Forever Becoming

Maturity

Immature - Mature
Irresponsible - Responsible

Development [...] can be defined as a successive decrease in egocentrism.

Carol Gilligan found, for example, that female moral development tends to go through three general stages, which she calls selfish, care, and universal care. In each of these stages, the circle of care and compassion expands and egocentrism declines.

[Ken Wilber]
A Theory of Everything, p. 17-18

Elders speak about everyone, but they do not ask to spoken about. They see everyone, but do not ask to be seen. The self is sacrificed, put to one side.

As we mature our gaze gradually turns away from the self and out towards others. We see more and become responsible for more. The less we look at the self, the more we see of our surroundings.

We begin to speak less in terms of "I" and "me" and more in terms of "we" and "us." We recognize our connectedness and become communalized.

For an elder to ask to be seen or spoken about is a perversity, and goes against the natural order. Just as water flows downhill, our gaze should also flow downwards, so that we see and speak about all those beneath us - less mature than us - and are in turn seen and spoken about by those above us. And as we wouldn't expect water to flow uphill - and would be engaging in a fruitless activity if we were attempt to make it - we shouldn't expect to be seen or spoken about by those beneath us. As we become older the self should become less important, and should not need to be stroked as much as when we were younger.

o < ------- o < ------- o < ------- o < ------- o < ------- o

This is one of the reasons why it is so disturbing when we meet an older person who is still consumed by selfishness and vanity, and who demands that we see and hear them, rather than the other way around. They may be older than us, but through such behaviour we see that they are no more mature. Often in cases like this, we must become the adult, sacrificing our self so that theirs is satisfied. An old person like this has ducked their duties and cannot rightly be seen as an elder. They are frozen in time, perpetually immature.

How can we hope for a mature and wise society if our grown-ups refuse to grow up?

"I will speak about others, but I will not expect or demand to be spoken about."

In many indigenous cultures, elders are accorded great respect.

To be an elder is more than being old; it means being a person who has learned some wisdom from their life experiences, including their mistakes. An elder may be someone who has lived a blameless life of complete integrity, or a recovering alcoholic who knows from personal experience how hard it is to struggle with an addiction, and so can guide others.

Not everyone old is wise. For some people, aging can simply rigidify longstanding patterns of dysfunction.

And some "elders" may be young, blessed with good judgment, compassion and sound sense from an early age.

Groups need elders: people who put the needs of the group first and help keep its balance.

We may become elders and gain social power in many constructive ways:

- By Taking on Responsibility and Fulfilling It

- By Helping the Group Function Smoothly

- By Good Judgment

- By Making Mistakes and Acknowledging Them so They Become Part of Group Learning

- By Showing Compassion and Forgiveness

- By Integrity and Upholding Values

- By Bringing Experience, Skills and Training to the Service of the Group

- By Mentoring and Being Mentored

- By Commitment and Time

- By Modeling Good Self-Care

[Starhawk]
http://www.realitysandwich.com/developing_elders

In maturity environment is something to which the individual contributes and for which the individual man or woman takes responsibility.

In a community in which there is a sufficiently high proportion of mature individuals there is a state of affairs which provides the basis for what is called democracy.

Of a true democracy (as the term is used today) one can say: In this society at this time there is sufficient maturity in the emotional development of a sufficient proportion of the individuals that comprise it for there to exist an innate tendency towards the creation and re-creation and maintenance of the democratic machinery.

By 'innate' I intend to convey the following: the natural tendencies in human nature (hereditary) bud and flower into the democratic way of life (social maturity), but this only happens through the healthy emotional development of individuals.

In bodily development the growth factor is more clear; in the development of the psyche, by contrast, there is a possibility of failure at every point, and indeed there can be no such thing as growth without distortion due to some degree of failure of environmental adaptation

[...] only a proportion of individuals in a social group will have had the luck to develop to maturity, and therefore it is only through them that the innate (inherited) tendency of the group towards social maturity can be implemented.

If the proportion of mature individuals is below a certain number, democracy is not something which can become a political fact since affairs will be swayed by the immature, that is to say, by those who by identification with the community lose their own individuality or by those who never achieve more than the attitude of the individual dependent upon society.

