Path of Maturation

     We have an intuitive sense of what's really going on, but to help maintain the momentum of life, we keep this from every-day conscious awareness. 

     “The person who can freely acknowledge that life is full of difficulties can be free, because they are acknowledging the nature of life - that it can't be much else.” Shunryu Suzuki

     Our conscious mind (left brain) is concerned primarily with survival. The left brain, home of the egoic self, pretends that we have far greater control over the environment & our life, than we actually do. Exaggeration of a normal, healthy sense of agency ("illusion of control") is most clearly seen in young men who take crazy risks with the assumption that they'll be just fine.
     Another delusion our left brain holds is that of our own normality. We readily notice others' faults, idiosyncrasies, and strangeness, but hold (idealized versions of) ourselves as models of perfection, or at least what's proper & normal.
     Interestingly, as we become increasingly self-aware through years of meditation practice, we see with increasing clarity how we truly are. This is very, very humbling. So much so, that we're filled with love & gratitude towards all those who patiently tolerated our (to put it gently) eccentricity over the years. When we now see our own "eccentric" traits & behaviors in others, instead of being harshly critical (projecting or externalizing) as in the past, we're far more apt to warmly recognize common human steps on the long, slow road to growing up.
     Seeing things more objectively or realistically (allo- & ecocentrically, rather than egocentrically), is the work of the "right brain". An improved left-right brain balance may occur gradually as we age, but aging definitely does not guarantee maturation. Regular meditation practice does tend to accelerate our human psychosocialspiritual maturation process.

     

 

OVERVIEW

     The purpose of my blogs has been, and continues to be, sharing with you the experiences of people whom I consider to be sincere, wise seekers of Truth. You will find quoted, a very wide range of exemplars & thought leaders, living & dead, from Shamanic, Aboriginal, Advaita, Buddhist, Greek & Roman philosophical, Jewish & Christian Mystical, Sufi, and other traditions, but primarily inspiring current non-dual teachers like Amoda Maa, Louise Kay, Helen Hamilton, Dorothy Hunt, Eckhart Tolle, Adyashanti, Henry Shukman, and many more.

      Most human beings have the capacity to mature emotionally / psychologically / spiritually well beyond "the average" : http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=stages+of+faith .
    Some factors accelerate, while others moderate, slow, (temporarily) stop, or even reverse our maturation process : http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=maturation . 

    The greatest roadblocks to healthy maturation / aging are rigid certainty about one's self-concept & worldview http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=certainty and nihilism http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=nihilism . When people cling with a death-grip to their (usually inherited & unexamined) self-concept & worldview, any alternative perspective tends to feel life-threatening, and it is, but only to the ego.

    “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” Joe Klaas

    For thousands of years, the few who've taken the search for Truth as their life's central purpose, all seem to reach a common set of conclusions, summarized in the 'perennial philosophy' http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=perennial .

    You'll find many quotations from books, interviews & presentations of mostly people whom I (among many others) consider spiritually-mature & on the life-long path of 'awakening' : http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=awakening . All these quotes are "pointers towards the Moon" - metaphors, humor, poems, stories, practices, to help you experience directly the peace, silence, stillness & joy that is well-beyond words & concepts ("surpasses all understanding") - your true Self : http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=true+self .

    You'll also find quotations about topics closely related to awakening, such as psychology / psychotherapy eg Trauma theory, Richard Schwartz's Internal Family Systems (IFS), Iain McGilchrist's Hemispheric theory, etc. This blog has almost 1,400 posts which are quickly & easily searchable - see top left of page.

