There are different aspects of evolution of a person, such as, intellectual, physical, spiritual, emotional, social, creative, and so on. I wonder how most people mature and evolve, I mean how specifically, and in what order at different stages of their lives.
I have thought that there is a typical order (although my life doesn't conform to the typical order). Physical development + intellectual development happen parallely from infancy to about twenties. And typically after that, there is development of bigger and better material and survival skills- which maps to climbing the career ladder, or buying your own house or car etc., and emotional development, to cope with girlfriends/boyfriends, ex dates, spouses, divorces, broken friendships, family ties and tensions. And then the stage from the mid life (crisis ?) to old age, where life takes a more spiritual turn, with a quest for more and more simplicity through the small yet meaningful things beyond the veil of mundaneness. (Actually this last leg can be quite different depending on the person - I guess there could be senile people who made a lot more sense when they were younger). But anyway, is this how everyone sees it and is this how people see themselves growing?
Personally for me it's been very very different. My spiritual quests and reasoning were at their peak in the teens. In my early twenties bulk of my energy went into physical development, when I worked out a lot and developed strength and stamina and worked my way into getting lean and mean. I also developed a lot of survival skills since I left home and the first couple of years after that were hard. Now most of my energy is spent on intellectual things, both left and right brain oriented, due to my fulltime job + part time degree, and my interest and consequently, time spent in the arts. So when I look at the path of my life since adolesence it's something like: spiritual -> [physical + emotional + social] -> intellectual. Of course all aspects of evolution are present in all stages of life but this map is based on the most *dominant* aspect, or the most significant aspect, at any particular stage.
Do people's life maps typically look quite different from the above? How do you see yourself evolve? What does your roadmap of evolution look like- the past and the future you envision? Would you have liked the roadmap so far to have been different and if so why? If not, why not?
I am really looking forward to reading your thoughts!
"How did humans get to life?"
9 years ago
8 comments:
I stumbled across ur blog and have been on a marathon reading all the posts and comments, and hence tempted to go on a writing sprint :). Will start with this post.
First off, the ability for each human being to mature/evolve in each of the dimensions you mentioned, cannot be taken for granted :). It will be wonderful and ideal if each of us could indeed mature on all levels. There are many who have reached the brinks of their current life without having matured "enough" and their road maps are perhaps incomplete (except for bodily/biological maturation). Again, to what extent each of us define maturation is based on what we perceive as being significant enough. I'm not sure we can be objective enough to define "significant" or "dominant".
As you pointed out, all dimensions mature and evolve at each stage of our life. Sometimes it's difficult to quantify which aspect has been most dominant, because how they get "measured" is highly subjective. More than trying to see a distinct dimension bubble up as dominantly evolved during a stage, I see most dimensions feeding into each other to holistically contribute to each other's growth. For example, I feel spirituality and intellect cannot exist without one another. So when our spirituality grows, it's a bidirectional/symbiotic process by which our wisdom/intellect contributes to it's growth as well as evolves itself due to the other dimension growing.
If I were to lose my eyesight/limbs during an accident,
1. My body goes through a physical trauma. It suffers and needs to adapt to the new ways of living.
2. While my body goes through physical trauma, my emotions are tormented as well, and when I try to adapt to my new life I need to emotionally mature to deal with my feelings and how they affect my relationships.
3. It is likely that my accident affects my livelihood. I need to socially adapt and learn skills to interact with society and survive to make a living. All through this process, my evolving emotions and body feed into how I socially adapt. The evolution of my survival skills matures my emotions further.
4. It is during trying times that we think of God/prayers/life and it's meanings. It is very possible that our spiritual evolution spikes at this point.
5. Spiritual evolution needs the mind/intellect. Intellectual evolution grows due to my spiritual maturation, as well as due to my new survival skills. Learning new survival skills requires the intellect, but also matures the intellect a great deal in the process.
In such a case, I can't point or quantify what was more dominant. For one aspect to mature we need other aspects to mature and contribute as well. And it's not a sequential process really.
In my life, I have similar "turning points" that have jarred up all aspects at the same time, making it impossible for me to point the most dominant. Each challenging situation has been an opportunity for more growth.
Maybe a few decades down the road, having more data points, I can lay down my map much better :). But again, I am not sure how I will quantify emotional maturation as being more dominant when compared against incident 1 versus incident 2 :). They were probably equally "dominant" but of different flavors.
Hi NS
First off, I really really appreciate the fact that you stopped by and shared your thoughts!
Second, I liked your comment - very holistic. I have been rather slammed the past few days. I'll try to reply to this this week.
Later,
SUMI
@ns - beautiful exposition (matches mine) except that I wasn't aware of it until I read your comment.
Will post my opinion later.
Visitor
Wonderful way of explaining by ns. As I was reading Sumi's post I was just thinking to myself how the evolution is not really linear, and ns has pretty much echoed my thoughts.
Plus, I feel external influences (parents, siblings, school, friends etc) play a big role in shaping the road map.
I think the order of maturation/ development in an individual is almost completely circumstantial rather than intrinsic. It is to stimuli that we react and grow.
As for me, the spiritual phase was on a high in my late teens (very briefly tho') and after that intellectual and 'artsy' phases have been playing a see saw till date :)
@ns
Completely agree with the interdependency aspect between the different dimentions of evolution. And also completely agree with the measurement of maturation being subjective. There cannot be an objective process to measure this; rather, I wanted to hear about every person's roadmap as per their own (subjective) judgement. Guess any evaluation is that way. So for instance, the roadmap I described of myself is just my perception of my own life.
