I Am...

Uniquely manifest
within the tensions and boundaries
of an always emerging
mysterious interrelation
of unknowable origin
and self-reflected
in the clarity and shadows
of the self and its relationships
from passing perceptions
understood as moments
on a line conceived as time
starting at the retrospectively created idea of birth
and ending at the imaginal projection of death
deducted from the existing patterns of life
held for the security of consistency
for my needs, hers, and
the safe rearing of young
all while being nonspecifically locatable
from one perspective to another
but nonetheless hewn in flesh, breath,
warmth, nutrition, movement,
flux, lineage, community, heart, energy, rhythm, passions, friendship,
skill,
language, light, pattern, care, parent,
exploration, curiosity, freedom, void,
stillness, breeze, texture,
sweat, sex, desire, blood, hair, howl,
cower, scream, avoid, deter, suffer,
envelop, ascend, sleep, approach,
yield, recall, dance, stretch, birth,
witness, agree, create, destroy, covet,
and above all
love.

Great Summary of Robert Kegan's The Evolving Self

Okay – now, let us apply Piaget's insights about how knowledge develops in successive layers not to thinking maturity, but rather to social maturity, a topic rather dear to the hearts of most people visiting this website, I expect. The questions to ask now are:

• Are there successive layers of social maturity (e.g., appreciation of the social world and of emotions and how to manage them) that people experience as they develop?

• If so, what are those successive layers of social maturity?

• What sorts of problems arise when you get stuck in a particular stage of social maturity and fail to mature further?

These first two questions are addressed in "The Evolving Self", while the third question is addressed in Kegan's follow-up book, "In Over Our Heads".

What Kegan has to say in "The Evolving Self" can be summarized (I think) in this manner:

• Social maturity does evolve or develop in successive layers just as does cognitive maturity, progressing from the most simple understanding to more and more complex understandings of the social world.

• More simple appreciations of the social world, and of human emotions are fundamentally inaccurate, and not a good fit for the actual complexity of the social world, but they nevertheless represent the best people can do at any given moment.

• More complex appreciations of the social world evolve into existence as a person becomes able to appreciate stuff abstractly that they used to appreciate only in concrete (obvious, tangible) forms. This is to say (using Kegan's terms) that people are initially embedded in their own subjective perspective. They see things only from their own particular point of view and fundamentally cannot understandwhat it might be like to see themselves from another perspective other than their own. Being unable to understand what you look like to someone else is the essence and definition of what it means to be subjective about yourself, for example. Being able to appreciate things from many different perspectives is the essence of what it means to be relatively objective.
  

• New layers of social/emotional development occurs as people become able to finally see themselves in increasingly larger and wider social perspective. For example, the moment I am able to understand for the first time what another person is thinking or feeling, I have made a sort of leap forwards out of subjectivity (me being trapped in my own perspective) and into a view of the world that is a little more objective. If I can understand what someone else is thinking and feeling, I can also imagine myself as I must look through their eyes and my self-understanding becomes that much more objective. This sort of expanded awareness represents an emergence from embeddedness in my own subjective perspective and the growth of my ability to see things from multiple perspectives at once.

• This process of becoming progressively less subjective as you mature, and thus more able to appreciate the complexity of the social world, repeats itself multiple times in a given lifespan (assuming people do continue to mature as they age and don't simply get stuck!). Each new layer of awareness; each expansion of perspective that a person grows is simultaneously both more objective; offering a better, wider perspective on the social world than did the prior understanding), and also less objective then the understanding that logically follows next.

• Where does this progression end? Theoretically, it ends in some kind of Buddha-like state of enlightenment, where everything that can be understood objectively is understood objectively and there is no more subjectivity to be embedded in anymore. More practically, it ends when we reach the level of social maturity that most of our peers achieve. Few people ever become more socially mature than the majority of their peers.

  
  

‘a trembling experience of oscillation between I and non-I’...

I know that timid breathing. Where
Do I begin and end? And where,

As I strum the thing, do I pick up
That which momentously declares

Itself not to be I and yet
Must be. It could be nothing else.

- Wallace Stevens

Hall of Mirrors

If I build it
I will come.

There's nothing but me here
and forever lonely I'm not anymore.
Inspire; the many mansions open their doors.
Expire; what I was dies to who I am
now.

If I build it
I will come

I was always only ever you.
Every other me just circumstance, just survival.
Inspire; I climb the castle's walls
Expire; all of existence becomes, and becomes
again

If I build it
I will come

No longer a feint wonder, a silent question
A fragment of a fragment forever reflecting
Inspire; it lifts, yeilds, delivers me
Expire; Delivered, Delivered, Delivered!
Delivered! Delivered! Forever,
Delivered!

Addiction and Developmental Arrest in the Ego-Self Axis

The Ego-Self axis as described by Edinger (1972) reflects a developmental pathway that is traversed in the process of individuation. For normal individuals, the path reflects a continually changing set of goals and directions which shape and give meaning to life experiences.The path itself is characterized by the numinous draw of the teleological Self (Jung, 1969; Gray, 1996).For many addicts the archetypal Self has been overshadowed by the demands of addiction and ceases to provide either a base for personal definition or a direction for growth.By reintroducing a sense of Self and its promise of individuation, the therapist provides a motivational foundation for overcoming addiction.In order to provide continuing, conscious experience of the Self, the author uses techniques gleaned from the work of Milton Erickson, Robert Dilts (1990), and Wyatt Woodsmall to assemble personal experiences of competence, personal- adequacy, and hope into what he terms a Feeling Toned Vector (FTV) which becomes a source of personal direction and a background for personal choice.

Addictions are characterized by several behavioral traits. Peele and Brodsky (1991) note that addictions include "the single minded grasping of a magic-seeming object or involvement, the loss of control, perspective and priorities...(p. 42).Other significant behaviors associated with addiction are: social isolation, loss of self respect, depressed mood, and lack of motivation. They often include a loss of futurity beyond the next opportunity to engage in the addictive behavior..

Transformations of Frustration - A.H. Almaas

"The animal soul is not a cruel human who has lost her heart. As we come to understand this manifestation, we begin to see that its exaggerated destructiveness and hateful quality are actually reactions to frustration. Because the instinctual self is not allowed to be powerful and effective in getting its way, its power turns into destructive hatred and heartless reactivity. The particulars of the structure connect with one's early history in relation to power, control, destructiveness as well as the need to protect the vulnerable and loving heart. When we are finally able to experience this animal form without either rejection or judgment or acting out, it transforms into its original form. This turns out to be an animal kind of power and energy, calm and confident, peaceful but ready to act with full power and energy. The opening of this experience removes the negativity associated with frustration".

- A.H. Almaas