The Ceiling of Development
El Techo del Desarrollo
A reflection on the mutual dependence between psychological growth and the realization of being, and why neither alone can complete the picture.
The Ceiling of Development
A reflection on the mutual dependence between psychological growth and the realization of being, and why neither alone can complete the picture.
When pointing becomes reifying
The challenge with talking about being is that it can get reified, turned into an object, as though it were some thing that is changing. The very act of pointing to it creates a strange distortion. What are we even talking about? If I always use the same word, whether "consciousness" or any other label, it starts to become a fixed idea, something understood conceptually. And it cannot be that.
The relationship between development and realization
It also works the other way. If the development of the body-mind is not complete, there are limits to the possibility of realizing being. This is harder to say assertively, but it seems true. There is simply so much pain and fear that can arise, and working through that material can support the realization of being.
At the same time, it has often happened that the sheer intensity of pain and fear is precisely what brings about the realization of being. So the relationship is not straightforward.
A ceiling in conventional growth
What I feel much more confident saying is that the development and growth of the body-mind has a ceiling if being is not realized. This is why there are these evolutionary leaps in human history. Someone realizes being, teaches ethics, and there is a developmental leap in society, precisely because there had been a ceiling in the conventional collective mind.
The value and the limit of working on the person
When it comes to the development of the person and the body-mind, psychology is good. Working on ethics is good. Physical exercise and care for the body are good. Working on emotions, pain, and fears, and aligning all of that with better maps, helps. But here is the paradox: if you were to completely clear away all fear and pain, there would be nothing left to bring about being, nothing to catalyze waking up.