What determines the kind of boat you drive, how your captain chooses a direction, how well your helmsperson follows directions, where your compass points to and how well your navigator can read and follow that compass? Well, what Seamanship School did your crew attend, and how well did they pay attention? Experiences are what teach us everything we know. Reading a book is an experience. Going to a class with a teacher is an experience. Living a life with other people, being connected to family or not, job, car, kids, friends, etc., all are experiences that we had that have told us what type of boat to choose, and have taught our crew how to get that boat to our destination.
Up to this point in your life, you may or may not have considered what you have learned about life and being mature. You may not be aware of your boat or your ego state. You may not be aware of how your captain and helmsperson are steering your boat. You may not care or be aware of where your true north is or whether or not your navigator is following it. You may also be perfectly aware of all of it. I actually hope that when people read these blogs, that is the least thing that happens, they start to be aware of all of those things. I do not necessarily focus on whether a person changes or not. They get to decide. My goal is awareness. You can’t even decide if you want to change, if you are not aware of where you are now. This particular blog is designed to help you become aware of where your current maturity level came from. So you can become aware of where you learned the patterns and habits that create your boat and guide your crew. It may also help you see why you are not reaching the desired destination of Maturity Island, if that is where you want to go. Once you are aware of the origin of your ego, locus, and focus, you have the opportunity to work to either stay the course, or change. Without awareness, there is only “stay the course” as an option.
Try to be honest and open with yourself and look back at your past experiences. Consider your family or household where you grew up. What was it like to be you in that space? How did people treat you? What was the consistent message you received, either by it being said over and over again, or by action, meaning what was done to or for you that sent a clear message of . . . something? Outside of family or household, what were your teachers? What was your actual school experience like? Who were your friends? Did you attend spiritual services of any kind, how often, and what was the message?
All experiences are school. What did your schooling teach you? We hope that schooling teaches people Accountability, Responsibility and Maturity, but we know that an actual school is only one type of experience a person has that can either teach them those things, or not teach them. People are taught by so many other things than their “school” experiences. We can’t discount the role a school plays, but it is only one teacher a person will have.
Consider the entire scope of your experiences to this point. Where did they point you? What was there a
consistent message? One way your experiences could have gone is one of Other control. Did people try or actually control your actions, tell you what to do, think and feel? Was it blatant and direct control using force to compel you to do what you were told? Was it more subtle, like emotional blackmail or guilt trips, to try to push you towards being controlled by the person? Was that person or persons in authority over you, a peer or sibling, stranger, community figure, etc.? What did you learn from that? You might have learned a lot of “other” focused thoughts, beliefs and values. You may also come out of that with a heightened sense or need for self-preservation. You may have developed an exaggerated sense of other and self, which creates a very strong conflict in you at all times. It is common for these types of experiences to create an Other Locus of Control, and a Me Focus of Control. Strong “Other” experiences tend to create immaturity of Other, but can also create a reactive immaturity of Me. They don’t often create maturity.
Perhaps your education was more Me focused. Did you get your way easily? Did things come easily to you when you tried to learn them? Were you popular, attractive, smart, funny, something that caused others to put you above them in some way? Were you told you were special? Did the world tend to revolve around your needs and wants? What did you learn from that? If you had a lot of experiences where you were the center of positive affirmations, you might have learned that you were better than others. That most often that creates a Me sense of both locus and focus with a strong Me ego.
What’s interesting is that if early experiences were abusive and/or other controlled or driven based on the will and whim of authority, but then later a person starts to be seen as special by others, maybe when they leave home, they actually might struggle a great deal. They were taught that they did not have value by the home life, then if others try to push them to see their value, they reject that because it goes against their earlier training. They can become really conflicted. I don’t know many people who are all Other or all Me all of the time. There tend to be waves and washes back and forth. What I often find underneath the ebb and flow of their maturity is strong lessons in opposition to one anther.
A narcissist is someone who is very Me, and Me pretty much all of the time. If there ever is focus on others, it is to be “seen” as generous, not to be generous. That is still a Me focus. I have met several people in my life to want to be seen as a good person and someone who considers others and gives back, but when I look underneath the reason for it, it is most definitely not for the benefit of other. It is entirely for a benefit of Me, or rather, them/their sense of Me.
Self help books are full of Me advice for people who have been controlled by others all of their life. They tell us to take care of ourselves, take our lives back, and if we focus on positivity we can call to us all of the good things we deserve. At what cost though? I am completely one of those people who all of the sudden realized the truth in that I am important and deserved to be taken care of, then I just pushed everyone else aside for what I needed and wanted. Screw other people. I need my needs met. I had spent my life up to that point focused on doing what was right for other people and pushing myself aside. Literally hiding and dismissing my true self for the sake of others. I suppose I needed to swing a bit the other direction in order to come back to the middle. Most people need to swing like that.
People can get sort of opposite of narcissistic too. When I looked up the “opposite of narcissism” I got a couple of different ideas back. One was diffidence, which is self-effacing, modesty, shyness, humility. Another direct opposite sited was “empath”. I found that fascinating. A narcissist focuses on themselves and discounts others totally. An empath tends to notice everyone else’s emotions and energy. Some empaths can also become sort of lost in their sense of others where they do not know which emotions are their own and which are coming from others. They are drained by others because they take on so much from them. In terms of maturity, and empath isn’t by nature immature. It isn’t immature to be able to truly read and sense others. It can become immature if the empath is not able to be aware of what is generated from inside and what is being generated from outside. We know that we are all the same energy and connected, and it is a mature human that can see the origin of things either outside or in, while still accepting them as part of their whole energy existence regardless of the origin. A mature empath does not allow the energy of others to occlude, ride over or diminish their equality in the balance of energy in the world. They remain connected and equal with others.
If you had perfectly balanced parents, with perfectly balanced siblings, and a perfectly balanced school environment for all schooling to this point, you are probably completely mature as an adult. I don’t believe I have ever, or will ever, know anyone who fits that category. What I am saying is that, getting to be a mature person through having a completely balanced experiences is pretty rare if it ever happens. How we get to be mature is about having a balance of experiences, not that each experience you have is balanced. There is a subtle difference there. If you had some “other”, some “me”, and some balanced experiences throughout your life, you are probably on a trajectory toward the island of maturity. If each experience you had was also balanced, your journey to maturity is also probably set, but that just isn’t how this world works. Having a variety of immature and mature experiences are more likely.
If those immature experiences you had were over time balanced, you might be able to learn maturity. If not, you might have some work to do. Doesn’t make you a bad person. It might mean you are operating an immature ship, but immaturity is not evil or wrong. It just is what it is.
You don’t have to do anything about being immature either. If you are satisfied with your life and how things are going, then there is no need to learn anything new or change in any way. I think that most people who read a blog like this though, are probably not actually satisfied with how their life is 
going, so might want to think about how to change something.
First step, awareness. How are you currently operating your life, your S. S. Ego? Why do you operate that way? Where did those habits and patterns come from? Be self-aware of your maturity, or lack there of. Step one is always awareness. Next step, what do we do about it? The good news is, experiences taught you to be how you are now, and so experiences can teach you something different. The trick is, how to find and gain those different experiences to learn something different OR, how to take those same experiences you already had and learn something different from them. People around the world have the same or similar experiences, and react, learn, and create very different lives from those same experiences. You can do that too. The next blogs will start to explore how we do that, learn maturity.
Namaste