 15 (2): 178–195.

     “Life (can be seen) as a journey towards wisdom & maturity, where both good or pleasurable and bad or painful experiences can help people learn & develop through six recognizable stages:
     1. Egocentric (immature, self-referenced existence)
     2. Conditioning (learning through insistent and persistent family & social traditions)
     3. Conformist (seeking to belong by following social conventions)
     4. Individual (starting to think, speak & act independently)
     5. Integration (shifting values & behavior towards altruism, through recognizing one’s deep kinship with the entirety of humanity)
     6. Universal (achieving maturity & wisdom, becoming a natural teacher & healer).”

     Research has shown that in western society, the majority of people past their teen years are at or between stages three or four i.e. are still culturally adolescent.
     Larry Culliford. “Seeking Wisdom: A Spiritual Manifesto.” Univ of Buckingham Pr, 2018. 

     “A healthy organization … is one that enables mature human functioning … being able to care compassionately for oneself and for others without losing sight of either, while moving comfortably between supporting organizational goals and taking initiative to create what is missing.”
       Kathryn Goldman Schuyler, Michelle Olsen Taylor, Orit M. Wolberger. “Bringing Mindfulness and Joy to Work: Action Research on Organizational Change.” Handbook of Personal and Organizational Transformation, 2018, pp1193-1217. 

     The goal of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is to help a wide range of participants discover, befriend, and gradually inhabit, embody & express the deepest domain of their being. Given a lifetime of very different conditioning, the task is not easy, but possible and highly desirable.

     "The human heart is the first home of democracy. It is where we embrace our questions. Can we be equitable? Can we be generous? Can we listen with our whole beings, not just our minds, and offer our attention rather than our opinions? And do we have enough resolve in our hearts to act courageously, relentlessly, without giving up — ever — trusting our fellow citizens to join with us in our determined pursuit of a living democracy?" Terry Tempest Williams 

     “Throughout history, the really fundamental changes in societies have come about not from the dictates of governments and the results of battles, but through vast numbers of people changing their minds, sometimes only a little bit.” Willis Harman

Feeling Useful

     The sense of "agency" - competence, being capable, "feeling useful" seems to be a very deep basic human drive. If one isn't a "jack of all trades", and few of us are, then one needs to be a "team player". If collaborating with society doesn't work out, especially if one is rejected ("shunned" usually informally) by society, then there are fringe anti-social subgroups.
     Be it in the city, country or wilderness, a human being can rarely "make it" alone. Our ancestors, traveling in small bands, may well have left behind those who couldn't keep up or who could not otherwise contribute to the welfare of the group. So the sense of having to live up to familial, tribal, ... societal expectations is a very real, very deep, inborn motivator.
     But society is also sustained, nurtured, and advanced in unexpected ways. Court jesters - today's political comedians (Bill Maher, Jon Stewart etc) - help both rulers & society see absurdities, & hopefully deal with them more creatively (than avoidance or violence). Those rejected by society or vice versa, also serve as persistent open questions - how can society evolve to become more inclusive, a more healing / nurturing home for too many "wayward children".
     Deep down, all of us care deeply about the long-term welfare of the human race and planet earth. Each of one us is an inherent part of the whole.

Contributions of Mindfulness & Other Contemplative Traditions

     "Contemplative disciplines make several radical claims about states of mind. First, they suggest that all of us potentially have available to us families of functionally specific and higher states, and that contemplative practices can foster these. Moreover, they claim that many of these contemplative states of mind can offer multiple psychological, somatic, and spiritual benefits. These states may heal, catalyze development, cultivate specific capacities such as positive emotions, as well as produce insights, understanding, and wisdom.

     In other words, contemplative disciplines suggest that certain kinds of insight, understanding, and wisdom are more likely to occur in specific states of mind, and some may occur only in specific states.
     So mind states are far more malleable than is usually recognized, there are many more functionally specific and higher states potentially available to us than we recognize, and some of these may foster exceptional capacities, including sapiential ones. However, contemplative traditions aim not just to glimpse altered states and higher perspectives, but to stabilize them. The goal is to transform transient states into enduring traits, higher states into higher stages, peak experiences into plateau experiences, and epiphanies into personalities. ... the goal is 'to transform flashes of illumination into abiding light.' The result is that brief glimpses extend into continuous vision, novel perspectives become permanent metaperspectives, and new insights develop into enduring understandings.

     In short, certain functionally specific and higher states may be doorways through which wisdom — in the form of valuable insights, understandings, perspectives and resultant ways of life — can emerge and find expression. Equally important, contemplative disciplines have developed specific practices and inner technologies to cultivate these states and their insights." 

       Walsh R. The varieties of wisdom: Contemplative, cross-cultural, and integral contributions. Research in Human Development 2011; 8(2): 109-127.

Photo: qhenson   www.dpreview.com

Buddhist Psychology, Abhidharma, Qualities Crucial to Maturation & Wisdom

     "Buddhist psychology (Abhidharma) describes seven qualities or capacities that are crucial to fostering mental maturation and wisdom: the seven factors of enlightenment. These are composed of three calming factors (calm, concentration, and equanimity) and three energizing factors (effort, energy, and rapture), and a superordinate factor of mindfulness. 

     The calming and energizing factors need to be of comparable strength to balance each other and to avoid the disabling extremes of sleepiness and agitation. Moreover, when all seven are strong and balanced then there is the possibility of a major developmental leap: a leap into transconceptual awareness known as 'cessation' and its resultant transconceptual wisdom."

  

       Walsh R. The varieties of wisdom: Contemplative, cross-cultural, and integral contributions. Research in Human Development 2011; 8(2): 109-127.

Photo: Evgenia Arbugaena   http://pdn30.pdnevents.com/gallery/2013/index.php?contest=arbugaeva