    “Maturity is the ability to live fully & equally in multiple contexts.” David Whyte, poet & philosopher

    “True adulthood … is a difficult beauty, an intensely hard-won glory, which commercial forces & cultural vapidity should not be permitted to deprive you of.” Toni Morrison

        “There are only two ways to live your life.
         One is as though nothing is a miracle.
         The other is as though
         everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein

    “The important thing is not to think much, but to love much, and so to do what best awakens us to love.” Saint Teresa of Ávila

    "... one works on oneself as a gift to other people so that one doesn't create more suffering. I help people as a work on myself and I work on myself to help people.” Ram Dass

    We are called “to serve not our limitations but what’s whole & unbreakable, our true self. It’s easy to identify with all the places we’ve been hurt & abandoned, but can we identify with the timeless wholeness that weathers every condition? If we can’t, we may spend this life protecting ourselves and never risk really living.” Bonnie Myotai Treace

 

    To see my latest blog, simply click : www.johnlovas.com 
    To see previous blogs, scroll down from the latest blog.

    My blog is NOT "monetized."
    I'm simply sharing what I understand to be of greatest value in life.

 

One of Helen Hamilton's fine orienting talks:

Hold Back - OR - Lean In?

     At some point we may sense the surprising, reassuring similarity between the two greatest mysteries: birth and death. 
     Perhaps the next greatest mystery is the shift we may (or may not) undergo, from fearful (egocentric) self-concern to (allocentric, ecocentric) openness & loving curiosity about birth, all aspects of life, including death. Clearly this qualitative shift requires serious maturation in the form of self-compassion, self-acceptance, and acceptance of all manner of life's difficulties, complexities & apparent paradoxes (Culliford's or Fowler's 5th or 6th stage: http://www.johnlovas.com/2018/10/nurturing-nonpartisan-human-maturation.html or http://www.johnlovas.com/2013/11/fowlers-six-stages-of-faith.html)
     As kids, we may well have been exposed to the idea that there was a ghost or boogeyman under our bed. For a while, it's natural to avoid looking under the bed. Fear, avoidance, 'negativity bias' etc are powerful protective evolutionary forces at work in all of us. But some, perhaps most of us, get up the courage to face our greatest fear at the time, and look under our bed! Massive relief - we survive AND feel pretty damned brave for having successfully completed our first 'hero's journey.'

     "Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less." Marie Curie

      "It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live." Marcus Aurelius

      "The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek." Joseph Campbell

      "I was born
      when all I once feared
      I could love.”                                         Rabia Basri 

It's Time We Stop!

    Since the age of 18, I was strongly attracted to, and began reading (a lot) about Zen, other forms of Buddhism, Taoism, Shamanism, Christian Mysticism, and psychology. Thirty years later, I finally started a sitting meditation practice, and for over 15 years, I sat with a couple of local Zen groups. With my wife and two sons, we also sat numerous 7-10 day silent meditation retreats at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS), and with my wife, a one month retreat at Forest Refuge in Barre MA. Then we sat a few annual week-long retreats at Dharma Retreats in Toronto, led by teachers from IMS.
    At some point I took Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher-training, and then facilitated about a hundred 8-week courses at Dalhousie University and the IWK Children's Hospital in-person, and since the beginning of Covid, online.
    All this time, I continued to read, blog, and contemplate this spiritual journey we call life. When I first started reading about spirituality & psychology almost 60 years ago, the material was puzzlingly paradoxical yet, attracted & fascinated, I kept at it. 

    “All truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed. Finally it is accepted as self-evident.” Arthur Schopenhauer, 19th-century German philosopher

    SO it's no surprise, that many - including most of our relatives & friends - quickly reject & avoid concepts & practices that strike them as unfamiliar, foreign, not quickly & easily understandable, too deep, religious, and especially spiritual. AND YET, healthy maturation, which involves at least some evolution of consciousness, REQUIRES acceptance, patience & perseverance BUT is BLOCKED by fear & avoidance.