Maturity means, among other things, a capacity for tolerating ideas, [a capacity] which at its best is part of social maturity. A mature social system (while making certain demands in regard to action) allows freedom of ideas and the free expression of them.

[D.W. Winnicott]
Home Is Where We Start From ('The Meaning of the Word 'Democracy''), p.242-3
Human Nature, p.29, 59-60, 152

The psychologically mature person as I have described him has, I believe, the qualities which would cause him to value those experiences which would make for the enhancement and survival of the human race.

He would be a worthy participant and guide in the process of human evolution.

[Carl Rogers]
Person to person, the problem of being human, p. 27

Our explanation of the sublime can indeed be extended to cover the ethical, namely what is described as the sublime character.

Such a character springs from the fact that the will is not excited here by objects certainly well calculated to excite it, but that knowledge retains the upper hand.

Such a character will accordingly consider men in a purely objective way, and not according to the relations they might have to his will.

For example, he will observe their faults, and even their hatred and injustice to himself, without being thereby stirred to hatred on his own part. He will contemplate their happiness without feeling envy, recognize their good qualities without desiring closer association with them, perceive the beauty of women without hankering after them. His personal happiness or unhappiness will not violently affect him [...]

For, in the course of his own life and in its misfortunes, he will look less at his own individual lot than at the lot of mankind as a whole, and accordingly will conduct himself in this respect rather as a knower than as a sufferer.

This contemplation is only maintained by a constant turning away from the will and exaltation above its interests; and this constitutes the sublimity of the disposition.

On the other hand, the charming or attractive draws the beholder down from pure contemplation, demanded by every apprehension of the beautiful, since it necessarily stirs his will by objects that directly appeal to it.

[Arthur Schopenhauer]
The World as Will and Representation, p.206-7

The Master of Hermetics polarizes himself at the point at which he desires to rest, and then neutralizes the Rhythmic swing of the pendulum which would tend to carry him to the other pole.

All individuals who have attained any degree of Self-Mastery do this to a certain degree, more or less unconsciously, but the Master does this consciously, and by the use of his Will and attains a degree of Poise and Mental Firmness almost impossible of belief on the part of the masses who are swung backward and forward like a pendulum.

The Kybalion, Chapter II: "The Seven Hermetic Principles"

In Pintupi life, autonomy is inseparable from relatedness. The two are coordinated through initiation.

The production of the social person involves an elaboration of the ties of relatedness to others, the creation of a public self that takes priority over its private qualities, and the development of the ability to "look after" others.

Thus, initiation is a dramatization of a man's becoming responsible for himself, developing autonomy and capacity to look after others through relations, and a negation of being "looked after” by elders. The initiate becomes one among equal men, capable of entering into reciprocal exchange with others […]

In initiation, the strands of Pintupi social life are brought together at the fulcrum of the system: the construction of related individuals.

[Fred R. Myers]
Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self, p.228, 236, 239

A tolerant scepticism, an ability to doubt one's own ideas as well as those of other people, is a good test of maturity: fanaticism, insanity, and an infantile attitude to others are closely related.

[Anthony Storr]
The Integrity of the Personality, p.174

Giving and Receiving

Give              -                    Receive
Masculine         -                    Feminine
Active               -                    Passive
Assertive           -                   Receptive
Creator              -                    Consumer
Red                -                    Blue

The principle of cause and effect is at work everywhere, and somebody has to receive the results of everybody's doings.

Every sentence or thought or act has an effect on somebody. If someone has a destructive thought or wish, it has to have an effect on someone.

If it doesn't work on someone else, it works back on the person who created it.

[...] There's no need to create any opposing destructive force; that only makes more negative energy and more results and more problems.

If you have a sense of opposition - that is, if you feel contempt for others - you're in a perfect position to receive their contempt. The idea is not to be a receiver.

You people have such anger and fear and contempt for your so-called criminals that your crime rate goes up and up. Your society has a high crime rate because it is in a perfect position to receive crime.

You should be working with these people, not in opposition to them. The idea is to have contempt for crime, not for people. It's a mistake to think of any group or person as an opponent, because when you do, that's what the group or person will become.

It's more useful to think of every other person as another you - to think of every individual as a representative of the universe.

