Develop in a Balanced Way

To understand this section you need to be familiar with the core ideas of Adult Development, in particular that people can develop in different ways, in adult development terminology along different lines of development.

There are aspects of development that can be (largely) avoided in the renunciate path. Whilst in a monastery, convent or equivalent community, an individual can develop enormously spiritually without paying attention to emotional, moral or relational development. This is not the case for someone who wishes to develop spiritually and also remain in the world of possessions, relationships and sex. Indeed the path that I am describing in this website requires individuals to consciously develop along many of the lines of development at the same time. This is not straightforward and requires paying attention to one’s weakest areas of development.

It is obvious that anyone reading this website will be interested in, and probably prioritising, their spiritual development, and Mastering Enlightenment Intensives can serve this very well. However someone who has developed spiritually enough to Master Intensives may use this ability to avoid facing themselves emotionally. This is known as spiritual bypassing; it is using spiritual ideas and practices as a defence to avoid facing emotional and psychological issues. I should emphasise at this point that individuals do not consciously choose to spiritually bypass, they do so unconsciously. Like everyone else they are unconscious of the defences they are using to avoid facing issues. So the first injunction is to pay attention to one’s emotional development and in particular develop effective tools and processes for uncovering what your unconscious is up to. This is expanded significantly in the next Principle (Uncover your Unconscious). It is the most important aspect of having a balanced approach to growth precisely because you, like everyone, are unaware of your unconscious – that is what unconscious means.

What constitutes spiritual development? How can anyone judge or decide whether they themselves, or people they know, have made spiritual progress? Within a specific spiritual system there may be markers, such as particular experiences or realisations, that can be used to ascertain progress. But given the plethora of different such systems, can any indicators be relied upon? Quite early in my engagement with EIs I read William James book The Varieties of Religious Experience.  In it he proposes to evaluate an experience by its fruits, i.e. how it affects the individual’s life. In particular how well the individual treats other people. This is echoed in the Dalai Lama’s criterion which is ‘how kind someone is’.

This seems to me to be a reasonable way to assess someone’s spiritual progress. There are also problems in attempting to assess one’s own spiritual development. The most obvious is that you may be a poor judge of how kind you are to others; the others are likely to be much better judges. Also one’s own evaluation is subject to many personal attitudes and beliefs. Someone who has an issue of feeling worthless or undeserving is likely to underestimate their progress whereas  narcissists are likely to overestimate their development.

For this reason the second most important requirement for balanced growth is to become sensitive to how one relates to other people, in particular to how one behaves in your most intimate relationships. There is another Principle devoted to the relational aspects of growth because it is so central to your spiritual progress.

There are other Principles that are key to  balanced growth. Cleaning up your act is critical to moral development. To explore your own moral development further I recommend searching online for Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development  and using some of the exercises.  “Regularly clean out Physically” is an important part of taking care of one’s body and becoming more sensitive to what it needs. As explained in the sections covering these Principles, cleaning out physically and morally is also an important prerequisite for the release of kundalini energy – and it is kundalini that ultimately determines your growth.

There is one further aspect of Personal Growth that is not related to the Lines of Adult development, but which I regard as central. This is becoming aware of, and integrating, one’s sub-personalities.  I first came across the concept of sub-personalities in psychosynthesis, but then realised that this was related to the ‘parts’ that negotiated in Gestalt therapy and to the archetypes in Jungian psychology. The essential idea is that an aspect of your psyche can take on a life of its own and represents some significant attitude or way of being. This is important because it is usual for each sub-personality or part to capture some aspect of your energy or ability – and until you are able to integrate the sub-personality you will not have full access or control over the energy or ability involved.

There are several different routes you can adopt to increase your ability to integrate sub-personalities. You can learn about archetypes and active imagination within Jungian Psychology. You can attend a Gestalt group, or engage a Gestalt therapist to help you identify ‘parts’ of yourself and negotiate between them. You can read Internal Family Systems Therapy by Richard Schwartz or find an IFS practitioner to take you through the process. The techniques covered in the Tools section of this website are Gestalt Negotiation and The Inner Guide Meditation ; this is also the main vehicle I have used for this mode of integration.