    Over this lengthy period of slow maturation, books written by wise spiritual elders have slowly but progressively come to reflect my own lived experience. My blogs showcase what I currently resonate with, inspire me, and hopefully, help you evolve spiritually. If negative judgments quickly pop up about wise spiritual elders' experiences, consider the possibility that what you just read might not be 'just crazy talk,' but simply beyond your current level of understanding.
    The more we're able to 'unburden' our 'parts' - Internal Family Systems (IFS) talk for the less self-centered & neurotic we become - the more we actually start to experience life the way shamans, mystics & saints of all traditions, places & times describe. IFS would say that these people have become 'Self-led.' See: http://www.johnlovas.com/2021/06/frightened-children-and-wise-elders.html

        “... as self decreases,
         the Divine increases.”             Bernadette Roberts

    From her wise, inspiring 2024 book, “Psyche & Spirit. How a Psychiatrist Found Divinity through her Lifelong Quest for Truth and her Daughter’s Autism” here is Melinda Edwards:

    “Ramana Maharshi (one of the great sages of India, 1879 – 1950) taught that the ‘Self’ or real ‘I’ (our true or ultimate identity) is a non-personal, all-inclusive awareness, not an experience of individuality (small self, noisy ego). He said the individual egoic self was a fabrication of the mind that obscures the true experience of the real Self. He maintained that this universal Self is always present, but the self-limiting tendencies of the mind must cease for one to be consciously aware of it.

    Contraction & separation, when acted out or discharged externally, cause suffering & pain, not only within the target of our words or actions, but also in ourselves. Contraction and separation are the same. When we allow our hearts to open to the pain our contraction has caused in the other or in ourselves, a healing of the wound of separation takes place. The illusion of separation dissolves. This healing is a return to Love, to recognition of our Oneness with the very object of our illusion of separation. The pain itself is the doorway Home. In truth, the tenderness of pain is not separate from Love. All is One. All is born in Love.

     With all spiritual paths, although a mental concept or paradigm can be useful in conceptually understanding where the transformative process is heading, the real transformation takes place at a deeper level – at a level where habitual patterns of thought, emotion, and energy shift in a foundational way. As the veil of my fear about (my autistic little girl) Saachi’s ability to be in the world dissolved, space opened up in my system for a deeper truth to reveal itself. The hallmark of every spiritual path is the dissolution of contraction, of fear, which is the source of separation & suffering. When fear dissolves, that which is deeper and truer than fear emerges. When fear & separation dissolve, love remains.”
    Melinda Edwards “Psyche & Spirit. How a Psychiatrist Found Divinity through her Lifelong Quest for Truth and her Daughter’s Autism” 2024.

    The same theme, from one of Gangaji's wise, inspiring interviews:

     Papaji’s (W.H.L. Pooja) practice instruction for Gangaji:
    “ ‘You want freedom? Great, just sit there and do nothing.’ So since I had practiced all this Buddhist doing-nothing business (sitting meditations), I thought I knew how to do nothing, and I sat still in meditation. And he said, ‘No, no, no. That’s too much. Don’t do anything.’
    And when I heard that, it was really, deeply frightening to me. It even took me back to that moment when I was eleven-years-old and I had started doing things to get out of my unhappiness. I had a fear that if I didn’t do something, if I didn’t do a practice or I didn’t do my meditation, or I didn’t do a mantra, or I wasn’t being good, that I would fall back, I would regress, I would lose anything that I had accomplished. So it was a moment.
    And he said, ‘Yes, lose everything!’ It shook my life. It shook my life right-side up. I feel like I was walking with my head in the sand, and I knew something was wrong because I kept tasting sand, and he just turned me right-side up.
    ‘Just stop. Just be still.’ And then later, I would hear him speak to people and he would say, ‘You have to lose your enlightenment, and you lose your un-enlightenment. You lose them both. You lose it all! Lose your gender. Lose your nationality. Lose your ranking. And (now) what’s here? And what’s here that’s always here?’ ” 

Q: “How do you teach people to stop?”