Every person is plugged into the whole works. Nobody is outside it or affects it any less than anyone else. Every person is a model of life, so the true nature of a person is the nature of life. I don't care how low you fall or how high you climb, economically or academically or anything else, you still represent the whole thing. Even the worst criminal in life imprisonment sitting in his cell - the center of him is the same seed, the seed of the whole creation.

["Mad Bear"]
Rolling Thunder, p. 244-5

Aikido was created by Morihei Ueshiba, referred to by some aikido practitioners as Ōsensei ("Great Teacher").

Ueshiba envisioned aikido not only as the synthesis of his martial training, but also an expression of his personal philosophy of universal peace and reconciliation.

Aikido is performed by blending with the motion of the attacker and redirecting the force of the attack rather than opposing it head-on.

[...] Today aikido is found all over the world in a number of styles, with broad ranges of interpretation and emphasis. However, they all share techniques learned from Ueshiba

[...] most have concern for the well-being of the attacker.

'Aikido', Wikipedia

In traditional violent and nonviolent conflict, the goal is to defeat the opponent or frustrate the opponent’s objectives, or to meet one’s own objectives despite the efforts of the opponent to obstruct these.

In satyagraha, by contrast, these are not the goals. “The Satyagrahi’s object is to convert, not to coerce, the wrong-doer.”

Success is defined as cooperating with the opponent to meet a just end that the opponent is unwittingly obstructing.

The opponent must be converted, at least as far as to stop obstructing the just end, for this cooperation to take place.

The essence of Satyagraha is that it seeks to eliminate antagonisms without harming the antagonists themselves, as opposed to violent resistance, which is meant to cause harm to the antagonist.

A Satyagrahi therefore does not seek to end or destroy the relationship with the antagonist, but instead seeks to transform or “purify” it to a higher level.

A euphemism sometimes used for Satyagraha is that it is a “silent force” or a “soul force” (a term also used by Martin Luther King Jr. during his famous “I Have a Dream” speech). It arms the individual with moral power rather than physical power.

Satyagraha is also termed a “universal force,” as it essentially “makes no distinction between kinsmen and strangers, young and old, man and woman, friend and foe.”

'Satyagraha', Wikipedia

"I say unto you," is written in the Gospel, "resist not evil," do not oppose injury with injury, but rather bear repeated injury from the evil doer.

[Leo Tolstoy]
The Kingdom of God is Within You, p. 11

[The] ד "Dalet"signifies "Dalluth" (poverty) and the ג "Gimel" beneficence ("Gemul").

The ג "Gimel" practices charity with the ד "Dalet".

The lord [said]: "It should suffice you to remain side by side together, since "the poor will not cease from the land" (Deut., 15:2), who will thus need benevolence [...] Therefore, do not separate from one another. You must remain close together and let it suffice you that one maintains the other.

"Why is the foot of the gimmel stretched toward the daled?"

"Because it is the way of the giving person to run after the poor.""

"And why is the leg of the daled slanted slightly back toward the gimmel?"

"Because the poor person must make himself available to those who can give."

"And why is the face of the daled turned away from the gimmel?"

"So he can give to him in secret, so the daled won't be embarrassed."

[...] once you have learned understanding, you see that there really is no hierarchy of givers and getters in this world. It's only on the surface that it seems that way, but in the understanding view from within, no one gives without getting, no one gets without giving.

'The letters 'Dalet' & 'Gime l'' and 'Gimmel & Daled' (adjustments have been made to the original texts)

Ingrid was a woman in her mid-twenties. She had been travelling alone and arrived late one afternoon in a foreign city. She had to cross from one railway station to another.

Suddenly she was accosted in the deserted street by a powerfully built man who forced her into an alleyway, saying he was going to rape and kill her.

Her initial reaction was one of panic, and she tried to fight back. But he was stronger. Then in a flash she saw the situation she was in; she saw the man; she saw herself. She accepted her death, her body relaxed and she looked straight into the man's eyes.

Immediately his fingers loosened on her throat.

"You don't even fight," he stammered. "You're no fun to kill."
"If I'm going to die, I'm going to die," she said quietly, never taking her eyes from his.

