Life's Journey towards Wisdom

     What is a meaningful, well-lived life? As we age, we realize that most of the things that in our youth we thought would make us happy, actually mean little and have already been largely forgotten.

     “Life (can be seen) as a journey towards wisdom and maturity, where both good or pleasurable and bad or painful experiences can help people learn and develop through six recognizable stages: 
 1. Egocentric (immature, self-referenced existence) 
 2. Conditioning (learning through insistent & 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 and wisdom, becoming a natural teacher and 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.

     "Fowler’s six stages of faith span the spectrum of development from childhood to maturity:
  a) In childhood, faith is based on fantasy & imagination;
  b) in the mythic literal stage, stories are interpreted literally;
  c) at the conventional stage, beliefs tend to be conventional & unexamined;
  d) the individuated reflective stage is characterized by demythologizing and individual responsibility for values & beliefs;
  e) the conjunctive stage, which usually emerges in midlife, involves a recognition of the unconscious and a more paradoxical understanding of truth;
  f) universalizing faith is inclusive of all being and free from ideological shackles.
      Although development does not necessarily progress in a neat, linear fashion from one stage to another, spiritual maturity implies adequately negotiating all these stages of faith. Spiritual experiences may be interpreted very differently by people at different stages of faith."
        Vaughan F. "What is Spiritual Intelligence?" Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 2002; 42(2): 16-33.

     “Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it, but it divides us from truth.” Kahlil Gibran

and the day came
when the risk to remain
tight in a bud
was more painful than the risk
it took to blossom                               anais nin

"For I see the beauty in you...
It is not an idealized picture of perfection,
But rather a mosaic of starlight and blood.
The most perfect poem of a life well lived,
Of pleasure and pain,
The sacred union of dark and light,
A life of redemption, surrender, and hope,
Of selfless acts, and courageous leaps.
For I see the beauty in you...
Your light shines so brightly to me."         Lauren Elizabeth Walsh

     “Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love.”           Rainer Maria Rilke

Wisdom in Paradox

      Can I, at the same time, embrace "contrasting themes; that of my deepest heart, which feels the intimacy of all things, and the walls the mind constructs, which separates all things"? (Thanissara) In other words, can I embody the nondualistic, unconditioned, spacious, timeless, empty, transpersonal ground of my being WHILE accepting, honoring & holding the dualistic, conditioned, limited, finite, material, personal aspect of my humanity?
     It's terribly common, easy, even comforting, to allow oneself to be magnetically drawn under by destructive emotions into the recurring nightmare of depressive wallowing or anxiety-ridden catastrophizing. This blows the importance of the personal self out of all proportion, thus failing to provide the essential balance that can only come from embodying our transpersonal nature.

     "... all mystics – Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion – are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare."
       Anthony de Mello. “Awareness. The Perils and Opportunities of Reality.” Doubleday, 1992.

     "In our world things are always getting broken and mended and broken again, and there is also something that never breaks. Everything rises and falls, and yet in exactly the same moment things are eternal and go nowhere at all. How do we see with a kind of binocular vision, one eye aware of how things are coming and going all the time, the other aware of how they’ve never moved at all? How do we experience this not as two separate ways of seeing, but as one seamless field of vision?" 
       Joan Sutherland. “Koans for Troubled Times.” Lion’s Roar, April 6, 2018

     “The exploration of the highest reaches of human nature and of its ultimate possibilities and aspirations … has involved for me the continuous destruction of cherished axioms, the perpetual coping with seeming paradoxes, contradictions and vagueness, and the occasional collapse around my ears of long established, firmly believe in, and seemingly unassailable laws of psychology.” Abraham Maslow