Gangaji: “Well there’s a conundrum, because you can’t really teach somebody to stop. You can invite people to stop, and what I try to do, and what I saw Papaji do is you point out where they are refusing to stop or where they are active. And the way you do that is you recognize it in your own mind, because we all have the same structure. It’s a survival structure. We have active minds because we’re an intelligent species that knows how to survive. So to stop is a threat to that, and the mind will get very busy – how it’s impossible, how you shouldn’t, or you can’t ((because the ego wrongly assumes that the {healthy, appropriate} transition from 'noisy ego' to 'quiet ego' to be a physical death)). So it’s really important to be able to hear your mind chatter, to overhear your thoughts. And then there’s a possibility of choice: to follow thought OR to be still. And really, it’s just to be still for a moment.
    There’s nothing wrong with thinking or thoughts, but often our thinking our thoughts is just a re-thinking of what has been thought, and re-thought, and re-thought – obsessive kind of thinking. And with that is a lot of unnecessary suffering. So to be willing to be open to not rethink that thought – this very thought, in this very moment – then the mind is available for insight & revelation.”

Q: Stopping could be interpreted as trying to hold the mind still, or purposely letting go of attachments, but even that’s too much.”

Gangaji: “That can be an initial step because normally, in our unnecessary suffering we’re just obsessively finding reasons in the past, or the present, or the future. So I had experienced that in some of the early meditations where you were kind of arresting your thought. But there was also in that the thought of me arresting this thought. So it was complicated and it took effort. This can actually be perceived as taking effort because it definitely is a challenge – because if you’re not thinking, that means you aren’t checking your environment, something could happen, you could die ultimately. That’s the root of it. So it’s an invitation to meet your death. ((The 'noisy ego' wrongly assumes that we are constantly in a life-or-death situation. BUT we rarely if ever are! Our noisy ego or false sense of self is, however frequently challenged eg a slow driver ahead of us when we're late. Such minor incidents can & do escalate unreasonably because the noisy ego operates at a primitive 'fight / flight / freeze instinct' level. THIS is one of the reasons why some wisdom traditions formally practice meeting actual death with an evolved, peaceful clear mind ie with equanimity, instead of primitive instincts.))”
    Gangaji - “Gangaji Interview: A Life of Service to Spiritual Awakening” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmUYR2Higcc 

 

It's WELL worth listening to these lyrics again!

Steps Along the Way

If we closely observe ourselves, we'll notice an incessantly recurring sense of uneasiness, most readily noticed while sitting or lying down to rest. For no obvious reason, we quickly feel uncomfortable / unpleasant, and automatically shift our position to one that's more comfortable - but only for a very short while, then repeat, repeat & repeat. Besides such primarily physical bouts of dys-ease, we also notice similar recurring bouts of discomfort which we assume arises primarily from our thoughts or emotions. We assume that these are all due to external irritants eg problematic people, situations, places, etc, so we automatically try fixing or correcting these external irritants, to make ourselves comfortable 'once & for all.'

Our materialistic consumer society spends billions each year to ensure that we continue to 'shop till we drop.' Too many of us actually believe that, "The one who dies with the most toys wins."
          It can take lifetimes to fully recognize that we cannot control our external environment sufficiently to achieve continuous happiness. If we could, then surely addicts, people with OCD & the wealthy would be the happiest people in the world. But eventually, everyone becomes disenchanted with materialism - disappointed, bored & frustrated with experiencing, consuming, hoarding 'things.'  

Even those seeking awakening / enlightenment initially, & some for decades do so with striving acquisitiveness - using the exact same approach to seeking awakening as they used to achieve success in the material world eg business, sports, outdoor survival. BUT this egocentric, aggressive, adversarial, acquisitive left-hemisphere-dominant approach, which seems to work for some to accumulate things, actually blocks spiritual growth. This inappropriate approach to spiritual maturation - like using a sledgehammer to slice cake - is called 'spiritual materialism.'

