Imagine you are going on a journey to an island, the island of maturity. What you are hoping to find there is peace, unconditional love, joy, accountability and responsibility, and meaningful connections to others. Would you go to an island that was full of those things? Most would, and if you are a little afraid of a couple of those things from time to time, that would also be normal.
The island of maturity is easy to find, but it is also easily lost. If we keep our focus on a sense of connection and unity, we will sail straight to the island and live a long peaceful life there. The problem is, we often get steered off course and end up tossed about by storms and waves. The storms and waves are represented by focus on self, the giant tsunami wave, or a focus on others, the ship
sinking mother of all storms.
Begin with the image of the island.
Imagine the island surrounded by blue/green waters, crystal clear and sparkling lightly in the sun. On the island are the inhabitants Peace, Authenticity, Fulfillment, Collaboration, Accountability, Responsibility and Unconditional Love.
Frequent visitors to the island are Joy, Pleasure, Pride, Fun and Excitement (some among many). The visitors may be there a bunch of times, but they do not live there. They are not residents, and they come and go often.
The inhabitants of the island are there all of the time. They do not leave.
If you get attached to the visitors, when they leave, you might also be tempted leave. If you focus on the inhabitants and building, not an attachment, but a healthy connection to them, you will stay connected to them and the island, and they will keep you grounded.
Think of the visitors as fleeting emotions that come and go and the inhabitants as conditions of being, and so, more sustainable. Do enjoy the visitors when they come to the island, just try not to get attached to them. If you do, and they take you off the island of maturity, you may end up in a stormy sea, where you may be capsized by the storm in a tsunami style wave.
There are other visitors to the island that you may not realize are a part of maturity. They are Anger, Frustration, Control, Sadness, Pain, and Loneliness (again, some among many). They also visit like the other emotions, and they come and go frequently, like other emotions. And also like other emotions, if you get attached to them, they will take you off the island of maturity and into a stormy, rocky, sea.
Emotional visitors are neither mature or immature by nature. They are just emotions. They have no meaning on their own, only the one we give them. If
we give them meaning and then attach to that meaning, that is the ticket off the island of maturity. The emotions do not do that. Their job is to come and go. It is our attachment to them that takes us off course and away from the island.
Emotions are really just a few of the types of visitors to the island you might find. Your thoughts are also visitors. They come and go, and also have little meaning on their own. They only gain meaning when we give it to them. And like emotions, when we get attached to them being things like, “true”, and can’t let them go, they will also take us off and away from the island.
Things like goals, actions, choices, and even the things we own can visit the island. They are not immature or mature by nature, and as with thoughts and emotions, it is easy to get attached to those items too. If we do, we may be dragged from the island and whisked into a stormy sea with giant waves setting us on a path from maturity to immaturity. It is always the attachment to the things that cannot be sustained that will drag you off the island.
Okay, summing it up, the first image and point to the maturity journey. There is an island that we all want to go to because of all of the awesome things we will find there. If when we get there, if we can cultivate a relationship with the island natives, the ones who sustain and keep the island mature, we will cultivate a personhood of maturity within ourselves.
If we get to the island, and when visitors like thoughts, emotions, goals, and stuff arrives, and we get attached to those things, we can lose our place on the island, be taken off the island into a stormy sea. Once we land again, it will likely be in shipwreck fashion and on the island of immaturity. If we are not careful, we can get stuck there.
Two things to remember. The island of maturity is not the end goal. It is not good or bad, right or wrong. Just like getting pulled off the island to spend time in a stormy sea or on the island of immaturity are not good or bad, right or wrong. It is just one is mature, and the other is immature. We make choices as to which island we are bound for on a continuous basis. Some people never arrive at maturity island, or if they do, it is for a very short visit. The goal is not arriving safely on maturity island, the goal is to be continuously focused on cultivating a connection to the inhabitants of the island. In so doing, when we get lost on the stormy sea or the island of immaturity, we will know how to return to the island of maturity.
More on this in the next article.
Namaste,