He became confused. She put her hands over his and gently took them from her throat. He began to cry, grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her into a nearby pub from which she escaped when he went to the washroom.

[...] So long as he was "rapist" in her mind and she was "victim," her violence mirrored his. Death was constellated. He wanted her to fight so he could kill.

But when she suddenly saw herself as one human being strangling in another human being's clutches, her compassion for herself became at once compassion for him.

She had accepted death; she saw him still in life, still fighting some ludicrous power battle [...] Paradoxically, she became invulnerable through her very vulnerability. He could not kill what had already died. In that instant of surrender she freed them both from the possession. She found herself and gave him back to himself. He was no longer "rapist"; he was simply human.

[Marion Woodman]
Addiction to Perfection, p. 152-3

Non-Indians know how to give, but they don't always know how to receive things properly.

They might say, "Aw, you shouldn't have ..." or "Why?" They put a lot of little blocks up, because they're so used to giving, but not used to receiving.

When someone gives to you, he wants to satisfy himself in some way by doing it, and if you say no, you hurt his feelings.

[Bear Heart]
The Wind is My Mother, p. 38

In Derrida's work, and in that of many cultural and literary critics who followed his ideas, there is always a sense that an opposition is no innocent structural relation but a power relation, in which one term dominates another.

Even in the case of an opposition as apparently rooted in nature as night/day, there is a hierarchy which ascribes privilege, priority and positive value to one term at the expense of the other. Indeed the very idea of otherness comes to signify this power relation, this secondary and derivative position that one sign acquires in relation to another...

Poststructuralist approaches to the binary opposition produce a kind of critique that unmasks power relations, that seeks to oppose hierarchy, that refuses to isolate the sign from the discourse in which it operates, or for that matter that refuses to isolate the opposition from the more general discursive context in which its associative and suggestive potential is formed.

If we take these two developments together, the liberation of difference from opposition on one hand, and a kind of critique that exposes hierarchy as it operates in discourse, we have a useful preliminary account of the characteristics of what came to be known, in the 1970s, as deconstruction.

[Mark Currie]
Quoted in 'Derrida and Jelinek', at Click Opera

"A woman on Gont" can't become an archmage. No woman can be archmage. She'd unmake what she became in becoming it. The Mages of Roke are men - their power is the power of men, their knowledge is the knowledge of men. Both manhood and magery are built on one rock: power belongs to men.

If women had power, what would men be but women who can't bear children? And what would women be but men who can?

'Hah!' went Tenar; and presently, with some cunning, she said, 'Haven't there been queens? Weren't they women of power?'

'A queen's only a she-king,' said Ged.

She snorted.

'I mean, men give her power. They let her use their power. But it isn't hers, is it? It isn't because she's a woman that she's powerful, but despite it.'

[Ursula Le Guin]
Earthsea: The First Four Books, p. 664

A closed system is one where interactions occur only among the system components and not with the environment.

An open system is one that receives input from the environment and/or releases output to the environment.

The basic characteristics of an open system is the dynamic interaction of its components, while the basis of a cybernetic model is the feedback cycle. Open systems can tend toward higher levels of organization (negative entropy), while closed systems can only maintain or decrease in organization.

[David S. Walonick]
General Systems Theory

The will to power […] depends on the fact that for Nietzsche all things in the world are interconnected and that their interconnections are crucial to their very character.

But from these ideas a more radical conclusion seems to follow: “No things remain but only dynamic quanta, in a relation of tension to all other dynamic quanta: their essence lies in their relation to all other quanta, in their ‘effect’ upon the same.”

The will to power is an activity that consists in expanding a particular sphere of influence, physical or mental, as far as it can possibly go. As such, it ranges from the crudest to the most sophisticated, from mere physical resistance and brute subjugation to rational persuasion.

[Alexander Nehamas]
Nietzsche: Life as Literature, p. 79-80

The hand that rocks the cradle erects the play-pen; and, whilst security is given on the one hand, restriction is imposed upon the other, with the result that all parents are bound to be ambivalent figures and to excite both love and hatred in their offspring.

If this historical view of aggression is taken, it will be seen that it can be postulated that aggressiveness is both innate and likely to become progressively less important as development proceeds.