A fascinating example of this is chronicled in Harley Rustad's biography of spiritual seeker, expert outdoor survivalist, world-traveler & blogger, Justin Alexander Shetler in, “Lost in the Valley of Death. A Story of Obsession and Danger in the Himalayas.” Justin seemed to understand the meaning of 'the finger pointing at the moon' analogy, “Religion is a very very attractive, alluring, sparkling arrow, and everybody gets focused on what kind of arrow or what it’s made of or what kinds of jewels are on it or what kinds of feathers – and no one’s looking where the arrow’s pointing, which is at truth.” He knew first-hand that, “Traveling is often exploring things that make you uncomfortable: physically, ethically, emotionally, metaphysically.” But he was seriously mistaken about continuous traveling (pejoratively referred to as 'geographic cure') & progressively more severe physical deprivation ('asceticism') being essential tools for awakening. Long ago, the Buddha showed that neither of these were helpful. 

But then it's human nature to stick to the skills one feels most competent at, and the temptation to use these more & more often, with ever-greater intensity - for every task! Over-reliance on a familiar tool is a well-known cognitive bias: "If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail." Justin pushed travel & survival in nature to the breaking point. Many of us have to 'hit rock bottom', before we finally drop our favorite approach, & become willing to learn an entirely new, appropriate skill that actually works. With respect to awakening / enlightenment, it's about relaxing our grasping / clinging, & remembering to connect with our silent, still, eternal Self - which we can only experience when our ego is very quiet. 

"... maybe at the end of the trail, Justin found nothing; that the harder he tried, the more it felt like he was grasping at mist — chasing tendrils higher and higher into the mountains." wondered Harley Rustad in his Dec 13, 2018 Outside magazine article. 

Of course deep self-inquiry reveals that who we truly are - our Self - is no-thing, Noumenon - "knowable only without the use of ordinary sense perception; & cannot be experienced through the senses." Helen Hamilton. "Dissolving the Ego." Balboa Press, 2021

Spiritual maturation appears to be about noticing when we contract around some 'thing' (phenomenon) which feels stressful; we learn to relax our grip on 'things' (phenomena); & remember to return to our true nature - Self, Noumenon, peace, & appropriate perspective on phenomena.

 Helen Hamilton's EXCELLENT 60 min Summary:

 

 

Standing on our Own Two Feet?

     “It seems that we are all, to some extent, still struggling to achieve an individual identity, and to love others without loss of ourselves. By individual identity I mean the ability to perceive the world directly with our own senses, to understand our experience with our mind, to feel that we inhabit our own body, to be able to surrender to the spontaneity of our own creativity and sexual passion, and to know that to a great extent, we can create the life circumstances of our own choice. In the therapeutic setting, we have come to recognize that the path toward this separate identity is fraught with taboos and obstacles of many kinds. It is a state of advanced psychological health and maturity. I can safely say that by age three, almost all of us have experienced some wound that will impede our progress toward this goal even as adults.
     From birth, we are trying to become fully ourselves in the context of our love for our parents. If childhood development were solely a matter of separation, there would not be nearly the degree of conflict and pain, and binding of pain in our body, as there is in this delicate balancing act between our deepening self-awareness, and our intensifying love for our parents. It is almost always for love that we give up (bind) those parts of our self that do not meet our parents’ acceptance. And it is almost always for the sake of autonomy that we close ourselves off from our parents’ love, by closing our own heart, when that love does not include the recognition and sanction of our separate identity.
     For the adult, individuation is a progression from a state of being merged with other people to a state of increasing independence and capacity to love. The merged state is a dependence upon the responses of others in order to feel good, safe, strong, and complete. There is an inability to use one’s own senses and understanding, or to perceive and think for oneself. There is a sense of never being truly alone with oneself, and not being able to experience one’s own sensations, feelings and thoughts clearly. … in situations of uncertainty, infants will look toward the mother to read her face for its affective content, essentially to see what they should feel, to get a second appraisal to help resolve their uncertainty. This looking toward others to see what one should feel or think remains in the adult who has not yet discovered his or her separate identity.
     Some people defend against this incomplete, dependent feeling by withdrawing from contact with other people. They are afraid of being overwhelmed, or feeling consumed by others, because they have so little felt sense of their own existence. Others become ‘addicted’ to love, searching desperately for anyone who will merge with them and help them feel alive.” 

