You will find a lot of blog post promising to give you a number (literally) of different stages of personal growth. My advice is to stop reading them! They are of no use to you. I’m sure the writers mean well, but the picture they paint is hardly touching reality.
One of the most important things you need to know about the stages of personal growth and development is that you are moving between them all the time. Because one aspect of you is in a different phase than the other, you are never only in one particular stage. Another vital thing you should know is that the various steps are in fact, different levels of consciousness.
Why do we feel the need to understand the stages of Personal Growth?
Probably because we seek support and find comfort in a description of the ‘road to personal growth’, because we are uncertain about so many things in life. This uncertainty may go away for a while by holding on to one of these lists of stages, but in the end, it is not how it really works, and you are fooling yourself when there is no need for it.
The reason that so many articles these days have titles like ‘The 5 stages for …”, “The 7 best …”, but also “How to …”, and of course the title of this article “Everything you need to know about…” is because of our growing uncertainties and our need to find our footing in these times of rapid change and increased threat. In other words, their strong appeal lies in our own fears and lists of information give us something to hold on to.
Within this one truth, that fear is the motor behind the appeal of those articles, the origin of so many personal development needs can also be found, namely in our fears. That is neither good nor bad. It’s just true. But it is also just a stage we are in. A stage that all people go through many times in their lives.
Though fear seems to be an important (and often unconcsious) activator for personal growth, all activators are of course just the start. If you are unable to ‘enlighten’ that initial activator, it will turn against you in the end and darken your path in stead. There are many of those activators, and different people will be activated by different expressions of it, but they all have the same origin. That is important, because…
Fear is both the motor and the prison of your personal development
So, fear is a powerful motor behind so many of our actions and some unconscious fears we carry within us, can even push us to do things beyond our normal will power. The fears embedded in our patterns seem almost unstoppable, precisely because they work unconsciously, but (by pure logic) they can be stopped with consciousness.
Although at first glance, it may seem like a good thing that we are somehow pushed by our fears to seek personal growth, those unconscious fears also play a significant role in preventing your actual personal development. Different levels of consciousness form the different stages of growth, so unconscious fear-based patterns automatically put limits on that growth and development.
Unconscious patterns create the invisible prison that keeps you from making serious progress and real freedom to develop your Self. The patterns have you on a merry go round that makes you blind for this truth, namely that the development you believe you are going through, is kept within certain boundaries that prevent further growth.
The unconscious fear has you striving for something outside your invisible prison, while you are unaware of the prison itself. Something like happiness, fruition, or alike, so you strive and make some progress, but then you hit the invisible wall. Maybe you call it bad luck or karma, but your attempt was doomed to fail from the beginning. You will first need to find the key to this prison if you want to go beyond its walls.
How to overcome the fear of the unknown?
Obviously, not by grabbing hold of a list of stages that have little meaning in real life, but by understanding what personal growth and development truly mean. If the stages are connected to levels of consciousness, then personal growth means overcoming the unconsciousness within you.
— Rumi
What are those barriers? Those barriers are your fears (and all its ramifications), and the opposite of fear is not courage, but love. The word ‘love’ is hugely misunderstood. Not in the least because it is ‘soled’ to the public by the media as a by-product of hormone-driven sexual desire and passion. Because of this, the meaning of love is difficult to explain to the people in modern society.
Although words won’t do it justice, Love is something like ‘inclusiveness’. Sexual desire is a rudimentary form of inclusiveness in which two bodies try to become one. Rudimentary because the level of consciousness is pretty low (instinctive), while inclusiveness at its highest level is pure consciousness. It’s when everything becomes one and nothing is excluded.
Many Guru’s have described something similar while perhaps using other words and images, but how do we overcome our fears with that insight? It tells us that fear and consciousness are the yin and yang of this equation. What it shows us, is that your ‘stage’ of development can be measured by the absence of fear and level of consciousness you experience in your life today. The higher your level of consciousness, the less your (unconscious) fears and patterns will control you.
Making consciousness the motor of your development
When you sleep, you are almost entirely unaware of your surroundings. Some of it may enter your dreams indirectly, but often we don’t even remember them in the morning. You do go through different stages of consciousness (your sleep cycle), even within that mostly unconscious state.
In the morning, when you wake up, you also go through different stages of consciousness, before you are completely awake. During the day, you switch between several different stages as well. Anyone can see that we go from less conscious to more conscious states and back all the time, every day, but also that we seem to have little control over it.
Having control over something may sound somewhat negative. For example, it makes me think of control freaks and people that manipulate others to get what they want. It reminds me of the jobs I had that I didn’t like and of the teachers that controlled part of my fate when I was in school. It sounds like a limitation of freedom. However, that is not what I am talking about here.
Not having control over our own consciousness is, generally speaking, equal to being prisoner of our unconscious mind, and that is mostly food for suffering. The more our lives are ruled by our unconscious patterns, the less our lives are our own. In that state we are stuck, simply reliving the past over and over again, unconsciously believing that it is what we want, or need or that it has to be like that. Believing that we cannot change how we deal with life.