Aggression is necessary for development, for separateness, for the achievement of differentiation from the parents. Competitive aggressiveness, sibling rivalry, is characteristic of immaturity and should diminish as self-realization proceeds.

Aggressiveness is at its maximum when dependence (and hence inequality) is at its maximum; as development proceeds it becomes less important till, at the point of maximum development, only so much aggression exists as is necessary to maintain the personality as a separate entity.

[…] differentiation is essential for individuality; two people who share the same views, hold the same opinions, and have the same interests are not differentiated but identified; and the wish of parents that their children should be like them is a narcissistic one. They want to hold a mirror to themselves and see that what they have created is both good and in their own image.

The notion that it is always wrong or dangerous to oppose anyone else is easily implanted in the child, but the behaviour which such a notion imposes is crippling to the personality as a whole, for individuality implies opposition and differentiation.

A certain opposition to others in adult life is necessary if the personality is to be maintained as a separate entity; and this is clearly connected with the aggressive impulses which are characteristic of childhood; but to use the word 'aggression' in connexion with the dignity and independence of the mature personality is to create a wrong impression.

All affirmation of the personality is 'aggressive' - but there is no word which conveys the idea of aggression without hostility, which is the concept I am trying to convey.

It seems to me that maturity is characterized by assertion and affirmation of the personality without hostility and without competitiveness, both of which characteristics are typical of childhood. The more a man has succeeded in realizing his own personality, the less compulsion will he feel to be competitive and the less hostile will he be to others.

[Anthony Storr]
The Integrity of the Personality, p.56-8

Male aggression and lust are the energizing factors in culture. They are men’s tools of survival in the pagan vastness of female nature.

[Camille Paglia]
Sexual Personae, p.25-26

The Spenserian rapist is a savage, churl, or knight who is not “curteous” or “gentle,” who has not, in other words, undergone the feminizing refinement of social life. Due to his failure to incorporate a feminine component, he pursues fleeing, malleable femininity with a headlong ferocity that is a hunger for self-completion. His lust is a semantic error, a selfmisinterpretation, a confession of psychic inadequacy.

But on the other hand, weakness inspires attack. Vulnerability generates its own entrapments, creating a maelstrom of voracity around itself. Nature abhors a vacuum. Into the spiritual emptiness of pure femininity in Spenser rush a storm of masculine forces.

Florimell, for example, is a professional victim. In her mad flight, she is called a “Hynd,” the deer whom fierce Belphoebe pursues at her first entrance [...] Feminine and unarmed, Florimell and Amoret are flagrant targets for attack. Sadism and masochism engender one another in dizzy oscillation. Caught on the swing of the sexual dialectic, the rapist vainly strives to obliterate his opposite.

The Faerie Queene’s savage circular world of rape is transcended by the higher characters, who internally subsume the chastened extremes of masculine and feminine.

[Camille Paglia]
Sexual Personae, p.186-7

Hierarchy is conceptualized eroticism, which is why, as homely Henry Kissinger said, power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

[Camille Paglia]
Sexual Personae, p.144

There are nothing but quantities of force in mutual "relations of tension". Every force is related to others and it either obeys or commands.

What defines a body is this relation between dominant and dominated forces. Every relationship of forces constitutes a body - whether it is chemical, biological, social or political. Any two forces, being unequal, constitute a body as soon as they enter into a relationship.

In a body the superior or dominant forces are known as active and the inferior or dominated forces are known as reactive. Active and reactive are precisely the original qualities which express the relation of force with force.

[Gilles Deleuze]
Nietzsche and Philosophy, p.40

Restraint / Engagement

Separation

Balance

The Sacred Circle

We cannot all sit on the same side of the Fire.

A Council Fire forms a circle, not a line or a square. When we move to the side, we still sit at the Fire with our Brothers and Sisters, but as we move away from one we move toward another.

The circle, like the Dream Hoop, brings us ever back to where we start. Any time words of respect and love are spoken, they will return as given. A harsh word runs forever in the circle, eventually vanishing from the wear against itself. Love settles within the Circle, embracing it and thereby lasting forever, turning within itself.