       Judith Blackstone. “The Enlightenment Process. A Guide to Embodied Spiritual Awakening.” Paragon House, 2008.

     See "Nurturing Nonpartisan Human Maturation":
  http://www.johnlovas.com/2018/10/nurturing-nonpartisan-human-maturation.html

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

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

Beyond Polarity and Duality

      We're very, very familiar with "the story of me" - our very personal perspective on ourselves & the world - "our reality". We're so familiar with this that we wrongly assume that it's accurate, true, & beneficial (even for us).

     The more we practice meditation or other means of deep introspection, the more we realize that "the story of me" (& resultant habitual reactive patterns) is a fear-based, primitive survival strategy based on our past but which now is a powerful impediment to our health, maturation, wholeness, & deep quality of life. See: http://jglovas.wixsite.com/awarenessnow/single-post/2017/11/10/Returning-Remaining

     "A significant shift occurs after we integrate the internal and external worlds: we move beyond polarity and duality and learn to see both worlds at once. We contain this paradox and are able to see the many options available to us. This more accepting and expansive way of thinking increases our tolerance for ambiguity, which is a function of wisdom. The ability to move beyond black or white, good or evil, helpful or harmful, signals wisdom’s presence.

     Although wisdom can be expressed at any age, it is less than becoming if we are not able to develop it in our later years and provide a consistent model for younger people. Our work in the second half of life demands that we neither be entrenched in the polarities of our daily experiences nor be rigid, harsh, or unforgiving in our approach. We are stretched to shift our perspective and our actions from the dualism of either/or to holding the paradox of both/and. This allows something greater and more creative to emerge. It is an essential perspective for problem solving. Wisdom always looks for the most elegant solution, the one that will create a genuine win-win and serve the greater good of the majority of people.

     Two extraordinary examples of what can happen when we hold the paradox of both/and to allow something greater to emerge are the restorative justice process of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in resolving apartheid issues and the unprecedented creativity and collaboration that created the European Union. Because the people involved avoided remaining in fixed, entrenched positions, they generated outcomes that far exceeded initial expectations or imagined results.

     If we can embrace the meanings and experiences in both our internal and external worlds, melding the sacred and profane, we will be rigorously challenged to transform opposition to paradox. The essential task is to allow all sides of an issue, or pairs of opposites, to exist in equal dignity and worth until their hidden unity is revealed. This is our initiation into the embodiment of wisdom, the entry point into authentic spiritual maturation and personal transformation.

     When we shift our perspective to look beyond dualities, opposites, and polarities, we can simultaneously consider many diverse options and possibilities without applying solutions that may seem quick, easy, and expedient but are in fact premature. In our later years, it becomes imperative to increase our capacity to hold creative tension, allowing far grater and more inclusive solutions and options to emerge. By befriending and strengthening our capacity to hold paradox, we can explore the realm of deep spiritual growth. As we actualize all aspects of ourselves and weave them into an inherent symmetry and whole, we become more skillful problem solvers, mediators, stewards of justice, and models of patience and mercy. We become an unshakably wise presence that harnesses the good, true, and beautiful for the grater good of all concerned. This is wisdom’s way and our primary task in the second half of life.”

       Angeles Arrien. “The Second Half of Life. Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom.” Sounds True, 2007.

awakeningartsacademy.com

Maturing Beyond "Ordinary Happiness"

     Many people deeply believe that the universe is unfriendly, and that "ordinary unhappiness" is the most they can hope for. A pervasive subconscious sense of "lack" haunts many of us. 
       David R. Loy. “Lack & Transcendence. The Problem of Death and Life in Psychotherapy, Existentialism, and Buddhism.” Wisdom Publications, 2018.
     Sadly, most of us don't actually know what a deep, meaningful life means, looks like, OR that it is available.

