Pat­terns of Development

This sec­ond arti­cle has to do with emp­ty­ing the mind. But before we can explore a west­ern take on the east­ern idea of empti­ness and how to use mind­ful­ness, I want to talk about how fear and anger con­tribute to blocked or stunted growth.

If you’ve explored back issues of Into the Cen­tre, or looked through the Body­work sec­tion, you’ll know that there are a cou­ple of human devel­op­ment mod­els that I agree with. In this arti­cle, I want to dis­cuss three. Next arti­cle, as we explore Mind­ful­ness, I’ll pull it all together.

Maslow, Myss, and Peck

Sounds a lit­tle like a law firm, right? Some years ago, I devel­oped a ten-session Body­work series based upon the Chakras, plus ses­sions of full body and erotic mas­sage work. For the brochure, I cre­ated to fol­low­ing illustration:

Now, in a sense, the chart ought to be the other way around, as we move ‘up’ from ground to ‘heaven,’ and of course that’s how it looks in Maslow’s hierarchy.

In both Maslow’s hier­ar­chy and in Chakra The­ory, we begin at the low­est level and develop (or not!) from there. In keep­ing with Ken Wilber’s idea men­tioned last arti­cle, the goal is to “[tag]transcend and include[/tag]†each stage of development.

Why Most are Stuck at Level Three

The first three lev­els are phys­i­cal, and are each about safety, belong­ing­ness, and escap­ing aban­don­ment. Infants learn from the first to do what is nec­es­sary to keep the food flow­ing and the phys­i­cal con­tact com­ing. Most peo­ple are highly ‘phys­i­cal real­ity based,’ in that they fear actual, phys­i­cal loss and/or abandonment.

A per­fect illus­tra­tion of this is how quickly peo­ple will aban­don their ‘selves’ when some­one threat­ens to leave them. Or they might think they are going to be fired. Prin­ci­ples fly out the win­dow as the per­son seeks to save the relationship.

We learned to do this as children—staying a mem­ber in good stand­ing of the tribe seemed to be ‘life and death.’ (My e-book, “Liv­ing Life in Grow­ing Orbits†describes this process. Have a look at the free sam­ple pages.)

The Flavours of Fear

The two main flavours of fear are ‘fear of loss’ and ‘fear of change.’ Aban­don­ment, for exam­ple, could fit into either cat­e­gory. Now this might be obvi­ous, but think about adver­tis­ing. Vir­tu­ally all adver­tis­ing tar­gets one or the other of these fears. We’re con­di­tioned to use the same prod­ucts and the same meth­ods for gain­ing safety and secu­rity. When in doubt, buy something!

The Mar­ket­ing of Fear and Lack

Mar­ket­ing is directed at the largest demo­graphic, and caters to what “moves†them. We are thus bom­barded with lack, loss, and fear-based ads, movies, TV shows, etc. We are told that if only we will buy in to the west­ern con­sumerist lifestyle, we will have it all. We will be safe, pop­u­lar, and smell nice. Yet, it just doesn’t seem to work out. Var­i­ous star­lets and singers like the strangely dis­turbed Hilton, Lohan, and Spears reg­u­larly give us a look at what a drug and drink induced mega-lifestyle looks at (as well as end­less views of the crotches, but that’s another article…)

And yet, we look, trans­fixed, the way we slow down and look at a high­way accident.

The smaller ‘voca­tional’ demo­graphic, above, starts at the tran­si­tion point between ‘phys­i­cal’ and ‘spiritual’—and it’s sim­ply a change of focus, ori­en­ta­tion and direction.

Now, know­ing this and doing some­thing about it are two dif­fer­ent things. In the next arti­cle, I’ll spend some time look­ing at Bud­dhist con­cepts for deal­ing with the fear mes­sages that occupy our minds at all hours of the day. For now, I just want you to “get†how they are implanted.

M. Scot Peck and the Stages of Faith

Peck, best known for his amaz­ing book, The Road Less Trav­eled, pro­posed four faith or devel­op­ment stages in his later work, The Dif­fer­ent Drum.
Here they are:

Peck says that every­thing fol­lows these stages—physical, psy­cho­log­i­cal, men­tal, and spir­i­tual devel­op­ment, in keep­ing with our theme.

He sug­gests that chaos is so unstruc­tured that it breeds an intense desire for order and rules, and fun­da­men­tal­ism is per­fect for this. There are always peo­ple around that want to tell oth­ers how to live, after all.

For most peo­ple, fit­ting in and fol­low­ing the rules is all they want. Any­thing else is just too scary. There­fore, their effort is put into buy­ing a house, hav­ing kids, get­ting raises and mov­ing up the lad­der at work. At the end of their work­ing lives, most are exactly as Thoreau described: liv­ing lives of quiet desperation.

The stage beyond fun­da­men­tal­ism is doubt. This is the stage of ques­tion­ing our beliefs, norms, goals, and direc­tions. It’s the stage of mov­ing from home, mov­ing out of town, doing some­thing dif­fer­ent and chal­leng­ing every­thing. Many peo­ple get just a taste of this in Col­lege or Uni­ver­sity, before they set­tle back in, sell out, and buy the Beemer.

Doubt is the Excit­ing Stage

There’s noth­ing more free­ing than ques­tion­ing your assump­tions. It’s deadly not to. I have a client we’ll call “Câ€. She sees this, and yet is firmly stuck in her fun­da­men­tal­ism. Her belief is that every­one hates her and treats her badly, and she is angry at ‘all of them.’ She goes on at great length, list­ing the sins com­mit­ted against her, and can stop for a minute and see that list­ing sins gets her nowhere. But the pull of her belief that she is hard done by trumps doing things dif­fer­ently. Doubt would require that she doubt her belief, and so far, it’s far too much fun to be a victim.

Doubt leads to ques­tion­ing and mis-trust—just the oppo­site of what soci­ety wants of good, loyal sheep. Doubt that is informed and guided by mys­ti­cism does not seek to change the sys­tem. It seeks to redi­rect the atten­tion of the indi­vid­ual to the only thing any­one can do any­thing about—him or herself.

Gandhi, for exam­ple, did not change Eng­land or India. He changed him­self. He sat, he spun yarn, and he talked and he walked. He said, “You must be the change you want to see in the world.†and “Always aim at com­plete har­mony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at puri­fy­ing your thoughts and every­thing will be well.â€

I sus­pect you’ve read this far because you are sick and tired of being bored, con­fused, angry, and turned off. In the end, there is only one way out, and it is the path of doubt lead­ing to a change of heart, mind and direc­tion. Our next arti­cles will address these changes.