The Medicine Wheel is the circle of life. Starting with birth and continuing throughout our lives until death, when we have gone full circle.

The Medicine wheel has four Directions, each direction offering it's own lessons, color, and animal guide. There are two paths shown which cross in the center, at which point for me is the heart (for when you work from your heart, you can reach all directions).

The path from East to West is the path of spirits, (the Blue Road) the path from South to North is our physical Walk (the Red Road ).

East - Beginnings, purity, family, innocence, amazement of Life

South - Youth - passions of life, friendships, self-control

West - Adulthood - solitude, stillness, going inside oneself, reflection

North - Place of the Ancient Ones who have gone over - place of wisdom

Above - Freedom of mind, body, spirit

Below - Nuturing, Mother, life

[Luther Standing Bear]
Oglala Sioux 1868-1937

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Related posts:-
Lines and Circles
The Colour Wheel
Maintaining the Balance
Native Wellness
Giving and Receiving

Familiar Territory

Known                         -                       Unknown
Familiar            -                       Unfamiliar
Tethered                         -                       Untethered

Celine: When you talked earlier about after a few years how a couple would begin to hate each other by anticipating their reactions or getting tired of their mannerisms ... I think it would be the opposite for me.

I think I can really fall in love when I know everything about someone.

The way he's gonna part his hair; which shirt he's gonna wear that day; knowing the exact story he'd tell in a given situation ... I'm sure that's when I know I'm really in love.

Dialogue from Before Sunrise

His tribal position was hereditary. His father and fathers before him had been subchiefs of the Shoshone.

He knew the vast Shoshone lands.

Like the typical Indian scout he knew every hill and valley, every river and stream, and the location of all the trees and plants that his people once depended on for food.

[Doug Boyd]
Rolling Thunder, p.54

The universe was a place of wonders, and only habituation, the anaesthesia of the everyday, dulled our sight.

[Salman Rushdie]
The Satanic Verses

PC: What tends to make love disappear for you?

SR: Excessive habituation ... I think its a loss of mystery - both ways round ... I think to be too well known, and to know too well.

[Salman Rushdie]
in conversation with Pamela Connolly
Shrink Rap, Channel 4

Habitualisation devours works, clothes, furniture, one's wife, and the fear of war […] art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony. The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known […]

[Viktor Shklovsky]
'Art as Technique'

It is important to recognise how the Pintupi process of identification with country is situated in personal experience. In enumerating his country for me, Jerry tjakamarra listed not only his father’s “traditional country” (near Lake Macdonald), but the area around Haasts Bluff as well. These were all his country, he explained, because he had seen and visited them all.

Other men similarly considered places to be their country because they "knew" them, that is, had acquaintance with them.

Although several forms of identification are covered in the simple phrase "my country," all derive from and indicate an emotional attachment to a place. These are expressed equally in the concepts of "knowing'' (ninti) and also "kin" (walytja).

[Fred R. Myers]
Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self, p.137

Our inner sense of our origins within the landscape has been powerfully expressed by the biologist René Dubois in his 1972 book The God Within.

Dubois compares a landscape to a human face, something that is always changing, yet is immediately recognizable. This continuity, Dubois suggests, is the spirit of the landscape, the god within who sustains the land and resides in every rock and tree.

For Dubois the spirit of a place can be so powerful that it molds, shapes, influences, and ultimately transforms the people who come to occupy it.

The Greeks had a word for it, entheos - the god within, the divine madness - which survives in our word enthusiasm, for the god can enter into us and possess us. Thus, the god of the landscape enters into and possesses the people.

It is Dubois's belief that if a new people entered a particular landscape they would eventually end up being very similar to the previous occupants.

The Haida say that they were found by Raven hiding in a clam shell and have always lived in their present location. Suppose that, several thousand years ago, a people moved into a particular landscape and came into relationship with the spirit of that place. In a sense those people would become inseparable from that land. They would, in fact, have been created by it.

Thus it could be perfectly true when The People say that they have always lived there, for it was the land that created them, gave them form, language, and customs.

[F. David Peat]
Blackfoot Physics, p.107-8

Cutting Ties

Maturity

Giving and Receiving

The Sacred Circle

Familiar Territory

Search Forever Becoming

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