     Roger Walsh MD, PhD, professor of psychiatry, philosophy, anthropology & religion at the University of California, states: 
     "... behind conventional religions with their myths, rituals, beliefs and dogmas, are hidden disciplines for practices for training the mind to induce the same states of consciousness that the founders had realized, and thereby opening up similar possibilities for all of us.

     Religions tend to get started when an individual has some sort of breakthrough of some kind. Different founders have different kinds of breakthroughs, but they have spiritual breakthroughs of one kind or another. And the people who are effective in initiating traditions that have lasting power provide several things. First they provide an insight, a vision, a spiritually-informed understanding. Then they’re also able to transmit partly charismatically, partly technically – that is they offer a variety of practices by which other people can have the same realizations for themselves, so that they transmit two things. One is insight, understanding, a vision of the way the world and we look from that awakened place, but secondly, a set of practices which allow others to have the same insight, understanding & state of consciousness and test it out for themselves.
     Now over time, as we all know, there tends to be a process of ‘truth decay’ – over time, the deeper or higher realizations tend to get lost or sidelined somewhat and what remains tends to be the belief system and the rituals around it. And in most religions, the ‘esoteric side’ – the real practices that can actually induce transformative states and psychological-spiritual maturation – tend to have become marginalized to a certain extent, to different degrees in different traditions.

     One of the real tragedies in our culture is that we have no understanding, let alone popular map*, of developmental stages beyond the conventional. So we have no encouragement or call to mature beyond conventional levels, which means that most people stultify at the conventional level, having no understanding that there’s something more. 
     There is data from multiple fields – developmental studies, psychotherapy, psychedelic work – that the psyche really does have inherent in it, a pull to development. Maslow called it ‘self-actualization,’ other people have called it ‘self-transcendence,’ ‘moksha drive,’ Jung’s ‘individuation,’ etc, etc. And, when that drive is not recognized or fulfilled, it creates a deep profound dissatisfaction. 
     And the tragedy is, because our culture has no understanding of this call, that malaise is not recognized for what it is. And people look for substitute gratifications of one kind or another. And the trouble is that you can never get enough of what you don’t really want. 
     So there is this inherent growth dynamic in the psyche, this fact isn’t recognized, which leads to enormous suffering in our culture. Maslow called these ‘meta-pathologies’ – pathologies, not of psychosis or neurosis, but existential pathologies that emerge for people. 
     And we have to have a realistic view of what post-conventional development looks like, because it’s not all sweetness and light. Every new stage brings forth new opportunities, new capacities, new understandings, and new problems. There’s a dialectic of development. Every new stage has its new challenges and difficulties. 
     And one of the big problems for us in our culture for anyone who starts to move beyond the conventional is there’s no map to understand the problems that emerge and very little in the way of remedies.”
       Roger Walsh, in an excellent 2hr interview by Rick Archer: https://batgap.com/roger-walsh/

     Four excellent recent books specifically deal, in-depth, with psycho-social-spiritual maturation well beyond the conventional:
     • Amoda Maa. “Embodied Enlightenment. Living Your Awakening in Every Moment.” Reveal Press, 2017. 
     • Shinzen Young. “The Science of Enlightenment. How Meditation Works.” Sounds True, 2016.
     • Dorothy Hunt. “Ending the Search. From Spiritual Ambition to the Heart of Awareness.” Sounds True, 2018.
     • Bonnie L. Greenwell. “When Spirit Leaps. Navigating the Process of Spiritual Awakening.” Non-Duality Press, 2018.

     * Those who specialize in this area do have "developmental maps": http://www.johnlovas.com/2013/11/fowlers-six-stages-of-faith.html