The way I see my life I see these distinct phases of waxing of one particular aspect of development, although as you say, by symbiosis and dependencies other facets grew as well. In my perception the distinction is strong enough for me to view them as side effects. But I can completely understand the fact that many people may not see their lives growing in phases like I have assumed.
@Sindhu
That is true. It is not necessarily intrinsic and my questions were not geared towards that idea. Many many factors influence the way people evolve. Environment/circumstances is a huge one. My roadmap was of course, also influenced by numerous experiences and stimuli.
Very interesting thread of discussion. As NS pointed out, it is not a linear process, but can be intermixed due to influences such as environment, perceptions, maturity and fulfilment.
In my opinion, true spirituality is not something that we hit upon by chance - I think our mental archetypes (from previous lifetimes?) influence this process a great deal.
As for me, the spiritual enquiry really started when I joined college, when I had to put up with a particularly vulgar and uncultured set of wingmates. This was the beginning - since I had taken admission into what was supposedly a premier institution of the country, I had certain expectations from the place, which were brutally shattered by the company that I had to put up with. This made me re-think my entire perception of conventional notions of excellence. Previously I had thought that the brand name in itself guaranteed a certain standard, but my experience made me realise that this isn't necessarily so. I became progressively irreverent to the established norms of society, and this attitude is now firmly established. My experience in the Indian marriage market with its vulgar materialism and hypocrisy only served to further fashion this irreverence into utter contempt.
I believe that one's quality of spiritual inclination depends a lot on one's experiences in life, and also on one's level of sensitivity. It took Buddha one experience of merely seeing suffering to change his entire perspective of life - that is how heightened his sensitivity was!! These things are probably determined from our unconscious archetypes. Everybody's spiritual attitude need not be the same - for instance it is fashionable for youngsters nowadays to only believe in a Western education-fashioned notion of spirituality, which is purely intellectual and practically useless - the sort that tries to reconcile notions of atheism and agnosticism, with no component of Bhakti. It is almost as if resorting to Bhakti is considered infra dig.
This is a mild sort of spirituality, where one is content with contemplation and trying to find out about concepts that are unknowable in the human body. My experiences made me realise that I wouldn't be satisfied with this approach, because my entire conception of life had been turned upside down, and I was not looking for intellectual answers - I was looking for a solution to my problems.
In my opinion, the other processes of evolution - intellectual, emotional, social etc. are only auxiliary to spiritual evolution. They are part of the human personality and society, that's all. If one looks at the Bhagavad Gita, the first chapter is titled the Yoga of Depression. Yes!! The Yoga of Depression!! The process of depression is cyclical - it starts with having certain expectations, then these expectations not being fulfilled, then feelings of anger and disappointment at these expectations not being fulfilled, then disappointment leading to infatuation with unfulfilled expectations, then infatuation leading to dependence, dependence leading to selfishness, selfishness leading to unpleasant behaviours and attitudes, and finally destruction of the intellect and discriminative faculty, leading to a vegetable-like state.
Of course, the process is often linear, and one may experience spiritual motivation after having fulfilled their other motivations in life - intellectual, social, emotional, sexual, financial etc.
I believe that spiritual evolution during one's lifetime starts with depression and ends with surrender. The process of spiritual evolution across different lifetimes is another matter. Until a person realises that noone belongs to him/her and he/she belongs to noone, I don't think the spiritual process has really matured. We are all just travellers travelling alone, and our associations are only transient, like meeting people in a hotel where one has put up for the night en route to another place. The sooner one realises this, the sooner one becomes free.
Some people, like true sannyasins, realise this very early in life. I know of one contemporary saint who realised this at the age of 4!! Which is why sannyasins do not associate at a very personal level with anybody - it's not that they don't have feelings, but only that they have transcended feelings into something higher - you may call it universal love if you will. Householders are sometimes disappointed when they see this in realised gurus, because they expect sannyasins to have the same notions of love as they do.
The rest of us have to struggle and suffer in life until this realisation dawns upon us. People have transformed their entire lives consequent to this realisation - examples being Tulsidas, who was infatuated with his wife, and Valmiki, who was a robber and murderer.
If we are really sincere and innocent, this realisation comes to us from time to time, interspersed through other evolutionary processes - biological, intellectual, emotional and social. If we cannot be sincere and innocent, then we remain in our headtrips throughout our lifetimes, and this is what happens to a vast majority of people. This is why people turn senile - they experience depression too late in life, when there is no time left to take the process up to surrender within their lifetime.
If we expect to be happy, we will be inevitably disappointed. If we expect sorrow, we will always be happy, because we will always get equal to or more than what we expect. The trick is to realise that life is but a passing phase, and thus remain unaffected by these things, though one may act as though these things affect him/her, for the sake of others. If we can go one step further and surrender, then there is nothing but happiness, because there is no involvement of the ego.
That's my take on this.
@dev
thanks for your comment. on vacation right now but just got a few minutes of internet time.
your answer was along expected lines. I agree with the bit of senility due to depression at the old age etc., and also with the idea of the spirituality process being dependent on one's sensitivity !
So I infer that as per you, the process ain't linear either and most of your focus is on spiritual development, the other ones being branches growing off of it? Is this right?
Yes, that is quite right. And in fact this is the view that Vedic Dharma takes on this. If you see the paintings of Khajuraho, they are about this theme. Sex is the part that most people see there because it is sensational, but actually the carvings are about leading a holistic life, with spirit at the centre. One of my friends had visited the place, and he told me there is a stone carving with Buddha in the centre, and players in different roles all around. Buddha here represents spirit, and the other people represent the different roles played by spirit as part of human life. The problem with us is that we view spirituality as a separate thing, without realising that we are, indeed, spirit.
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