Personal Development and Beyond
In the personal development workshop entitled “Living the One Wild and Precious Life” that I hold at various venues and festivals in Ireland I share with those who are gathered in the opening circle the following poem by Mary Oliver:-
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean–
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down–
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is is you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
The Harvard Review describers her work as an antidote to
in attention and the baroque conventions of our social and professional lives. She is a poet of wisdom and generosity whose vision allows us to look intimately at a world not of our making."
For this writer and storyteller, personal development is very often about expanding your personal sense of separateness. It is not something that we can add to ourselves; it is more of a gradual process of revelation. It is the slow revelation to ourselves of our own beauty and the wildness of who we are. Personal development and beyond is an endless journey into the wild and wondrous creation you are and what you are here to be and share with the world in your unique way.
If personal development is simply the practice of developing the ego in order that you get what you want and get more of what you want, the danger is that you will move into some form of attachment which will become habitual and move into addiction in some form. The writer and founder of the Creation Spirituality movement Matthew Fox states in his recording from Sounds True entitled “Radical Prayer” that as a culture we get A+ for both addiction and violence.
Creation Spirituality deeply aligned with the ecological and environmental movements of the late 20th century, with a focus on “deep ecumenism” that embraces numerous spiritual traditions around the world, including Buddhism, Judaism, Sufism, and Native American teachings.
Deepak Chopra writing in his book entitled “How to Know God – The Soul’s Journey into the Mysteries of Mysteries,” writes
It is no co-incidence that a wealthy and privileged society is so prone to rampant addiction
He continues
“— when pleasure becomes obsessive, the result is addiction. If a source of pleasure is truly fulfilling, there is a natural cycle that begins with desire and ends in satiation. Addiction never closes the circle.
The first three steps into the endless journey of the wild and precious life are focused on that aspect of being human called the personality. The personality is the sum total of the way in which life expresses through you. It isn’t life itself but the way that the life force flows and expresses through you. It is not who you are but the expression of who you are.
The first step on the journey into living the wild and precious life is the step of grounding. This first step is where you focus on being present and conscious to yourself as a time/space experience living in the body. This is where you focus on being present in the moment. This poem by Mary Oliver called “The Summer Day” is about the practice of being present, which is the foundation to the higher state, that in living a wild and precious life, this writer calls presence.
The work of being present is a most practical work. It is the most practical of practices. There are many ways to practice being present in the moment. The three key practices which I focus on in learning to live the one wild and glorious life are meditation, prayer and yoga.
In this work that I am graced to share with you I will be using a framework around which the whole journey of personal development and beyond has been mapped. This is known as the chakra system. These are the seven psycho-spiritual doorways into dimensions of living that are available to each of us. This chakra system is what the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung referred to as the process of “individuation.” The journey into the wild and precious life is not a thing to be attained but a process of revelation to be learned and lived from.
These chakras I will be referring to as doorways and in relationship to personal development and beyond I will be giving you guidance on how to use key practices to open these doors. I will be your guide to finding the key and to guiding you to the door.
Your work is to have the discipline, commitment and courage to cross the threshold into a more expansive way of seeing (6th Chakra) the world and living from that way of seeing as one who has real vision. This way of personal development is not a quick fix method. The knowledge about the chakras is very ancient. It has been preserved and developed in India. However, the chakra system of personal development is not specifically “Indian.” It is a process and a map of human personal development and beyond.
This framework I will sometimes refer to as “The Path of the Chakras.” It is path that has different names. One name given to it is “The Hero’s Journey.” You will recognize this path in many movie themes including the movies such as Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, The Wizard of Oz and stories such as Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Icarus and many others. This is the path to the realisation and the revelation of the wonder tale that sleeps within you. You are the sleeping beauty within but you are the one who is locked in a room that you believe is the only room – the only way of seeing the world. This room I call the room of separateness and it is where you feel that you are someone called a person living in a body in time and space and that you are subject to the limitations of this space time dimension.
While this is true on one level – the first room level – it is not true on other levels.I hope to show there is so much more available to you than you might ever, or could ever, imagine. So we will begin our journey with an open mind so that we might develop the ego to a point where is expands and continues to expand into the fullness of what I will refer to as the Self. This is an expansion beyond the aspect of personal development where the individual merges with the Oneness of Creation and becomes the revelation of wonder that creation designed them to be and which you are forever becoming.
OTHER GREAT CONTENT Here is some other material that will further your personal and spiritual development and your understanding of the various stages of spiritual development.
life transformation
SOUNDS TRUE - Tools and teachings to spark your inner evolution. Download FREE spiritual development podcasts from inspirational teachers
SUPER CONSCIOUSNESS MAGAZINE - SuperConsciousness is an inspiring, content-rich, evidence-based science and spirituality magazine focused on exploring innate human potential.
SPIRITUAL THEMES IN YOUNG ADULT BOOKS - Many young adult books can provide the spiritual information young adults need to assuage the loneliness of their passage; some of the possibilities are presented here.