But we want to change! We want to grow and develop! Right? Yes we do, but we don’t seem to know how or why naturally. That is, again, a level of unconsciousness that stands in our way. Or maybe you are not yet convinced that consciousness is what it’s all about?
How do I know that consciousness is the way to go?
Earlier I mentioned that fear was one of the motors behind your search, so it’s only logical that you should question what is said so far. Luckily, the effectiveness of a specific process, like achieving personal development by elevating your consciousness, is easily recognised by comparing it to similar processes in nature.
If you look at animals, you can see that they are generally guided by their instincts, over which they have no say whatsoever. Their species survived because of their instincts, but those are predefined behaviours. They are born with them and cannot change them, even if it hurts them in some occasions.
If you compare the animals to plants, you can see that their level of consciousness is much higher than the consciousness of plants. Plants have little or no immediate reaction to what happens in their surroundings, while most animals have the ability to run, hide or fight, for example, whenever their survival is threatened. That displays a different level of consciousness.
What is new about the human level of consciousness?
Humans have both the ability to use automated reaction patterns and think of specific solutions in specific situations. This clearly shows a tendency from purely instinctive behaviour in animals to more consciousness in humans. This tendency seems embedded in nature. Although there is much more to it than that, we humans are in the process of overcoming our instincts, while we haven’t reached our full potential yet when it comes to this new level consciousness.
That is because the new level of consciousness is not just readily embedded in us somehow. It is dormant while being pushed forward by our unconscious patterns and tendencies. It gives us the freedom to rise, but also to fall back down in a way. This stage is not without its dangers, so your fears are partially justified, at least from a certain level of consciousness.
As a species, we are struggling to get to the next level, and this struggle is part of the process. That does not mean we have to reinvent the wheel as individuals, because we can also learn from other peoples experiences. When the Greeks started to discover mathematics, not a lot of people were able to understand it, while nowadays we learn a lot that even before we become adults.
Currently, there is so much out there to learn from, but there is also a lot of nonsense available. At the same time we are sensitive to all kinds of manipulation and deceive, but most of all we can deceive ourselves. So how do we take the next step?
How to know who to learn from?
With so many people expressing their view and insights on the subject of personal growth and development, it can be a daunting task to recognise mastery from mistake. Many people who talk and write about these subjects and teach others how to do it, are themselves (partially) fooled by the same invisible prison that I mentioned earlier.
Some may present lists to simplify reality beyond usefulness, while others complicate things because they get lost in the complexity of the labyrinth of their own inner prison. Usually with the best of intentions, of course, but not always. You should be aware that some will try to get you hooked to their method, often juiced up by inspirational videos and seminars where you can get a refill.
I will do neither. I cannot explain to you in a list, or even in an article, how to know and recognise who best to learn from. I also don’t do videos and seminars for you to (re)fill your prison walls of unconsciousness with more feel good posters. Instead, I offer you one book (for a small price, because I too have to earn a living) that explains how to escape from your own prison.
Whatever you do with your new gained freedom, you will be able to decide for yourself. You can learn from whoever you want or do most of it by yourself. It will help you recognise which teachers are still imprisoned themselves, and who has managed to escape so that he or she can help you with your own consciousness and growth.
How to stop struggling and start growing?
There is a lot to be learned from those who have walked the path before you and those who are walking the path right now. To do so, you will first need to find your own core and foundations, and clear the clutter from there.
People seek to grow for many different reasons, but if happiness is your ultimate goal, be aware that the pursuit of happiness is one of the biggest traps ever created. Happiness is a state of being, but as soon as we turn it into a goal, it will also need to take a form in your mind.
The pursuit of happiness will keep you imprisoned as long as you keep it alive. All that you experience, you experience inside of you. Therefore, pursuing happiness would be like a cat or a dog chasing its own tail forever. A complete waste of time that will make you suffer more than it will ever bring happiness.
Do we need a reason for reason?
So what would be a legitimate reason to seek growth? Is there one? Strangely enough, growth is an ongoing process which has a power of its own. It does not need any reason. It is a law of nature. However, as humans, we are approaching a certain kind of freedom within the process of growth, because of the level of consciousness that is available to us. This, in turn, makes it possible to ‘grow down’ instead of up.
So your choice is not about if you want to grow or not. Your choice is whether you want to grow up or down. The way down would start with not entering into a higher level of consciousness. Somewhat like Cypher wanting to be plugged into the Matrix again after having been unplugged from it.
Anyone who will not grow upwards could eventually turn into a glorified animal with the destructive power of a human being. That sounds crazy and crude, believe me, I know. But it is not that farfetched if you simply take a look a the state of the world today and wonder what it will look like in 50 or 100 years. Imagine what it can turn into if we do not find ways to rise to new levels of consciousness.
As you may have noticed, there have never been more people looking for ways to grow as a person than there are right now, and the number keeps rising. That is no fluke. As I said before, our fears can easily be the spark behind our growth, but to really grow, we will have to outgrow our fears. If that sounds like a contradiction, then it is probably time for you to rise to the next level of consciousness where it will make perfect sense.
