I trashed the other articles on maturity that I did. I have been digging in deeper to this idea of growth and maturity and realized a few things.
One is that maturity isn’t an either or determination. It is a spectrum and a continuum of action and being. We are not either immature or mature. We are born immature and are maturing continuously throughout our lives. As we mature, we will continue to act, believe, and feel immaturely in some ways. We will not ever become purely a mature human. I suppose it is possible for someone to become purely mature, but I do not know of any past or present human that did that, so I am thinking perhaps it is possible, but improbable. I also don’t think that is the point of this anyway.
Life is about growth. It is about the journey. It is never about where we end up in the end because we all end up in the same place. It is about how we get there. It is about the journey. You don’t get anything special at the end of your life if you lived a mature existence. You don’t get to live longer or die younger, whichever you think is better. There isn’t a prize at the end of the journey if you do it correctly.
I know that might be heretical to some religious organizations who think that at the end of your life if you are: good, take Jesus as your savior, live “right”, etc. that you will go to a place called Heaven and have a blissful experience there. People also think that how you live this life will determine what your next life is. While I do believe that is true, I do not believe it is based on punishment if you were evil and reward if you were good. That is a human construct not a spiritual one. Spirituality is fluid and purely about experiences that benefit the greater good. There is no judgement of you at the end. You will process your life to continue your experience of it and learn anything you might have missed. You may try again in a similar existence, or you may try again in a different one, more painful or more peaceful. You get to choose based on what you want to learn or experience. I do not actually believe in any constant absolutes of good and evil or right and wrong. I also know that many people would like to argue that point, which is off topic, so for another discussion.
What we all get when we die is simple, dead. After we die, we do transition to another dimension of energy. Energy cannot be destroyed, all humans are energy, and so we do not cease to exist. We simply transform our energy into another type of existence. I do not know exactly what that is, but since I feel like I have connected with people who have transformed their existence after dying to this one, I am pretty sure that is what happens. I have no idea what it is like to transform though. I won’t get to know that until I do it myself. We are not meant to know that.
So then while we are here, we are here to grow as souls. That means we are meant to have experiences of all kinds, good, bad, and neutral. As I mentioned, there really is no good or bad, only experience, and again, that is another story.
So this thought of maturity. I am still basing my theory on Kain Ramsey’s work, which was my original thesis. I am still looking at it in terms of being developed in Stages, which was an idea I got from Mark Manson. I have strayed quite a bit from their pure definitions of how things work though and created my own personal theory with elements of theirs inside mine. Still want to give them credit for inspiring me. I am not saying their theories were wrong. I am saying that as I started to make sense of them so that I could translate them to others, ultimately they transformed into my theories.
I am not sure I am done developing my theories yet, so I am asking you to stay tuned. I have some drawings to do to illustrate my points, and I think I might have some more work to do on the theory.
I’ll give you a run down on where I am right now though. Point Number 1: Maturity is not a destination. It is a journey. We are all on it. We are all developing it as we age at different rates and in different ways. There isn’t a goal of “being a mature adult” to get to. The point for most is to work toward making more mature choices in life as you age, not to become mature and only make mature choices before you die, but to continue to grow and mature as a soul.
Point 2 is that maturity is a stages of development process. We are all born immature and then spend our lives becoming more mature. Before we were born, we were mature as spirit, but then we forgot all that when we were born. Some children do appear to not have forgotten how to be mature, despite never having been taught. That is very interesting to me.
The three stages of mature development are: Dependence, Independence and Interdependence. Kain talked about his theory of Outside – In and Inside – Out. I added an Inside – In to it. So, Outside – In is when you are dependent on what is going on outside of you for your existence and to determine if you exist. Inside – In is the middle maturity stage. It is when you become Independent of others and assert your separate existence from others. Stage 3 is Interdependence, when you realize that we are not separate from each other and are here to work together on this thing called life.
Point 3 there are categories of the different types of choices we make or areas of life. Instead of saying you are either Taught or Teaching as a measure of your maturity, which was Kain’s theory. I determined that Learning is a category in which we may mature. As we mature in our understanding of learning, we begin by being taught, then we use what we are taught and teach ourselves, then we seek to teach others for our gain, then teach others for their gain, then teach others for our gain so we learn and grow together. Moving from dependence, to independence, to interdependence.
In truth, most of us, if we live long enough will also go back to a more dependent life. It is more of a circular journey. Anyway, the Categories are: Learning, Communication, Goals, Actions, Connections, Physical Self, Emotions, Mind/Thoughts, Soul/Spirit, Self-Esteem and Self-Awareness. I read a great thing on Self-Awareness by Mark Manson yesterday. Sometimes we become addicted to being “Self” aware and forget that we are not the only ones who exist.
Anyway, this series is taking off in a new direction where I plan to flesh out the different categories and help us understand how we can makes our choices consciously on a scale of maturity. I also think I need to figure out how we can support ourselves and others to grown in maturity. Most of it develops naturally, but our society has developed in such a way that it creates barriers for growth in maturity for many of us. Our society is based on greed and selfishness. Even the self-help groups are creating a “me” mentality of “Independence” and I am separate.
I need to work on the developmental phases of each category, and then work on how we might teach maturity to each other. It is mostly a matter of how you think and perceive the world, on a scale of from the Outside to the Inside to the Outside.
Stay tuned.
Namaste